How could I have missed it? The 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov — better known to most of the world as Vladimir Lenin — came and went (on January 21st), and I slept right through it. Shame on me.

In my defense, however, I will point out that it didn’t make a huge splash in the news, considering the mountain of articles on the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the war between Donald Trump and the entire U.S. judicial system, and Travis Kelce’s war with himself over the relative importance of his career versus his romance with Taylor Swift. But still, I must take responsibility for my own oversight.

Fortunately, I did come across one interesting article about the effect — or lack of it — of Lenin’s role in Soviet history on today’s Russia. Apparently, Lenin’s image today is “largely an afterthought in modern Russia . . .” [Jim Heintz, Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2024.]

In 1988, when a friend and I joined a tour group and headed off to the Soviet Union for a two-week adventure, one of our stops in Moscow was — in Mr. Heintz’s words — the “near-mandatory pilgrimage” to Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, where his embalmed corpse lies under glass, in full view of God and country. As the line of visitors snaked slowly but steadily (no stopping allowed!) around the sarcophagus, I whispered something to my friend, and she chuckled softly. You would have thought we’d pelted old Vlad with rotten tomatoes, judging from the guard’s immediate reaction . . . an angry, almost growling “Silence!” from the other side of the narrow enclosure, virtually scaring the breakfast out of everyone in line. We were obviously in sacred territory, in the presence of a demigod (albeit a dead one), and we had sinned. We were lucky not to have been arrested.

Not so today, apparently. The mausoleum is currently open only 15 hours a week, and draws fewer visitors than the Moscow Zoo. (I can understand that. Who wouldn’t rather spend time with some beautiful live animals than a creepy, waxy-looking dead guy?)

Statues of Lenin do still stand around the country, but Mr. Heintz informs us that many of those have been the targets of vandals and pranksters. My favorite is at St. Petersburg’s Finland Station, which commemorates Lenin’s return from exile; apparently, it was “hit by a bomb that left a huge hole in his posterior.” [Id.] How fitting, for one who has apparently become something of a pain in Russia’s ass.

According to historian Konstantin Morozov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lenin has “turned out to be completely superfluous and unnecessary in modern Russia.” [Id.] That’s really rather sad, in a metaphysical sense.

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The Communist Party, led by one Gennady Zyuganov — something of an anomaly himself — also still exists in Russia, and is the largest opposition party in parliament. Yet it holds only 16% of the seats, dwarfed by Putin’s United Russia Party. So the question arises: If not communism, then what form of government does Vladimir Putin have in mind for the future? He clearly has brought repressive, totalitarian rule back to Russia after 30 years of relative freedom; he rules from the top of his own mountain, with an iron fist; and he has made it clear that he finds much to admire in the accomplishments of the late Josef Stalin. So is Russia facing a new era of Stalinism . . . or perhaps some hybrid of Putin’s own creation? Only time will tell.

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Looking back on the past 100 years, and contemplating the next decade and beyond, perhaps it’s just as well that Lenin isn’t here to see what’s happened to the country for which he had such big dreams. I can almost see myself walking into his mausoleum again, only to find him lying face-down, weeping silently into his satin pillow.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/28/24