Leniniana

In the basement of Moscow’s State Historical Museum, hundreds of tiny Lenins gather dust on shelves. They are red, white, yellow and black. They clutch their lapels and point towards the future; they frown in concentration and grip their pens.

Their author was Nikolai Andreyev, a Soviet sculptor who spent six years perfecting his design for a statue that would never be realized. Andreyev was one of dozens of artists who labored to create the iconic image of the Leader – and whose efforts often ended up on history’s ash heap.

Andreyev’s figurines are among 100,000 pieces of “Leniniana” hidden for decades in the bowels of what was once called the Lenin Museum. Now, some of them are on display for the first time in “Myth of the Beloved Leader,” an exhibition running through January 2015.