#Lenin monuments

[thererisesaredstar]

Happy October! (1971)

[estherax]

Generating plasm and stacking matchboxes: how to build a better future through collective consciousness.

Alternatively - Steban and Ulixes were building Tatlin's Tower so I have to talk about the symbolism or I will explode!!

While completing the communist vision quest you get an opportunity to build a model of "The Tower of History", depicted on the last page of "A Brief Look at Infra-Materialism": a leaning tower wrapped in a dramatic helix. The scale model you make is a mirror image of Tatlin's Tower - a design for a grand monumental building to the Third International: the government organization advocating for world communism.

The main idea of the monument was to produce a new type of structure, uniting a purely creative form with a utilitarian form. Meaning it would function as an office building while also serving as a symbol of cultural significance. And let me tell you, this bad boy can fit so much symbolism in it.

Tatlin was commissioned to develop a design in 1919, after the 1917 February Revolution - a parallel to Disco Elysium's Insulinde we're witnessing post-Antecentennial Revolution.

Tatlin's work was inspired by high revolutionary goals, which are evident in the visual direction of the tower as well, expressing the ideological strive for achieving something that has never been done before, overcoming the odds. The structure "oscillates like a steel snake, constrained and organized by the one general movement of all the parts, to raise itself above the earth. The form wants to overcome the material and the force of gravity..."

The tower has meaning packed even in the materials. For example, the glass structures (marked A, B, C on the architectural rendering) were meant to serve legislative, executive and informative initiatives while rotating around their axes at different speeds. The material signified the purity of initiatives, their liberation from material constraints and their ideal qualities.

But here's the best part. The spirals.

"The spiral is the movement of liberated humanity. The spiral is the ideal expression of liberation: with its base set in the earth, it flees from the ground and becomes a symbol of the suspension of all (...) earthy interests." They are "the most elastic and rapid lines which the world knows" that represent movement and aspiration, continuing the themes of progress and freedom, but they also refer to something else.

In the process of building the matchbox model Rhetoric points out: "It's almost exactly as Nilsen's sketch imagined, a physical manifestation of the dialectical spiral of history."

The shape of the tower is a representation of dialectical development of history, first visualized as a spiral by G. W. F. Hegel. He pictured transformational change as "both linear and circular in order to be short-term responsive, i.e. possibly negating itself, and long-term strategic, i.e. a process of development."

Hegel's dialectics would later be reinterpreted through the prism of materialism by Marx and Engels to create dialectical materialism - the basis for historical materialism.

"Still, this idea, as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegels’ philosophy, is far more comprehensive and far richer in content than the current idea of evolution is. A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis, (...) a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line; a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; (...) the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon (history constantly revealing ever new aspects), a connection that provides a uniform, and universal process of motion, one that follows definite laws - these are some of the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development that is richer than the conventional one."

The tower embodies progress in materialist understanding of history while also indicating the connection to ideological plasm, a manifestation of "the proletariat's embrace of historical materialism", necessary to create a better future.

According to Nilsen, the proletariat of a revolutionary state can generate enough plasm to create extra-physical architecture that "disregards the laws of 'bourgeois physics' and instead relies on the revolutionary faith of the people for structural integrity."

This function of plasm implies that The Tower of History can be created only under revolutionary circumstances - without a sufficient amount of plasm even the matchbox model didn't stay up. The exact same sentiment is expressed about Tatlin's Tower: "We maintain that only the full power of the multimillion strong proletarian consciousness could bring into the world the idea of this monument and its forms. The monument must be realized by the muscles of this power, because we have an ideal, living and classical expression the pure and creative form of the international union of the workers of the whole world."

Nilsen called it "the highest expression of Communist principles, a society whose literal foundation is the faith of its people."

Tatlin's Tower was a symbol of faith in the revolutionary future, the global triumph of Marxist socialism. A monument "made of iron, glass and revolution."

It was never built in real life, and neither was The Tower of History in the world of Elysium.

But you can try to see if there's enough plasm between the three of you. And the matchbox tower stays up for a long moment, quivering with an improbable energy. You believe it can say up - and it does.

So you have to believe; whether it's for collective action or generating ideological plasm. Then, together, maybe you'll be able to build as much as 0.0002% of communism.

[picsfromsiberiangirl]

Lenin's Pet.

[benkaden]

Ansichtskarte

MERSEBURG Lenin-Monument am Gotthardteich

Köthen: Heldge-Verlag KG 437 Köthen (P 1/72 IV-14-45 06 08 11 120)

Foto: [Erich] Kühn

1972

[scavengedluxury]

Lenin Monument, Mohács, 1986. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

[katchwreck]

March, 1924: The monument in Noginsk is one of the first monuments to V.I. Lenin.

[mockva]

[callmepip]

new monument mythos episode lookin fire 🔥 🔥 🔥

[faradaysketches]

Lenin by Lev Kerbel, Museum of Socialist Art, Sofia. May 2023

I spent hours trying to find this museum. I asked 15 people on trams, tubes and walking. One person walked with me to show the way, another told me the wrong direction and one person asked for money after helping.

[schiellestentere]

путь к коммунизму всегда выстраивался через тернии к звездам, а владимир ильич до сих пор намекает на то, что надо продолжать бороться за светлое будущее. своим примером, идя большими шагами по всеобъемлющему простору, усыпанному звездной пылью, он показывает что достичь своей цели возможно, но для этого надо хорошо постараться, иначе твои идеи никогда не поразят сердца миллионов людей даже спустя многие тысячелетия.

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🌱🌆💡

[pattern-recognition]

they should erect monumental bronze statues of the Fitgirl-Repacks woman like Lenin

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

"Let's continue advancing along the victorious path of socialism"

Monumental poster depicting Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin during the anniversary of the revolution in Cuba, January 1979.

Via Socialism Pictures

[komsomolka]

One of the most unusual monuments to V. I. Lenin is located in the village of Leningrad Region. The 2.5-meter bust, towering over the volumes of the immortal "Capital" and Lenin's own collected works, was created at the beginning of Soviet power existence without any professional help by local citizens own effort.

[jedivoodoochile]

A monument to Lenin transformed into a statue of Darth Vader in Odesa, Ukraine.

[dailyoverview]

Ashgabat, capital city of Turkmenistan, is known for its white marble buildings and numerous grandiose national monuments. Some created during the Soviet era honor figures like Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Pushkin, while more modern monuments symbolize independence, neutrality and the Constitution of Turkmenistan. Ashgabat has a population of just over 1 million.

37.937500°, 58.380000°

Source imagery: Maxar

[scavengedluxury]

Lenin monument (Imre Varga, 1974), Széchenyi square, Mohács, 1979. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.