Word: leninization
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...grind their faces in the ice of miracle, mystery and authority, to make culture into a form of ventriloquism from on high. Socialist Realism was a religious art celebrating the transcendent power of communist ideology, the impending heaven of world socialism and the godlike benignity of its father, Lenin's successor, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, the man of steel. And like the traditional icons of Christ and the saints it replaced, the stuff was omnipresent. No square or schoolroom in Russia lacked its image of Stalin pointing to the future...
...truly astonishing thing was how quickly, after Khrushchev's speech, it all disappeared. The statues were unpedestaled; the thousands of pictures vanished into cellars; Stalin's auto-monument, his embalmed body, which lay in state beside Lenin's in the tomb under the Kremlin wall, was deaccessioned, hoicked out and cremated, and its ashes were scattered...
While there was loose talk last week of coalition building, especially between the Communists and Zhirinovsky's followers -- a so-called Red-Brown coalition -- Russia's once daunting mastery of party discipline has gone the way of the honor guard at Lenin's tomb. Any alliances forged in coming days are likely to founder shortly after the Duma convenes in Moscow next month and Deputies get their first real taste of lawmaking. Despite the surprising showing by the Liberal Democrats, Zhirinovsky's power will be much diluted once the Duma gets down to business...
China, on the other hand, stands alone. It is monolithic, but lacks leverage in any part of the world except its own formidable chunk. And while China does value international influence, it has no evangelistic mission propelled by the figures of Lenin and Marx...
...shot by Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg, Czar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and three of their children will receive a proper burial. The bones were discovered in a pit outside the town in 1991. Meanwhile, one week after honor guards ended their 69-year watch outside the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, the fate of his embalmed corpse remains undetermined...