Talk: 150 years since the birth of Vladimir Lenin

2020 marks 150 years since the birth of Vladimir Lenin. Join Pushkin House for an evening with writer Lev Danilkin to onsider a complex inheritance. What is there to gain from studying Lenin’s biography todcay — and why is a new revision of his political modernism so necessary? Officially, the powers that be distance themselves from this contradictory character, preferring to let their proxies fabricate ideas about his life and legacy. Today there is no acknowledgement in mass-consciousness of “Lenin as philosopher”, and his literary inheritance is barely considered. The Soviet phrase ‘Lenin is more alive than the living’ no longer applies to him. In fact, he is deader than dead, a mausoleum-enshrined communist-era mummy. Does this mean that Russia has parted ways with Lenin forever? Author of Lenin. The Pantocrator of Solar Dust, will lead us through an evening of discussion about this important figure.

The event is a part of the ‘Read Russia’ programme and will be chaired by Anastasia Koro, a PhD candidate at Queen Mary’s University of London.

In English.