Posted on 06/24/2006 6:14:06 AM PDT by Popman
Russian communists reacted with dismay yesterday after they discovered that strippers and drunken businessmen had turned the birthplace of Lenin, once one of the most hallowed museums in the land, into a wild party zone.
The Lenin Memorial Museum, a complex of buildings with Lenin's home at its heart in the central Russian town of Ulyanovsk, admitted throwing open its doors to corporate parties in an attempt to raise revenues.
Museum staff acted as waiters at vodka-tasting parties and other events hosted by local banks and factories that often degenerated into binges with strippers, local newspapers reported.It is all a far cry from Soviet times, when dutiful citizens travelled to the museum on the banks of the Volga to pay homage at the simple house.
"We wish we did not have to engage in things like this but we have to maintain the building somehow," said Valery Perfilov, the museum's director, insisting that Lenin probably would not have minded. "Lenin was very pragmatic and flexible. He was known for his many compromises."
Local communists, however, met the governor of Ulyanovsk yesterday to lodge a formal complaint.
"Everything is for sale nowadays - body and soul," said Alexander Kruglikov, the head of the Communist Party's local branch. "I think making money out of Lenin's name is a shame."
Governor Sergey Morozov is unlikely to sympathise, however, as he wants to turn the museum into a theme park called Leninland, where visitors can dodge secret police and relive "the gulag experience".
I alway thought that the suggestion in National Review just after the fall of Russian communism was the best.
Put his corpse on a giant rotisserie, so he can roll over in his grave for all eternity.
Of course the did. How else could the latest KGB director control them.
It was an integral part of a bigwig [nomenclaturist] career - official or inofficial attachment to, and collaboration with, KGB. Like the prior military service used to be expected from United States politicians in the 19th and early 20th century. And it is not a question of "control" - nobody needed to pull any strings. They did not need to be controlled - kegebunery became their very nature, flesh and bones. They instinctively behaved as needed and expected - that's how they got to where they were.
Then strap magnets to him, and generate free electricity!
Next, they will prop Lenin waxen body up for the photo shoot for 10,000 ruble
Well, first of all "conservatives" are not a monolithic group. There are social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, ye olde greed is good conservatives, etc.
And too, the irony in this case is just too delicious.
I see a "Weekend with Lenin" movie in out future...
D'oh! Beaten again...
That $370 per shot. I'd bet you could make lots more money buy lowering the price and going for volume sales.
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