This refers to packs of cigarettes with Lenin's face on them. Actually, such cigarettes still exist -- you can buy prima Nostalgia cheap filterless packs in two forms, one with Lenin on the pack and one with Stalin. They cost three (3!) rubles a pack, or about 10 cents, as opposed to 10 rubles for Soyuz-Apollon or Russkii Stil or 30 rubles for Marlboros. Which kind of shows you which smokers feel nostalgic for Lenin and Stalin, namely poor people.
By the way, I have heard from the horse's mouth that the USSR had great cigarettes -- they would get the tobacco directly from Cuba and then mix it with Moldovan and Ukrainian tobacco.
Chris Doss The Russia Journak
BOOK REVIEW: THE LENIN CULT
Olga Velikanova. The Public Perception of the Cult of Lenin Based on Archival Materials. Lewiston (NY, USA), Queenston (Ontario, Canada), and Lampeter (Wales, UK): The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001 [in Russian]
Every Soviet child grew up immersed in the Lenin cult, but few could have been immersed as deeply as Olga Velikanova, whose mother was deputy director of the Lenin Museum in Leningrad. As Olga matured, there grew within her the yearning to understand the cult as a cultural phenomenon. Glasnost gave her the opportunity openly to pursue her intellectual search. This book, which draws extensively on newly available archival materials, is the result.
The author traces the development of the cult from 1917 right through to the "de-Leninization" of the 1990s. In contrast to the political (in the narrow sense) concerns of previous writers who have tackled the subject, her approach is anthropological. Thus she places the attempt to make Lenin "immortal" by embalming his body in the context of the Bolshevik ambition to "tame" time and put it to political use.
Only by reading this book and looking at the pictorial illustrations in it did I come to realize the extent to which the Lenin cult penetrated everyday life. Lenin's portrait adorned not only the pages of newspapers, the walls of people's homes, processions, and children's reading primers, but also such objects as teacups, headscarves, and cigarette packs. It was on signet rings that people wore on their fingers and medallions that they carried round their necks.
There were really two distinct Lenin cults: an official cult deliberately constructed by the Bolshevik leaders, and a popular cult which arose spontaneously among the common people and found expression in rhyming verses [chastushki]. The two cults evolved in interaction with one another, but there were significant differences between them. The popular cult contained elements which for ideological reasons could not be incorporated, at least overtly, into the official cult. Although the popular cult was ideologically "incorrect," the leaders (who were well informed about it by secret police reports) valued it as a political asset and took it into account.
Thus the popular cult contained a strong religious component, as exemplified in the way Lenin's portrait was displayed on the walls of peasant huts for worship alongside icons of the more traditional variety. It also had an important ethnic aspect. Lenin was loved because unlike many of his party comrades he was perceived as a pure Russian. Above all, he was not a Jew! Historians who later discovered that Lenin was not in fact a pure Russian -- one of his grandparents had been Jewish, another Kalmyk -- were told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet.
This is a very rich study, and I can hardly do it justice here. I hope that it will soon get published in English so that it can reach a broader circle of Western readers.