The Union: The New USSR

Careful, there. This is no ordinary statue you’re adjusting, but one representing the father of the state, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the man who renamed himself Lenin and reshaped Russia in the Bolshevik Revolution. One crucial slip by workers at Moscow’s All-Union Artistic-Production Association (hear the clang of bureaucracy in that name), and they must pour a whole new mold. In attempting nothing less than a second revolution, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is also adjusting Lenin, paying lip service to his dogma even while reshaping it to fit the needs of the U.S.S.R. The task is a delicate one, for the future of the Soviet Union — in some ways, the future of us all — is at stake. A single crucial slip and the nation’s No. 1 sculptor might find himself starting from scratch — or out of a job. But what Gorbachev has already done can never be undone. What would Lenin think?