"Sometimes - history needs a push"

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This is an entry about the city of Ulyanovsk, the Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and a little about Maslenitsa. The title is a citation from Lenin.

I decided to go to Ulyanovsk simply to see two interesting museums – one dedicated to the father of Soviet Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, and the other – civil aviation history museum. Web search revealed few other notable sights but I could not miss the Lenin Memorial because the man had played a major role in the history of Russian State. Also, I like seeing items and things from the Soviet times because I grew up when USSR no longer existed, but I was actually born in the Union. Moreover, as I thought, it would be nice to break down the trip to Saint Petersburg in two stages, with a day’s stay in Moscow. The latter would turn out such a damned nuisance, however.

The city of Ulyanovsk is situated on the banks of the mighty Volga River and the less formidable Sviyaga River, with more than half a million inhabitants. The city was founded by the order of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovitch by Bogdan Hitrovo in 1648 as the Fortress of Sinbirsk (later Simbirsk) for protection of the eastern borders of the Russian Czardom against nomadic tribes' raids. In 1924, Simbirsk was renamed Ulyanovsk to honour the city's native Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin). There will be no discussion of the rights and wrongs here.

The train from Ufa to Ulyanovsk takes about 14 hours (overnight), while I mostly slept and read Stephen King’s ‘Gerald’s Game’ – a book I had read in my youth, when I was in the seventh grade, I was so excited about its opening chapter containing sexual matter.

As I approached the city, I saw nothing worthy of attention, except perhaps the railway bridge across Volga, and the river’s vast expanse. At the train station I left my rucksack and went to the tram station. As I took a seat in the tram I found out my damned photo camera would not work because batteries have died (though recharged the day before) and, moreover, I had only a 32-Mbyte flash card. How the hell can one take photos with 32 Mbytes?! I blamed myself, but, thankfully, my cellular phone also had a camera, and I meant to use it. This all relieved me of the bother of going to some of Moscow’s sights, which I planned to visit, and I’d simply stay at the train station, because my employees made me a pleasant surprise by leaving my money to themselves for the time being.

I took the tram in the wrong direction, got off and immediately understood I was in a wrong area, then asked a man how to get to the Lenin Memorial, and took the tram in the other direction. The city looks so uninspiring as the tram rushes by the dirty snow, with no beauty until it reaches the centre. If you haven’t had the pleasure of going by tram in a far Russian city, please do so, because some of them can truly be 30-40 years old, and unforgettable.

The Lenin Memorial is an imposing building on Lenin square, with the tall Venets Hotel on the other side of the road, and a university building. The Memorial is multifunctional, housing a museum, a concert hall, lecture rooms, cinema etc. The complex also includes the house where the Ulyanovs lived for a couple of years and where Lenin was born. The museum contains lots of Soviet items.

The exhibition starts with two beautiful dioramas of the old Simbirsk (much more attractive than nowadays). The museum’s space is uniform, without division into rooms, and contains the following (in order of appearance, 100% relating to Lenin, Revolution, and Soviet State): leaflets, posters, mottoes, old photos, slogans, Revolutionary stuff, printed matter (books and newspapers, statues, bas-reliefs on walls, porcelain ware with Lenin’s images, nascence and development of the Soviet Union, its symbols, peoples, propaganda, coats of arms, the First and Second World Wars, Lenin’s image in applied arts, and a small section devoted to more recent leaders such as Gorbatchev, Khruschev, Brezhnev, and the ‘tandem’ of Putin and Medvedev.

I left the museum and walked across the Lenin Square to see a view on Volga River from the hill and heard some songs from afar. Definitely, that was Maslenitsa celebration. I saw two monuments, one to city’s founder Bogdan Hitrovo, the other to Dmitry Razumovsky, a commander of the assault of the school building hostaged by terrorists in Beslan.

I soon approached another square where Maslenitsa was being celebrated. The most characteristic food of Maslenitsa is pancakes, made from the foods allowed by the Orthodox tradition that week: butter, eggs and milk. Maslenitsa activities included pillow fights, horse riding (a walking pony kicked a woman, just slightly), horse carriage rides, pole climbing. The mandatory mascot of the celebration is usually a brightly dressed straw effigy of Maslenitsa, Lady Maslenitsa, eventually stripped of her finery and put to the flames of a bonfire. The overall atmosphere was joyful and people looked delighted.

I joined a queue to have some free pancakes with sour cream. There were also many booths selling other dishes, e.g. shashlik, some fast food items. I walked further to find a skiing slope, which undoubtedly is a source of enormous delight for urban citizens (right in the city centre!)

As I was hungry, I bought pancakes (cost about 1 English pound for 4 pcs) and watched some dance and song performance on the stage. I saw two other monuments – to the teacher and to the famous historian Nikolai Karamzin, where the man himself is a small bust, with Clio, Goddess of History, towering above him. As I mentioned earlier, my aim was to see the aviation history museum. The attempt failed, because the address I found in the web was absolutely incorrect.

I was disappointed, but at the back of my mind I realized that the museum might be near the airport, not in the city centre, and I had to research better in advance. I then went to a food shop, had a bite at a pizzeria, and took the tram back to the train station.

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Photos

Monument to Teacher
"I give my heart to children"