An Analysis of the Cult of Lenin in Russian Archives

This study of collective representations in Soviet Russia concentrates on perceptions of Lenin’s image, from a socio-anthropological rather than political view. In addition to Communist party information, official documents, memoirs, and folklore, newly-opened secret reports of the soviet political police are used for the first time. It analyses the development of the cult from Lenin’s lifetime up to the process of ‘de-Leninisation’ in the 1990s. Much of the research concerns the perception of his death and the decision to embalm his body, the campaign called ‘the Lenin enrollment’, renaming of Petrograd, and organization of ‘Lenin Corners’. It also presents new material devoted to Lenin museums, along with archive documents and never-published photographs. The text is completely in Russian.