It serves as the resting place of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, whose preserved body has been on public display since shortly after his death in 1924, with rare exceptions in wartime.

The structure, designed by Alexey Shchusev, incorporates some elements from ancient mausoleums such as the Step Pyramid, the Tomb of Cyrus the Great and, to some degree, the Temple of the Inscriptions.

Two days after Vladimir Lenin's death on 21 January 1924, architect Alexey Shchusev was tasked with building a structure suitable for viewing of the body by mourners.

A wooden tomb, built in Red Square close to the Moscow Kremlin Wall, was ready on 27 January, the same day Lenin's coffin was placed inside.

[1] By the end of May, Shchusev had replaced the tomb with a larger, more elaborate mausoleum, and Lenin's body was transferred to a sarcophagus designed by architect Konstantin Melnikov.

[2] Pathologist Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov had embalmed Lenin's body shortly after his death, with Boris Zbarsky and Vladimir Vorobiev later being tasked with its ongoing preservation.

In 1925, Boris Zbarsky and Vorobiev urged the Soviet government to replace the wooden structure after mold was found in the walls and even on the body itself.

On 26 January 1924, the head of the Moscow Garrison issued an order to place the guard of honour, popularly known as the "Number One Sentry", at the mausoleum.

[4] The guard of honour was disbanded following the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, but was restored at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Garden four years later.

In January 1925, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee announced an international competition to design a stone tomb for Lenin's body.

The upper slab of red Karelian Shoksha quartzite was placed on columns of granite, whose different species were specially brought to Moscow from all the republics of the USSR.

[4] During construction, both the mausoleum and the necropolis were brought to a unified architectural design: differently characterised tombstones and monuments were removed, individual and collective burials at Nikolskaya and Spasskaya Towers were united, and the fence was redesigned and installed.

Illuminators and light filters are embedded in the upper part of the frame, giving an animating pink coloring and reducing heat.

[3] For example, if a patch of wrinkling or discoloration occurred, it was treated with a solution of acetic acid and ethyl alcohol diluted with water.

[10] In 2016 the Russian government reversed its earlier decision and announced it would spend 13 million rubles to preserve Lenin's body.

I think that actions of this kind can lead to the kind of destructive state that we have already experienced.In 2009, Vladimir Medinsky, a State Duma deputy from United Russia, noted that there was no point in keeping Lenin's body in the mausoleum:[16] The maintenance of an ideological artifact in the center of the capital is an immoral act, meaningless from the point of view of budget spending, harmful from an ideological point of view, and cruel both towards Lenin's relatives and towards people who do not share the communist ideology.On 20 April 2017, deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and United Russia proposed for consideration a bill on the burial of Lenin's body, which proposed to establish a procedure for the burial of historical figures.

The very fact of the need for burial was considered established, but specific dates were not specified:[17] In order to consider the issues of reburial of the remains of historical figures, whose activities influenced the course and outcome of major historical events, in order to perpetuate their memory, the government of the Russian Federation, in the manner established by it, forms interdepartmental commissions... the remains of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) are subject to reburial...

The provisions of the bill allow for burials without taking into account the will of the deceased and at the expense of the federal budget, but the sources of funding have not been identified, which makes it difficult to assess the financial consequences of the adoption of this law.

[17][18] In 2018, RIA Novosti reported that Vladimir Petrov, a member of the legislative assembly of Leningrad Oblast, proposed creating a special commission in order to examine the question of the removal of Lenin's body from the mausoleum.