Gorbachev and Predecessors Matryoshka Doll [5pc]

Product Description

Gorbachev and Predecessors Matryoshka Doll. 5 pieces, 7⅞" down to 2⅜". Fully hand painted. In near fine condition with no cracks. 1 only.

Mikhail Gorbachev has a red sash that encircles him, a hammer and sickle painted on his red tie, a folder with the Soviet and American flags, and on which is written Договор (Agreement), and a sparkling gold ring on his right hand. Leonid Brezhnev is painted with his characteristically thick eyebrows, one eye closed and the other squinting at the bumblebee on his forehead, cobwebs all over him (a reference to his age and the gerontocracy over which he led), and, of course, the military medals that he either actually received, or simply bestowed upon himself (over 200 of them, by some accounts). Nikita Khrushchev, (aka the Ukrainian "peasant") was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He touted and popularized the expansion of corn cultivation as a solution to the livestock feed problem. (Note: it didn't work out well in the end.) Josef Stalin is depicted holding his lit pipe behind his back and, on the front, clutching a hatchet dripping with blood, a macabre reference of his reputation as the butcher, which was the antithesis to his cultivated "Papa Joe" image. Finally, Lenin is in a black suit with a red tie, and, reflecting some of the contemporary portraits of him, shows him with his hands in his pockets. Note: there is no Boris Yeltsin in this set, as he had not yet arrived on the scene, having done so in 1991.

In March of 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies elected General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as the new president of the Soviet Union. The election was a victory for Gorbachev, but it revealed serious weaknesses in his power base that would eventually lead to the collapse of his presidency in December of 1991. He was facing criticism from reformers and communist hard-liners. The reformers (Boris Yeltsin) criticized him for the phlegmatic pace of his reform agenda. Communist hard-liners saw Gorbachev’s retreat from Marxist principles as betrayal. So Gorbachev amended the Soviet constitution and wrote a section establishing more power to the president, a position previously largely symbolic.