On politics, they say everyone said that the government is hard at work to build the New Russia image, and that as part of it, there is an effort to remove old Soviet and communist symbols where they aren't historically protected. The closure of Lenin's mausoleum is allegedly a decided matter (on which they confirm what I heard elsewhere, that most locals think the display of Lenin's mummy is something silly). They also listened to rants to the tune that Lenin & the communists have ruined Russia (uhm, was what was there before really that good? Not to mention the ruin by the Nazis?)

Must be just that people they were talking to were anti-communists. There may be too many streets and monuments dedicated to revolutionaries, but attempting to rewrite history 90 years after the fact or to re-fight a virtual civil war is a bit stupid.

Orthodox church made a few noises recently about communism (I understand that this must be coming from the Foreign Russian Orthodox church which formally reunited with Russian Orthodox) and general tone of the blog/media comments was that church is risking followers if it is to push for anti-communist campaign: for one, the church is overstepping boundaries by talking politics, and secondly, communists left the church and religion alone, and church should do the same for the communists.