Sunday will mark the hundredth anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, a key player in the Russian Revolution and founding father of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). A century later, what remains of the ambiguous memory of the creator of the first socialist state in history?
On the afternoon of January 21, 1924, Lenin died at only 53 years old. Weakened for years by a series of strokes and confined to a wheelchair, he finally succumbed to a final attack. He leaves behind him a country bloodless following years of war (the First World War, during which he took advantage of the fall of tsarism to seize power, then the civil war which followed), but in which we are busy building the first communist economy on the planet.
In the hours that followed, his body was embalmed and placed in a glass coffin to be displayed to the public. A hundred years later, the remains of the communist leader are still in the heart of Moscow, in Red Square, where a mausoleum was built in his honor in 1930.
For any tourist staying in the Russian capital, a stop is almost obligatory. Even today, many Russians and foreigners make the detour to pay their respects and see with their own eyes the body of the man who built the first socialist state in history.
“You’d be surprised how many people go there,” says Kristy Ironside, a professor of Russian history at McGill University who has visited the mausoleum twice herself.
An experience she describes as “deeply bizarre”. “We enter the mausoleum, we go down a few steps, then Lenin is there, illuminated in the middle of the darkness. He looks like a melted candle, he’s not in great shape! » said the academic specializing in Soviet history with a laugh.
This perhaps sums up Lenin’s place in Russian memory: a little tarnished, but immovable.
Selective memory
The memory of Lenin is the object of all covetousness after his death. He then embodies the strength of the global communist movement, intelligence and self-sacrifice in the service of a cause. Stalin seized it to legitimize his accession to power. Then, Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev used it to justify their reformist wishes.
“After his death, Lenin was immediately recovered,” recalls Kristy Ironside. Saint Petersburg is renamed Leningrad, posters and statues of him appear everywhere, the mourning is immense. And this cult continued throughout the Soviet period. »
The cult of Lenin is mitigated, to a certain extent, by that of Stalin during the years in power of the Man of Steel. But after the death of Stalin in 1953 and the de-Stalinization process initiated by Khrushchev, it resurfaced. Same thing at the end of the 1980s, when Gorbachev initiated perestroika, a series of economic and social reforms to give some breathing room to the dying communist regime.
“The memory of Lenin is reactivated at this moment, but it is a very selective memory,” explains Kristy Ironside. The Lenin that Gorbachev evoked was a liberal, who would have wanted pluralism, democracy. This is a far cry from the real Lenin, who justified the use of violence and terror several times when the Bolsheviks murdered their enemies. »
Always present
Almost 35 years after the end of the USSR, monuments in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov can still be found almost everywhere in Russia and in certain former Soviet republics, such as Belarus.
“Under Boris Yeltsin, in the 1990s, there were a lot of debates to decide whether it was necessary to move on and get rid of Leninist symbols, but we never managed to agree and take a decision,” recalls Jean Lévesque, professor of Russian history at UQAM.
However, we should not expect major celebrations on Sunday from Vladimir Putin’s regime to mark the 100the anniversary of his death. It is rather on the side of the communist opposition, still tolerated by Putin and which receives up to 15% of voting intentions in certain regions, that we should anticipate any celebrations.
“The Putin government has an ambivalent relationship with the Soviet period,” argues Kristy Ironside. They have inherited certain aspects of the communist system, but they are not communists. For example, the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution was marked in 2017, but in very nuanced terms. We still celebrate the victory of the USSR in the Second World War, but it is seen more as a Russian victory than a communist victory. »
The fall of communism and the end of the USSR sidelined Lenin in popular Russian imagery. But not enough for his statues to be unbolted… or his corpse to be put back for good.
“Figures from the communist years like that of Stalin were evacuated, but we never managed to get rid of Lenin,” explains Jean Lévesque. It is still there today. As if we were touching something almost sacred, almost as if it were part of the country itself. »