Product Description
Yeltsin with Leaders (Ельцин с Вождями). The whole line of succession, from Yeltsin down to the beginning of the monarchy, is depicted in this 10 piece set. Larger dolls with more than 5 pieces are less common due to the cost of production.
A solemn Boris Yeltsin, the first post-Communist leader, heads off the caravan. A banner proclaims "Россия" (Russia) in red letter and the white, blue and red flag is painted on the back. Gorbachev in his characteristic blue suit has a yellow sash with the word Перестройка (Perestroika). His birthmark has the letters CCCP added.
Leonid Brezhnev, who led the Communist party from 1964-1962, holds his 1978 autobiographical memoir.He served as a regional party official in Kazakhstan, helping oversee and promote the implementation of the Virgin Lands project (a scenic view is depicted on his back). His bushy eyebrows are also here on display.
Nikita Khruschev, the flamboyant and photogenic Commissar who ended up "remembering" a lot, was born Russian, but who identified with Ukraine. He wears a stylish peasant shirt and two memes that are always remembered about him: the infamous and mythical "shoe" that he pounded in the UN and the corn for which he enthusiastically crusaded to be planted in the Virgin Lands.
Further in, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, known to most as Stalin, wears green fatigues and smokes his omnipresent pipe, which protrudes from his well-groomed mustache. He holds a sign written in blood: "ГУЛАГ". The Gulag was a vast government agency that administered the Soviet network of forced labor camps and colonies.
Lenin, known to all who study history, has a small red flag with 1917, the official year of the Russian revolution, and on the back an image of the cruiser Aurora. It was from this ship belonging to the Russian Imperial navy that a blank shot that served as the signal for the Bolshevik storming of the Winter Palace, marking the start of the October Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin.
The last four pieces are rulers (and sundry) from the Romanov monarchy: Tsar Nicholas II (Николай II), the mystic Grigori Rasputin who befriended the Tsar's family, Peter I (also the Great) and Ivan III, aka the Terrible.
The set is in excellent condition, and all the pieces have been painted. The faces are high quality. Moscow, circa mid-1990s. 10 nest, 9¾" down to ¾". 1 only.
