The Discreet Charm of Lenin
Abstract
This article takes two postcards of Lenin as their point of
departure to ask about articulations of Soviet history as image and
kitsch. I am especially interested in the ways in which the dead body or
mummy of Lenin comes to symbolize an imagined social coherence that
accrues specific political significance after the demise of the Soviet
Union. In looking at Lenin's mummy as a site of memory and key to
understanding contemporary Russian political desires, the article offers
one analytical interpretation of the continuing preservation of
Russia's revolutionary and also Stalinist past. By arguing that the
Lenin mummy simultaneously functions as camp and kitsch, and as an
embodied time of eternity, I also seek to understand how “grandiose”
understandings of Soviet history work in this present.
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