MULTIDIRECTIONAL LAUGHTER

April 22, 1970, was approaching. All newspapers, journals, and other media were preparing to celebrate what would have been Lenin’s one hundredth birthday. Krokodil would publish a cover with Lenin, world revolutionaries, and communist leaders, emulating Vladimir Serov’s painting Peasants Visit Lenin (Khodoki u V. I. Lenina, 1950), depicting a friendly meeting around a table between Lenin and three peasant men. Andrius Cvirka was entrusted with the graphic design for Broom’s contribution. He chose a 1918 drawing by Mikhail Cheremnykh, with a behatted Lenin atop the globe and, with a large broom, sweeping away his enemies: the tsars, a priest,