In April 2025, the Levada Center released the results of a long-running survey asking Russians to name the “greatest people of all time and all nations.” For the first time, Vladimir Putin not only climbed into the top three — he rivaled Lenin and even outshone Pushkin. Once upon a time, Lenin was the undisputed face of “greatness.” Now, that symbolic role belongs to a man who governs not through utopia but through televised nostalgia.

This isn’t just polling. It’s an epistemological x-ray.

📉 Lenin Fades. Putin Rises. A Symbolic Coup

In 1989, 72% of respondents named Lenin. By 2025, that number had dropped to 28%. Meanwhile, Putin, who only entered the list in 2008, has steadily climbed and now ranks with the top cult figures — just behind Stalin, who remains the perennial champion of authoritarian nostalgia.

What’s happening is not just generational turnover. It’s a rewiring of collective memory, in which the architect of class revolution is quietly replaced by the CEO of imperial decline.

🛠 Kremlin as Memory Engineer

In today’s Russia, history is not studied — it’s performed. Schools no longer teach historical complexity; they reenact state mythology. The Kremlin doesn’t just rewrite history — it redesigns emotional loyalty.

And so, Putin doesn’t just emerge as a new hero — he inherits Lenin’s mythological function:

The father of a reborn empire,
The eternal defender against the “West,”
The one who sacrifices “now” for a future only he defines.

Propaganda didn’t just glorify Putin. It replaced the very criteria for greatness — from ideas to intimidation, from progress to permanence.

📺 The Three Sources of Russian Memory

The Levada rankings tell us more about media exposure than about admiration. The names most frequently cited align with what Russians are allowed to remember. Their memory is formed through three vectors:

The school curriculum (frozen in late-Soviet amber),
Television (which serves the state, not the public),
Absence of alternatives (where silence equals erasure).

That’s why Pushkin survives (he’s required reading), Newton and Einstein linger on (remnants of science class), but global figures like Gandhi, Luther King, Mandela, or even Churchill vanish into informational oblivion.

🎭 Cult Instead of History

Putin has not simply surpassed Lenin in rankings. He has absorbed him.

Lenin offered a vision of global revolution. Putin offers eternal war against a fabricated West. One believed in class conflict; the other in imperial grievance. Both offer a mythology in which personal suffering is sanctified by national mission.

But there’s one difference: Lenin was buried. Putin is televised.

And television, unlike mausoleums, never rests.

❌ Memory as Violence

In healthy societies, memory is debated, contested, revised. In authoritarian systems, it is curated and weaponized. Today, nearly half of Russians still revere Stalin — the man responsible for mass terror. Every third admires Putin — a man responsible for a war that has isolated Russia from the world.

But the truly telling figure? The number of people who couldn’t name a single “great person.” It’s nearly 50%.

That’s not forgetfulness. That’s epistemic sterilization.

🧩 The Real Victory

Putin didn’t need to win elections. He won the battle for memory.

Lenin was replaced not because people rejected him, but because the architecture of Russian knowledge no longer supports multiple stories. There is no room for contradiction. Only for command.

And until Russia rediscovers greatness in ideas — not in force — it will remain, not a failed democracy, but a successful simulacrum of empire, where the past is just a mirror for the man on TV.

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