Lenin, Lenin Everywhere | scottrellphotography

Lenin, Lenin Everywhere...

December 7, 2014

Calling all Lenin lovers: a collection of Lenins from across Russia and the former Soviet Union.

A pink granite Lenin stands in typical pose on a huge revolutionary square in the centre of Chita, in south-east Russia. All across the region, there are scores more monuments to the father of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

As Fidel would later do with Che Guevara, Stalin started the process of immortalising Lenin as soon he died and soon Lenin statues could be found everywhere. The Second All Union Congress of the USSR decreed that: "the image of our great leader must be immortalized for all future generations and should serve as a permanent reminder and a call to the struggle for the ultimate victory of communism."

By the fall of communism, this cult of personality had become such a part of everyday life, that to this day you can come across the great leader everywhere - from the modest centrepiece found in many a small village in the Russian countryside, to the giant Lenin head in the city of Ulan Ude in the Far East, which stands almost eight metres tall. Even in the depths of Krygyzstan, on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul you can stumble across a statue of the great man painted in shimmering gold