Lenin's Odyssey 2019-2021
I got to the abandoned Soviet pioneer camp "Cosmonaut" in the summer of 2020, during a period of quarantine and self-isolation, when, tired of the boring lockdown, I decided to drive around the entire Leningrad Region in search of old architectural sites.
The scale of this "abandonment" was impressive: three-story buildings, a canteen, an assembly hall, and an indoor 50-meter swimming pool. All in all about 20 buildings and constructions in uninhabited and half-destroyed condition on the bank of the river Oredezh in the village of Rozhdestvenno.
But unlike other ruined buildings, this place began to awaken in me feelings different from the sense of loss of architectural heritage. Mosaics depicting Ilyich, cosmonauts, and books about pioneer exploits-the same few uncomplicated and straightforward tools of Soviet propaganda that I had experienced at school before the collapse of the USSR.
It seemed that by burying the consequences of these Leninist-era morals in my memory, I was rid of them forever. But the sense of finitude turned out to be deceptive. Like the pattern of half-decay, in which the number of radioactive nuclei must go down after several periods, but nevertheless the resulting substance can remain radioactive, the sense of transience and loss, which in no way can take place, remains quite viable.
And Lenin's odyssey continues.