In the mid-1950s, at the height of the Cold War, Alfred Hitchcock made a wickedly funny black comedy called, “The Trouble With Harry.” It was all about a corpse that insisted on popping up at the most inconvenient moments.

The Russian Federation has its own Harry in the form of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, whose embalmed body has been on display in Moscow’s Red Square for 80 years.

Since the fall of Communism, Lenin’s presence in the heart of Russia’s capital has become increasingly embarrassing – and controversial. As the New York Times reported Wednesday, there is a lively debate going on right now as to whether the time has finally come to bury Lenin, not to praise him.

“It is time to get rid of this horrible mummy,” one political reformer is quoted as saying. “One cannot talk about any kind of democracy or civilization in Russia while Lenin is still in the country’s main square.”

Others, older Russians who lived most of their lives under Communism, and were taught to revere Lenin, hold that burying the body would be a denial of Russia’s past.

Meanwhile, the “mummy” is said to break out periodically in nasty patches of fungi.

As one whose life spans the whole of the Cold War, I always regarded Lenin’s embalmed corpse with a certain amount of amusement. The Soviet regime was officially atheist, and yet it put Lenin’s remains on display for the masses to venerate, the way some Christians might revere the relics of a saint. The regime also encouraged a quasi-religious cult around its defunct founder.

There were many Russians at the time who were similarly amused, as the political jokes of the period testify. I remember one in particular that circulated in the mid-1950s as Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was preparing for an official visit to England.

As the story went, Khrushchev had been warned by a protocol officer that he would be expected to kiss Queen Elizabeth’s hand when she received him at Buckingham Palace. The news dismayed Khrushchev, who felt it would be demeaning for the head of a workers’ state to kow-tow to the representative of a decadent bourgeoisie monarchy. Seeking guidance, Khrushchev and his advisors held a séance in the Kremlin to conjure up the ghost of Lenin.

The séance was successful. Lenin’s ghost duly appeared, and the problem was explained to him. “What should I do when I meet the Queen?” pleaded Khrushchev.

Visibly annoyed, the spectral Lenin made this scolding reply: “Nikita Sergeiivich, Nikita Sergeiivich, how dare you disturb me to ask such a silly question. You kissed Stalin’s ass for 20 years, so you can certainly kiss a lady’s hand!”

It was Khrushchev who, after denouncing Stalin in a speech before a party congress in 1956, had his predecessor’s body removed from the tomb in Red Square, where it had lain side-by-side with Lenin’s during the three years since Stalin’s death.

As I recall, Khrushchev had the remains cremated before they were buried outside the walls the Kremlin, to make sure that Stalin’s body could never be disinterred and returned to the tomb on Red Square. In the end, that may be the only way the Russian people can be sure of ridding themselves of Lenin as well. After all, Lenin himself never approved of halfway measures.