A man sees a poster

 A man walking down the street sees a poster that says Comrade Lenin has died, but his cause lives on!

"If only it were the other way around..."

One variant during the Brezhnev years changes the punchline to "What a coincidence. Comrade Brezhnev has died, but his corpse lives on." The Russian words for "cause" and "corpse" are "délo" and "telo," so the rhyme is even stronger.