The Dustbin of History

“You are pathetic bankrupts! Go where you belong. Into the dustbin of history!”
Leon Trotsky

That famous quote by Bolshevik outcast Leon Trotsky as he derided the failed Mensheviks at the first Central Party congress during Russia’s October revolution,
is a dim reminder that all empires, no matter their mettle, must sooner or later, all come to pass.

It’s been almost 6 months and after having given up the notion of finding any leftover furnishings of the former Soviet Empire, I got my first big lead about two weeks ago. There was once an age during the nadir of this great empire where one could casually stroll the boulevards of any Soviet republic and run smack into one those colossal bronze monoliths created to illuminate the glory of the empire’s most significant architect: Vladimir, Illich, Ulianov, a.k.a ,V.I. Lenin. I’d only seen the pictures, heard the stories from travelers poking around the recently liberated Soviet republics of the great monuments dominating the city squares. After, all, liberation here came almost 20 years ago so there was no reason to believe that I could still find one of these Soviet Realist treasures. I started hearing stories in school, though, about one of these rare, lost statues poked away down by the river, hidden from public sight since liberation, no doubt. The school’s Russian teacher actually took her class to this statue, so, after a little investigating, I too, would set off in pursuit of Lenin’s statue. After dragging Carrie along on our first expedition, to find Lenin, we gave up after two hours of fruitless searching on a cold Saturday in an obscure local park down by the Ural River. It wasn’t until the following Saturday, with the direction from a local Kazakh Carrie snagged in the vicinity, that we were able to locate Lenin. But, find him we did! Poked away in some nameless alley outside of the park’s boundaries was this glorious, eight-meter high statue. Along with this monolith were, scattered throughout the alley, another three
or four Lenin busts as well. It seemed as though they were simply whisked in the back of a truck one day following liberation and consigned forever to this obscure reliquary left to languish in the “dustbin of history”. It seems a proper epitaph to a symbol that is once proudly Soviet and a reminder of dimmer times. That sums up well, I think, the attitudes of some local people around here; fondly forgiving, forever reminiscent and just a little ambivalent about their Soviet heritage.