The Amazing Adventure

Description: Vanya Chmotanov is a small-fry Moscow pick pocket whose "university" was the prisons were he served two long stretches, the first sentence of ten years being for stealing 76 bread-rolls (bublichki) from the bakery where he worked. One clay during a lunch-break, after a morning of diligent thievery in the GUM department store, Vanya wanders out into the Moscow streets and, seeing a long queue, joins it out of pure habit. Too late he discovers he is in the queue for the Lenin Mausoleum; he dares not leave the line lest he attract police attention. Stolidly going through with it, Chmotanov, to pass the time, idly but attentively sizes up the security arrangements of the Mausoleum and, when finally inside to view the sacred sarcophagus, is struck by the idea that there behind that glass is a treasure for which "Rockefeller would pay billions." Another day, Chmotanov, the "thief of the century," again joins the Mausoleum visitors’ line, this time equipped with surgical instruments, acetylene torch and a suitcase and other paraphernalia concealed beneath his winter coat. Once inside he hides behind the catafalk until closing time, and stays hidden until a changing of the guard at 3 a.m. gives him his opportunity to go to work. Inside the glass cage beside Lenin’s body he discovers that all his tools are unnecessary: the head comes off easily in his hands;