Learn, learn, learn. Lenin.
Please take a look at the painting of the Surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dali, named "Partial Hallucinations. Six Apparitions of Lenin on a Piano". This work was created in 1931 and it is permanently exposed at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris.
One can wonder why was the artist or its character haunted by Lenin's image, and also why was haunted the whole world, philately including, by this philosopher and politician. This site will try to give a short answer to this question, and will show a small selection of innumerable stamps that the USSR has dedicated to its creator. It is not my intention to present here Lenin's biography, that can be found on the Net, in its various interpretations.
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Lenin justified theoretically and created practically what the US President Ronald Reagan had the courage to call many years later by its right name: The Evil Empire. Even if he considered himself a disciple of Marx, Lenin contradicted him in an essential point, by stipulating that the communist society should be firstly built in an underdeveloped country (i.e. Russia). He has created the party that has overthrown, by a putsch, the first democratically elected Russian government (lead by the social-democrat Kerensky). It is he who created the Communist International (Comintern), the international organ for the spreading of communism worldwide. He is the father of some bloody repressive organs like the Cheka (Special Commission, the later NKVD - Popular Commissariat of Interns), and of the GULAG (the Soviet wide system of concentration camps). Just as an example among many others, it is by his order that the Kronstadt uprising of sailors (the earlier supporters of the communists) against the Soviet Government was bloodily supressed.
He introduced the term of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", a smoke curtain to conceal the crimes of the group of professional revolutionaries, that he led, against the adversaries of communism and terror. He is also the father of the Comsomol (the communist organization of the youth) and of the pioneers organization, that "educated" the children. Both were used as well for indoctrination as for the espionage of the adults. He persecuted all religions, by terrorizing their adepts and by incarcerating (and often liquidating) the priests.
So why is Lenin still considered by so many as a genial thinker, a hero, an example to follow? It is obviously the effect of the earlier (and sometimes still present) communist propaganda (note that a joke said that communism is a locomotive that consumes a half on its power through the whistle). The communist leader compromised themselves, one after another, because they have never delivered what they promised, and because they used terror in order to achieve at least something. So they needed a immaculate leader, a kind of communist God, and Lenin fit to that, because he was the first leader, i.e. for most a long time ago, he died quickly after he put the communist system in Russia in place, and because his follower and consistent pupil Stalin was even more bloodily and more cruel.
That's why Lenin even became after his death a Mausoleum, in Moscow, on the most central Place, the Red Square (a pre-revolutionary name, "red" having here the meaning of "nice"). This was the obligatory transit place for many people who came from the whole USSR and from abroad to visit Moscow.
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Are Lenin's stamps rare or somehow precious? Most of them aren't, excepting for those from the beginning of the USSR, a period for which most of stamps are more difficult to find in a good condition. Historically some of these stamps are nevertheless interesting. Please notice that about 90 per cent of USSR cancelled stamps are CTO's, and that really used stamps are much more valuable.
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The last Lenin stamp, shown above on the right, was issued by USSR on 22nd April 1991. It commemorated Lenin's 121 birth anniversary. The paintings presents Lenin in Geneva library, Switzerland. The democratic Russian state didn't celebrate either the 125th birth anniversary, or another one. The end of an era.
A hint and an excuse:
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Point on the above stamps with the mouse for more information
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Sorry, Lenin hadn't a particularly nice or friendly face, so that even the bests artists couldn't make it look better
Should Lenin stamps be collected? This is up to everybody, and it depends of their philatelic interests. I don't collect them,
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Created:
07/26/03.
Revised:
12/07/05.
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