Held in Czech

The leader of the Bolshevik revolution Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died a physical death in 1924. Soviet society, however, acknowledged this fact in a way one might interpret as denial. Lenin’s embalmed corpse was deposited in a mausoleum and Soviet culture celebrated his immortality. Did Lenin die at all? Apart from literature, photography played a crucial role in projecting the image of the eternal Lenin. Lenin in Pictures offers an insight into the phenomenon of immortality in 19th century Russian culture, and its transformation during the Soviet era. Much in the spirit of utopian materialism, it then seemed that science and technology would be able to prolong life infinitely. In Lenin’s case, however, the dimensions of physical, iconographic and political immortality became increasingly contradictory, illustrating the strategies of Soviet propaganda in documenting its own history.