I’ve always wondered how many leaders around the world are actually preserved forever after death. When I looked into it, I found out there are only five. What’s more, and this is the interesting part, their stories aren’t driven by technology alone—major political choices of the times have a big influence behind it.

It starts with Lenin, who is almost like a pioneer of modern permanent body preservation. When he died in 1924, he was apparently going to be buried in the usual way, but sparked by the public’s outpouring of mourning, they ended up freezing his body on short notice. After that, Soviet scientists carried out repeated experiments and developed a special preservative solution. It’s quite a clever technique: by replacing the body’s water content, it suppresses bacteria.

Lenin’s tomb is equipped with a constant-temperature cooling system, and experts carry out restoration work every week. Regular comprehensive maintenance, of course, is required, and sometimes even small transplant-style surgical procedures are said to be necessary. Because of these strict processes, his body has been kept in a perfectly preserved state for nearly 100 years.

But here’s what’s fascinating: the fate of another Soviet leader, Stalin’s body, turned out differently. He was buried in Lenin’s tomb in 1953, but in 1961, his body was cremated because the values of the era changed. In other words, whether a body is preserved isn’t just a matter of technology—it’s heavily tied to the political decisions of that time.

The same is true for Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh. He personally wanted to be cremated, but his successor decided to preserve his body instead. During the Vietnam War, his body was hidden in a mountain cave for 5 years, and Soviet experts completed the preservation process inside the underground caves while avoiding bombings—so it must have taken a tremendous effort.

In Angola, Nétu faced even more technical challenges. They needed to specially develop a pigment-preservation technique suited to Black skin. These days, his body is apparently only publicly displayed once a year, on his birthday.

On the other hand, there are also failure cases. Since Gottwald’s embalming and preservation technique was insufficient, his body decayed and was cremated in 1962. Dimitrov had been preserved for more than 40 years, but due to political changes in Eastern Europe, he was cremated and buried in a public cemetery.

The body from Joba Mountain in Mongolia was also destroyed in 2005, when the mausoleum was demolished, and it was cremated according to Buddhist rituals.

Looking at all of this, permanent preservation of a body is the result of both technology and history. Even if technology advances, it can’t be achieved without how people of the time understood the issue and the political judgments they made. The body in the crystal coffin is indeed a testament to technology—but at the same time, it’s also a mirror of history.