The above image is the sarcophagus of Vladimir Lenin, a primary inciter of the October Revolution that saw the rise of the Soviet Union, of which he would eventually become the first leader of the Communist state. It is here, in his public mausoleum, where Lenin became the ultimate form of Soviet propaganda, and this is the formal establishment of the Soviet cult of personality, under the regime of Stalin. For the Soviet people, this site became like the Ka’aba for Muslims, the Western Wall for Jews, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians. Just look at the droves of Soviets lining up to catch a short glimpse of “Dedushka” Lenin:
This became like religion to these poor, oppressed souls.
However, this was not the first time Lenin was used as propaganda. In fact, for the greater portion of his life, Lenin used himself as propaganda. After the death of his brother Alexander, who was hung for conspiracy to assassinate the Csar (what a model revolutionary family), Lenin became overtly radicalized and started to move against the Russian Empire. He became learned in the works of Marx and other socialist writers/theoreticians, yet he lacked his own revolutionary persona, as his upbringing was not the idyllic notion you would think of the world’s first Communist dictator. Thus, his political image became something very constructed in an attempt to shake off his seemingly bourgeois upbringing. So, old Vladdy Ilyich played the role of Rakhmetov (the main character in some poorly-written Socialist propaganda novel) under the guise of “The New Soviet Man.” And this is where the all-inclusive cult of personality began to take shape. Even down to the food he ate, Lenin played this role. He abstained from the elitist/bourgeoisie gluttony characteristic of most of European society in favor of more simplistic fare. And after the October Revolution, Lenin rose to the heights and became leader of the Communist world. It was under his leadership that the ideas of a socialist utopia and the creation of a “community” were shoved down the throats of the people, with basically a complete abolition of personal privacy. Along with this came the destruction of the “personal kitchen,” and, in effect, food production/distribution was nationalized, which only held a recipe for disaster.
It was here that I believe the cult of personality should have been eliminated, with the introduction of Lenin’s NEP plan amid rising tensions over what else, food. The nationalization of food led to poor quality and severe shortages, which in turn led to hunger, even starvation. So, what does the COMMUNIST leader Lenin decide to? Adopt a pseudo-Communist free market system, in which a few businesses were allowed to establish privatized ventures. This, in turn, not only created the nepachi class (well-off capitalist businessmen), but also set a precedent for the continuance of this system through the creation of an intricate black market system, which contributed to the true Utopian ideology of Communism to never be instituted in the Soviet Union.
Yet, that is not how the story went. Rather than see the truth, the Soviet people were too busy choking on the propaganda of the state while Lenin kept the country just barely afloat, and the people recognized this through the sole fact that they were no longer going hungry, a notion unheard of since before the 1917 Revolution. So rather than see the light, the Soviet people were again force-fed propaganda, in the form of the grotesque spectacle pictured above. Stalin, who commissioned his eternal preservation, had created a holy place, for all the Soviet people to congregate and take in, with the eyes of course, the communion of the body of Lenin.