Book of Love for the Leader

On January 21, 1924, Lenin passed away.

From January 23 to 27, day and night, people walked to the coffin displayed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. Since then, the ballroom of the Noble Assembly, created for fun and celebration, received a new function for decades to come - a kind of cathedral of the country of victorious atheism, the place of the people's last farewell to the Leaders and honorary citizens.

The first communist relics took their place in the first real communist temple - the mausoleum on Red Square. Hundreds of wreaths, banners, bouquets, and memorial plaques brought and sent to his coffin remained. They were moved from the Hall of Columns to the Kremlin, and the entire St. George Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace was filled with spruce branches, live laurels and artificial flowers, hammered metal, red and black flair. They didn’t dare just throw away all this unnecessary splendor. It was obvious that something more than a spontaneous exhibition of ritual objects had crystallized around the Leader’s body.

“These various wreaths and inscriptions on ribbons reflected so much creativity, so much genuine, sincere feeling, so many apt and correct definitions of the role and significance of Lenin for the broad masses of workers and peasants, so much love for him that reproducing them will be of great historical interest,” - stated the Commission of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR for perpetuating the memory of V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin. So the decision was made to publish a unique book - the photo album "To Lenin. January 21, 1924." The Goznak factory produced it in a huge circulation for that lean time - 13 thousand copies.

This was one of the first sacred books of communism - later forgotten, but no less interesting. Book of love for the Leader. 516 pages contained images and descriptions of about a thousand objects. Mostly pompous products of funeral parlors - wreaths in the Art Nouveau style, strewn with porcelain lilies of the valley, wreaths with woven portraits, wreaths with ribbons, wreaths with ears of corn, wreaths made up of the attributes of the labor of factory workers, and also a black plywood circle on a stand from avant-garde artists , touching children's embroideries "to Grandfather Lenin", strict engraved tablets and baroque handwritten letters.

Inscriptions in Russian, French, Tatar, Uzbek, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Uighur...

Loaders at the Moscow Tovarnaya station of the Kazan Railway sent a wreath of tin flowers in the shape of a five-pointed star with the inscription: “Lenin’s grave is the cradle of freedom for all mankind.”

Workers at a cloth factory in Kupavna near Moscow sewed a two-meter panel with a portrait of Lenin from colored cloth.

“Sleep, our world leader. We will remain your faithful sentries,” write the workers of the gun factory from Motovilikha. Their gift was a copper plaque in the shape of a tombstone obelisk.

The great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky sent an elegant wreath with the inscription “Farewell friend” without a comma, and the unknown Roman anarchist Hamlet Temellini sent a bouquet of live red carnations and palm leaves, tied with a ribbon with the inscription “To the man who deserves everything.”

Laurel wreath from the Moscow Art Theater with the inscription "Lenin - the sun of the future." Another wreath is a homemade spruce wreath, “From neighbors, peasants of the village of Gorki.”

The Red Army soldiers of the Kharkov garrison say goodbye to the “commander-in-chief of the proletarian forces of the world”, the sailors to the “brilliant helmsman of the world revolution”, the workers of the psychiatric hospital named after. Kashchenko with the “healer of social ills”, the newspaper “Izvestia” with its “best employee”, and the workers and farmers of Turkestan with the “liberator of the working class and the oppressed peoples of the East”.

The Committee of Merchants of the Horse Square behind the Cow Wall in Moscow swears: “The world’s great leader of the revolution, the great V.I. Lenin, your good work in the world will be forever honored by us.” The troops and employees of the GPU of Ukraine swear: “Your commandment of the Cheka - be on the alert - we will sacredly fulfill.”

And here is an offering from the prisoners of the Moscow Tagansk prison: “To the dear teacher of the working people of the world, Vladimir Ilyich. We cannot prove our devotion to your teaching by personal presence, for reasons of voluntary and involuntary mistakes we have made before the working people, but in soul, consciousness and instinct we are with you and against your enemies."

Wreaths from schoolchildren and children from orphanages, a common wreath from passengers of train No. 5 Tashkent-Moscow, gifts from people who wished to remain anonymous... This reminds me of something...

“And Malchish-Kibalchish was buried on a green hillock near the Blue River. And they placed a large red flag over the grave.

The ships are sailing - hello to Malchish!
The pilots are flying by - hello to Malchish!
Steam locomotives will run by - hello to Malchish!
And the pioneers will pass - salute to Malchish!

Much has been written and said about the cult of leaders and fallen heroes in Soviet culture; Much more will be written and said. But the opportunity to see a country parade before the coffin of its leader, like the endless processions on the reliefs of Egyptian tombs, is worth many books and articles. You can look through it in the Library of the Sakharov Center in Moscow.