This article is classified "Real"
A big brick building located on one side of the Red Square next to the Kremlin, the Lenin Museum is one of the most interesting thing to visit in Moscow (Russia, Earth). On its three stages you will see several hundreds of pictures of Vladimir Ilitch, plus several kilometers of his quotations. You will be driven through his life with great details by charming tour guides (well, as charming as is compatible with twenty years of loyalty to the Party), perfectly speaking your language, in the respect that they have learnt by heart in your language the complete works of Lenin. Things To Do ============ In the first room, you will be shown a report card of young Vladimir Ilitch, where all of the marks are excellent except one. Ask about this one to your guide: she will explain you in great details that this particular teacher has been proven to be a maniac by later investigation. Actually, we didn't have to ask about it - she started defending poor young Lenin before we even asked. Each time you pass along one of those Sovietic painting where you can see all the hoopy team of the first days of the Revolution; the tour guide will tell you that the guy there on the left used to be Trotsky, and the guy there on the other side used to be Stalin. But after Stalin eliminated Trotsky at Lenin's death, the looser had to disappear from all the official paintings and documents. Then at the de-Stalinization, under Krushtshev, the evil Stalin was in turn erased from all the paintings, and sometimes Trotsky was painted back. Nowadays they don't know actually what they should do with all these multi-layered paintings. Some of the photographs underwent the same treatment, and they now show all the successive versions, which is most interesting for Field Researchers - after seeing that, one feels free of inventing historical nonsense for The Guide. As often as possible, ask your tour guide about the words of wisdom lying everywhere on the walls, ceiling and ground, just for the pleasure of hearing her translate them without even looking at them. More generally, ask questions of the type, "what do you think Lenin thought about this and this," and she will delight you with a ten-minute quotation of the idol in the purest Sovietic style. In the end, you definitely have to ask a question like, "do you think that things would have gone better if Trosky had won instead of Stalin." Before the end of the communism, the answer was easy: "I don't see how things could have gone better." Nowadays she will try a variation on this theme (just insist), and then escape by suddenly pretending she doesn't speak our language that well. The most impressive room of the museum is the room filled with all the effigies of Lenin given to the USSR by brother countries and others. Here you find Lenins made of fur, of rice, of wood, of feathers, of fabrics, of all possible materials; Lenins that look like Asians or Blacks; big Lenins and small Lenins; and some exotic ones, like a picture of Lenin on a piece of American spy plane shot by the Cubans. According to a widely-spread rumour, Paul Clegg decided that he would also become the Founder of Something after visiting the Lenin Museum. The other museum definitely to visit in Moscow is the Mayakovsky Museum, in the former building of the KGB on the Lubianka. It is almost, but not exactly, everything but Lenin Museum.