After his death in 1924, the face of Владимир Ильич Ленин was used for mainly religious purposes, as he became known as a sort of ‘icon’ for the Soviet Union. After the death of the Soviet Union, the face of Lenin, and even more so his profile, has been used for a wide array of purposes, many of them purely commercial, some even rudely capitalistic. If Lenin must have been spinning in his grave – uhm, I mean mausoleum, back in the days of building communism and being on the constant watch-out for a classless society, then I suppose he’s getting sweaty with movement in modern Russia of today. Here and now you’ll run into Lenin in places where you least of all expect him to, like in advertisement for juice or on children’s t-shirts, while at the same time statues of him are being torn down quietly all over the country. But then again, the Russian mind has a history of being complex and even more so the Russian soul – and which one of these two body parts was it that he had more influence on? If there’s a Bolshevik Hell, I’m sure to burn in it: I call the minor statues of Lenin [those are often forgotten and will probably be the last to go, if they ever will that is] «Ленинчик» [“little Lenin”] which has the suffix «чик» in the end, which used in this waysand in this context is what in Russian is called a «уменьшительно-ласкательный суффикс» [diminutive-endearment suffix]. Such a suffix is often used when wanting to express certain feelings (perhaps of endearment) toward certain things, or if the things talked about are small. In my case, though it is risky to be your own therapist, I’d say my distortion of the Russian leader’s name is an expression of my familiarity both with him and the statues of him. Come to think of it, I’ll probably not go straight to Bolshevik Hell for this – in usual manner The Party will probably invite me up for tea in Communism Heaven first, where they’ll treat me cookies and smile at me, right before denouncing me in their paper “Heavenly Pravda” and purging me… Anyway, that’s not important – and may be offensive to some – what I wanted to discuss was this ad that I came across today:
