Communism Had Nothing to Say about Death

During the second world war, [the British statesman] Sir John Laurence attended what he describes as “a sort of Communist memorial service” to "Stanislavsky (the seminal Soviet Theatre practitioner) in the Moscow Arts Theatre. “There was a closed coffin on the stage, draped in a red flag, and the dead man’s colleagues came and said goodbye to him in set speeches. 

One heard some of the world’s greatest actors and actresses speaking of their teacher and leader on what should have been a moving occasion, but the experience was empty. I was not at that time a Christian believer, but even so it struck me that Communism has nothing to say about death. There was no development of a theme such as one gets in the prayer book service for the Burial of the Dead. In the same way to visit the mausoleum where Lenin lies…is for me a disturbing experience precisely because it was no content.