Former North Korean rulers Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il may have died many years ago, but they’re very much alive in the national consciousness, their embalmed bodies lying in state deep within a massive mausoleum on the outskirts of Pyongyang.

Their corpses attract scores of visitors every year and have undoubtedly become North Korean icons, sacred symbols in the cult of the Kim family dictatorship.

But like the founding leader himself, these icons have a Russian origin story that the regime is loath to acknowledge. 

One-hundred years ago this week, the communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin diedat his