VI Lenin Exhibition at the State History Museum – Moscow

Posted on 10/05/2025 by Michael

To the Citizens of Russia

VI Lenin Exhibition at the State History Museum, Moscow

At the moment there’s a special exhibition attached to State History Museum, one which documents some of the life and work of VI Lenin. Although there’s only a fraction on display here of what used to be on show in the now closed Central Lenin Museum (which used to be housed in what is now the War of 1812 Museum) this exhibition is still worth the visit. Unfortunately, you have to pay the high admission price to enter the State Historical Museum – which, after the pre-historic exhibits is basically a glorification of Tsarism – to get to this exhibition, which is located on the third floor.

To get a better idea of what the Russian State did hold about Comrade Lenin have a look at the book, The Central Lenin Museum, produced in 1986.

What to look out for – amongst other things:

a porthole and sailor’s tally from the Cruiser Aurora;
the cap that (the clean shaven) Lenin wore when he was on an island in Finland before his return to Petrograd to lead the October Revolution;
the original poster of ‘Comrade Lenin cleanses the world of evil spirits’;
Lenin’s Rolls Royce – on the ground floor right where tickets are checked and possible to miss;
the painting of the Central Committee meeting which made the decision to go for everything and to make a Proletarian Revolution and not just a bourgeois change of guard – with a disinterested Trotsky skulking on the extreme right hand side;
the painting of the assassination attempt on Lenin’s life on 30th August 1918;
the gun that was used in the assassination attempt;
the light bulb whose filament is a profile of Lenin’s head;
Lenin’s death mask;
early Lenin badges;
early Soviet coinage and bank notes;
the first symbol of the Soviet Union – a hammer and a plough – before the adoption of the Hammer and Sickle;
the felt hat used by the first Red Army soldiers.

Duration of the Exhibition;

The Exhibition will be in the Historical Museum until 18 August 2025. It is located on the 3rd Floor, separate from the general displays and entrance is by way of the same ticket that gets you into the general museum.

Location;

Revolution Square

GPS;

55.75546 N

37.61771 E

How to get there;

Right in the historic centre of Moscow, at the opposite end of Red Square to the St Basil’s Cathedral, right behind the equestrian statue of Marshal Zhukov.

Cost;

2000 roubles

Casa Scînteii – House of The Spark/Casa Presei Libere – Bucharest

Posted on 06/10/2024 by Michael

Casa Scînteii – House of The Spark

Casa Scînteii – House of The Spark/Casa Presei Libere – Bucharest

The House of the Free Press (Romanian: Casa Presei Libere), known during the Socialist period as Casa Scînteii, ‘House of The Spark’, is a building in northern Bucharest, Romania, the tallest in the city between 1956 and 2007.

Construction began in 1952 and was completed in 1956. The building was named Combinatul Poligrafic Casa Scînteii ‘I.V.Stalin’ and later Casa Scînteii (Scînteia was the name of the Romanian Communist Party’s official newspaper). It was designed by the architect Horia Maicu, in the Socialist Realist style made popular in Moscow in the early 1950s, resembling the main building of the Moscow State University, and was intended to house all of Bucharest’s printing presses, the newsrooms and their staff.

It has a foundation with an area of 280 by 260 metres (920 ft × 850 ft), the total constructed surface is 32,000 m2 (344,445 sq ft) and it has a volume of 735,000 m3 (26,000,000 cu ft). Its height is 91.6 m (301 ft) without the television antenna, which measures an additional 12.4 m (41 ft), bringing the total height to 104 m (341 ft).

Between 1952 and 1966, Casa Scînteii was featured on the reverse of the 100 lei banknote.

100 lei banknote, 1952, reverse

On 21 April 1960, a statue of Vladimir Lenin, made by Romanian sculptor Boris Caragea, was placed in front of the building. However, this statue was removed on 3 March 1990, following the Romanian counter-revolution of 1989.

Casa Scînteii – FOTOFORTEPAN MHSZ

On 30 May 2016, the Monument to Capitalism, ‘Wings’, was inaugurated in the same place.

Renamed Casa Presei Libere (‘House of the Free Press’), the building has basically the same role nowadays, with many of today’s newspapers having their headquarters in it.

