Lenin-museo

Last Sunday I went downtown with my previously mention German acquaintances to hit up the Lenin Museum. According to the website it is the only permanently open Lenin museum in the whole world, apparently even the ones in Russia are only open seasonly. It is located in the building where Lenin and Stalin first met, which I don't know if they should really be boasting about that. It's a small exhibit, a large room divided into two sections. The first section gives the story of Lenin, starting with his early childhood, then his education, his exile, followed by his rise to power and then his death. The second section focuses more on Lenin's time spent in Finland and the Red Finns that helped him during his exile and return to Russia. All the documents were in Russian and the captions were all in Finnish, but thanks to my handy english tour book I could figure out what was going on in all the photos. The museum had a definite communism bias, you can sense an admiration for Lenin and the Finns that helped him. What struck me most was since my grandfather fought in a war against the Russians I always think of the Finns as being very anti communist Russia. However, this museum reminded me of the Finnish civil war (1918) between the Reds and the Whites and why in Berkeley there are two Finnish Halls.