Some of the most ridiculous objects I’ve ever seen in a museum have been the gifts presented to communist leaders in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Any time there was a birthday or state anniversary, kowtowing sycophants would trip over themselves trying to present some type of communist-themed gift to their beloved leaders, each trying to outdo the last.
The result was a bizarre hodgepodge of very strange objects indeed.
Today, nearly every capital in this part of the world has some type of communist museum that includes a few such gifts on display. If you happen to be in Moscow this month, however, the Kremlin Museum has designed a specific exhibit just for these presents. Gifts to Soviet Leaders showcases more than 500 presents received by every leader from Lenin to Gorbachev.
According to an article on BBC, one of the most bizarre is “a portrait of Lenin made entirely from human hair.” Other gifts typically include weird variations of the hammer-and-sickle theme, such as the telephone featured in the photo above.
I highly recommend this exhibit; it provides a fascinating insight into just how screwed-up and twisted this system actually was.