Fong, the most famous of that elite corps, has a contract with Spacetec, which puts his name on its joysticks and pays him to wear the company logo at public appearances. And some just tell me that I'm their idol. The communist cult of the dead Boris Yeltsin wants to bury Vladimir Lenin once and for all. That idea infuriates some of Russia's Communists, and, last week, one group protested by wiring a statue of Peter the Great with explosives. Moscow police defused the bombs, but the group has threatened to strike again if Yeltsin carries out his plan to remove the embalmed body of Lenin from his mausoleum on Red Square.
Communists take their mummified former leaders seriously.
The practice started in 1924, when Joseph Stalin ordered that his predecessor's remains be preserved and put on display. Lenin was to be a Christ-like figure. This form of veneration caught on elsewhere in the communist world. The preserved bodies of China's Mao Zedong and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh are virtual holy sites in their respective countries. And last week North Korea unveiled a memorial complex for the mummy of Kim Il Sung, who died three years ago.