The Lenin Statue That Never Was: Moscow's Monumental Propaganda

Before the Lenin mausoleum and the grand statues of Stalinist Moscow, the Bolsheviks had a wild plan: to cover the young Soviet republic with monuments to revolutionaries, poets, and even anarchists. This episode tells the story of Lenin's 1918 'monumental propaganda' decree, the artists who raced to build plaster busts of Marat, Spartacus, and Bakunin, and the chaotic first years of Soviet public art. We follow the forgotten sculptor Sergei Merkurov, the never-built Tower of the Third International, and the strange fate of a colossal Lenin statue that was meant to crown the Kremlin but ended up in a Moscow park. Along the way, we ask what these fleeting monuments tell us about the revolution's hopes and its quick turn to control. Lucas and Luna explore how a regime that had just seized power tried to shape the future by sculpting the past — and why so much of it crumbled within a decade.

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