A spectre is haunting Instagram — the spectre of Lenin selfies.
The Lenin Communist youth union of Russia’s Komi republic has started an Instagram campaign to conduct a “Selfie with Lenin” flash mob, according to Global Voices. Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party, approved of the idea to promote Lenin as a way to evaluate the condition of Lenin statues across the Russian Federation.
About 300 posts showcase the success of #селфислениным thus far. Lenin statues remain a popular selfie object for foreign tourists as well as Russian, which makes it slightly difficult to separate the sincere from the ironic. A particularly popular Lenin statue is a 25-foot tall statue of his head in Ulan-Ude, on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia.
Polls have shown Lenin’s popularity increasing in Russia since at least 2006. In an April 2014 poll conducted by the Levada Center, 38 percent of respondents indicated that Lenin’s influence had been “mostly positive.”
Many Lenin statues remain in Russia and around the world. Occasionally, the effort to remove or relocate them within Russia is raised, but a large-scale program has yet to appear.
