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Museum exhibit /Model of the Lenin Mausoleum.
The marble model of the first (wooden) Lenin Mausoleum belonged to Professor Il’ia Venediktovich Slavin (1883-1938). After the arrest of I.V. Slavin the new owners of his flat smashed the model and threw out the pieces. I.V. Slavin’s daughter, Ida Il’inichna Slavina (born 1921), glued together the fragments which her neighbour had collected and kept the model in memory of her father. In 1998 I.I. Slavina gave the keepsake to the museum of the Research and Information Centre “Memorial” (St Petersburg). (Photo 06.10.2004). | Registration number in museum acquisition book | KP-123 |
| Date and place of creation | 1920s |
| Years and places of existence in subject-related function | 1920s and 1930s, Leningrad |
| Size | Base – 20cm x 17cm; height – 10.5 cm. |
| Description of exhibit | Model of the first (wooden) Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square, Moscow, made from marble. |
| State of preservation | The corners are broken off and there are many traces of glue as a result of the amateur restoration. |
| Detailed annotation | A model of the Lenin Mausoleum (a marble table-top ornament) that belonged to Il’ia Venediktovich Slavin (1883-1938). I.I. Slavin was arrested in November, 1937, and was sentenced and shot in 1938. His wife Esfir’ Isaakovna Slavina (1885-1964) was also arrested and sentenced. According to their daughter, Ida Il’inichna Slavina (born 1921), after the arrest of her mother NKVD officials entered their flat and several items belonging to the Slavin family – including the broken model of the Mausoleum – were thrown out. Ida herself lived in another part of the town with relatives. A classmate of Ida, who lived not far from their former flat, found the pieces of the Mausoleum and brought them to Ida, saying “I found your father’s Mausoleum on the rubbish-dump”. I.I. Slavina managed to collect the pieces and glue together the Mausoleum. The family preserved it in memory of her father (Slavina writes in her memoirs that “it was the only thing left over from her father”). Before departing to Germany, where she had been granted residence, I.I. Slavina gave the keepsake to the museum of the Research and Information Centre “Memorial”, since she would have had to apply for special permission to take it out of the country. In her memoirs I.I. Slavin says: “A bronze clock stood on daddy’s desk [...]. Next to it was the main ornament in the house – a marble model of the first (as yet wooden) Lenin Mausoleum. After the death of my father (5th November, 1937) the flat was given to some official of the NKVD. And what had seemed to us the essential items that belonged to daddy’s study were not needed by the new owners of the flat. They smashed the Mausoleum and threw it out with the rubbish. We thank a little girl - a neighbour – who saw what they had done and picked up the pieces (although not all of them). I did the best I could to glue them together again. And so I once more had this model that had been reassembled and had traces of yellow glue on it – the Mausoleum
as a material symbol of daddy’s beliefs and my memories. Before my departure for Germany I presented it to the museum at “Memorial”. |
Museum exhibit /Model of the Lenin Mausoleum.
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