MOSCOW Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its founder Vladimir Lenin still occupies a place in Russian hearts and in the heart of Moscow's Red Square where his mausoleum, a perennial tourist attraction, will be the focus of his 131st birthday celebrations Sunday.

More than 66 percent of Russians believe, according to AFP, Lenin played a positive role in the country's history despite the all-too-familiar litany of Soviet evils, according to an opinion poll published this week by Moscow's Romir Institute.

"Lenin's ideas were good but they were badly interpreted," said Olga, an accountant from Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg, who had come to the capital to show her teenage daughter the mausoleum in Red Square.

Inside the red granite tomb Lenin's mummified corpse lies on display, albeit in crepuscular gloom, for the hordes of die-hard communists and tourists who make this pilgrimage to the walls of the Kremlin.

In keeping with the mausoleum's somber mood, visitors are forbidden to speak or take notes or even to stop for a moment on the ill-lit walkway as they parade past Lenin's body under the watchful eye of uniformed guards.

The body of the father of the Bolshevik revolution, who died in 1924, is kept as a precaution behind a bulletproof glass case, his orange-tinted face and hands bathed in a halo of light.

"The Lenin era was not so bad. Lenin was not responsible for Stalin's crimes. He is a part of our history," said a 32-year-old teacher leading a group of Russian schoolchildren on a tour of the mausoleum.

Admission to Lenin's tomb is free and, according to the authorities, it receives thousands of curious visitors -- half of them Russians -- every day at the height of the summer.

A decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, statues of Lenin still dominate the main square of most Russian cities, while few of the countless streets bearing his name have been rechristened.

"Today's population has no firsthand memory of Lenin while the memory of Stalin is still very much alive. After all, every Russian has a grandfather who suffered at the hands of Stalinism," says Marc Ferro, a specialist in Russian history.

"Lenin died so long ago that today's Russian society does not feel it has any connection to him. Instead Lenin is remembered for liberating the people from hundreds of years of bondage, from the evil tsarist regime and the church," Ferro adds.

Lenin's popularity is especially revealing of Russians' attitude toward the past, observes historian Nikolai Koposov.

"The Russians have a short historical memory. Nobody wants to accept any responsibility for the evil that was done. We try to forget our past, and pretend most of the 20th century didn't really happen," adds the Saint Petersburg University lecturer.

Yet the Lenin legend comes under attack in a new film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov, whose "****Taurus****" (the astrological sign Lenin was born under on April 22, 1870) depicts the Soviet icon's sad decline in the last months before his death.

The film -- in competition for the Golden Palm at next month's Cannes Film Festival in France -- portrays the father of Soviet communism as a wheelchair-bound invalid.

At a special screening in Russia last month, the film divided audiences reared on the Soviet era's more dynamic images of Lenin.

More divisive still, however, is the long-running dispute about whether or not the mummified corpse should at long last be evicted from its pride of place in Red Square and laid to rest elsewhere.

Over fifty percent of Russians polled by Romir believe Lenin should be buried once and for all.

Young, educated, urban Russians tend to favor the burial option, while the elderly and loyal communists resist the idea, according to the pollsters.