Lenin and Red Kirill

St Petersburg was called Leningrad from 1924 upon the death of Lenin until 1991 upon the death of the Soviet Union. The man in question, Vladimir Ilych Lenin, was an almost unbelievably roulettian character. It's hard to imagine what Russia would have been like today had this radical revolutionary been content to relax in his rural hometown on the Volga in the soft comfort of bourgeois family life.

Instead, he moved to Petersburg, studied law, and took part in conspiratorial organizations against the monarchy for which he was exiled to Siberia. Thereafter, he went abroad, residing among other places in Zurich, where he heard the news of the February 1917 revolution that deposed Tsar Nicholas II. This was the moment! But how to get back to Russia?  War was raging and crossing international borders was fraught with difficulty and danger. A million things could have gone wrong, but with the help of the Germans, who hoped to foment internal problems in the land of their WWI enemy, he was transported back to Petersburg in a sealed train like (so Churchill) a "plague bacillus."  The plague spread, and Lenin stirred up a fervor that culminated in the Great October Socialist Revolution and the founding of the USSR.  


Meanwhile, Red Kirill sends me a text message:  there's going to be some sort of event tonight in an underground pub. I'm supposed to meet him at the Obvodny Canal metro station in one hour. Kirill is an artist, a continual dissident, an optimist with negative forecasts. His hair is tied up in dreadlocks and he only wears red, not due to any communist convictions, but because "Red is the color of hope!  And it makes it easy to buy clothes. I only look at red."


As we race along to the pub, Kirill talks and walks non-stop, ignoring red lights. "I only know one direction! That's forward. If I stop, I sleep. Ach no, nothing will come of the protests. This is a land of slaves! No one knows any better. My problem is Griboedovian: 'Woe from Wit.' I understand too much. If I didn't know everything, I too could be a consumer like the rest! But no, I understand it all. Putin says the Americans are stirring up the protestors. Ridiculous! It's the KGB! They know how to manipulate. They're causing dissension between the various groups. Then they'll strike. At first we were all working together, now everything is squabbling among themselves. Ach, things will never change, oh, here we are."


The pub is located in an anarchistically renovated cellar with low ceilings and red walls. A band plays loud music and the smoke hangs heavy. Kirill introduces me to Byelorussian Ilona, striking in dyed blonde hair, black-rimmed glasses, space-consuming earrings, white fur, and red plaid skirt.  


Ilona says that contrary to rumor, there really isn't a dictatorship in Byelorusssia. The pensioners love President Lukaschenko, it's the youth who are discontented as usual. They call it a dictatorship just to get attention. Of course the situation is bad, but...what can you do?


Suddenly, the door swings open and who strides in but Lenin himself! The crowd cheers. Following him are Father Christmas (the Russians use the Orthodox Church calendar which is fourteen days behind the western one, plus they celebrate for as long as possible: in short, it's still Christmas here), and somewhat unrecognizably, Putin as an extraterrestrial robot. Everybody wishes everybody else a happy 2012 as the band plays on.

Red Kirill, Lenin, Putin, and Father Christmas

The lyrics stick in my mind:
A happy new year to you and me
Now that we're free
Anything might be.


In Russian, this doesn't sound optimistic, but rather like a warning of impending chaos. As long experience has taught, that "anything" will most likely be bad. 


[originally published 11 January 2011]