Cruise 4

The next day found us in Ulianovsk, nee Simbirsk.  This remarkable town is designed to make the visitor never, ever again want to think about Vladimir Ilych Lenin.  

In Ulianovsk you can-- indeed, cannot avoid to-- see statues of Lenin, photographs of Lenin, grocery lists written by Lenin's sister, the bed in which the little Lenin slept, the school in which he studied, and the fur coat which his mother wore to walk him there, preserved in a large glass case.  The center, near the harbor, is taken up by what seems to be acres of Lenin memorials and a monumental Lenin museum, in the courtyard of which stands one of about five houses in which the Lenin (then called Ulianov) family lived, all of which are now museums.  One house stands in a neighborhood some distance from the main memorial site, and some years ago the Soviet state decided to not only remake the house into a house-museum, but to restore the entire surrounding neighborhood to approximate the condition in which it stood during the Ulianov family's stay there.  

Now the city center stands as a monument to a man about whom no one knows what to think. A couple of the older Russians in our group were openly disgusted by the display.   If nothing else, the memorial park serves now as a reminder of the incredible monotony of the one-party state.  The real deeds and life of the man are beside the point, when he is represented for three-quarters of a century as the hero-saviour of Russia.  One almost feels sorry for the heros of the Soviet era-- Gargarin, Lenin, Gorkii, et. al.-- whose real earthly selves were hijacked to serve the purposes of the state they supported, or created.