As of 2023, the House of the Free Press is the only building in Bucharest that has kept the hammer and sickle communist symbol, together with the Star, which appears on repeated reliefs on its façade.

Text above from (a revised) Wikipedia posting.

Architect;

Horia Maicu

Engineer;

Panaite C. Mazilu

Location;

Piata Casa Presei Libere

GPS;

44.480907°N

26.071261°E

Construction started;

1952

Completed;

1957

Height;

104m (341ft)

Moscow State University

Radisson Ukraine Hotel, Moscow

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moscow

Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya

Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building – Moscow

Kudrinskaya Apartment Building – Moscow

Memento Park, Budapest

Posted on 20/09/2024 by Michael

Memento Park

Memento Park, Budapest

This is a collection of statues, bas reliefs and busts that used to be located in public spaces in the city of Budapest during the period of the countries Socialist construction. This is similar (but not an exact equivalent) of the Park of the Fallen/Muzeon Art Park, Moscow, and the Museum of Socialist Art – Sofia, Bulgaria. It consists of 41 items, spread out over three sections, in the open air. The collection consists of what might be called the seminal works that were on display in the city but the curation also seems to have chosen some of the exhibits based upon the uniqueness of their design. Hungarian sculptors seemed to have followed a slightly different path in representing individuals and events from some of the other countries in Eastern Europe. Here you will see figures that are almost abstract, still ‘figurative’ but a shift away from the norm of the time.

What to look for;

a couple of good Lenins – although one of them looks slightly different from what we’re used to – and one of which Vladimir Ilyich holds his scrunched up cap in his left hand;

Memento Park – 01

an interesting, stylised, made of stone, ‘the only Cubist-style monument of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the world’ to the right of the main entrance;

Memento Park – 07

a truly monumental statue of a Soviet Red Army man – who used to be placed at base of the memorial to Freedom in present day Liberty Square;

Memento Park – 02

the large statue group as a monument to Bela Kun and the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, a late statue (1986) its composition is quite unique and seems to be open to a whole number of interpretations;

Memento Park – 03

a couple of monuments to Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian leader of the Communist (Third) International;

Memento Park – 04

the two bas relief panels that were originally planned to be part of the decoration of one of the Budapest metro system;

Memento Park – 05

the robotic forms of the three Hungarian volunteers of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War;

Memento Park – 06

the wall to commemorate the defeat of the Hungarian Counter-Revolution of 1956.

Memento Park – 08

More information about all the statues in the Park can be found in the official guide book, In the shadow of Stalin’s boots.

It’s a bit of a mixed message. It thinks it’s critical of the Socialist past – which the narrative puts down to be one only of Soviet occupation – but, from time to time, has to acknowledge that it was the Soviet Red Army that liberated the country from the Nazis. The only country that threw out the fascists, first the Italian and then the Germans, without the direct intervention of the Red Army, was the Albanians. The rest of Eastern Europe didn’t do it by themselves.

Perhaps one of the most telling statements made in the book is on page 4, second paragraph. Here it states ‘Hungary finished the Second World War in 1945 on the losing side’. By December 1944 the Red Army had surrounded Budapest but it took them 50 days to destroy the resistance of the German Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators. The remnants of this support for fascism obviously were not totally destroyed throughout the country and it was from this seed that the counter-revolution of 1956 grew – nurtured by the capitalist ‘West’.

Location;

To the south west of the city centre, just outside the official city limits.

1223 Budapest XXII. district, Balatoni út – Szabadkai utca corner

GPS;

47.42671015031753º N

18.999903359092098º E

How to get there by public transport;

From central Budapest take the Metro line No. 4 to Kelenfold, the end of the line. Once out of the metro system and in the passageway under the railway lines of the mainline station look for a sign pointing you to Örmezö which will take you to the bus station (blue buses) where you want to catch either the 101E, 101B or the 150. There’s an electronic information board as you come up from the underpass indicating how long before they depart. This is an express bus with few stops and Memento Park is the second of these, indicated on a screen as well as being announced. The second time the voice mentions a stop it is imminent. The entrance is just behind the bus as you get off, look for the black boots.

Memento Park website