Hi there, Lenin

Having prepared myself to start my studies in Cambridge (in the so-called “West”), the last thing I imagined happening was being welcomed by tovarish Lenin on my first night-out. Here, he occupies a place for leisure; however, my parents, having grown up in socialist Hungary, used to watch his image every day for twelve years while sitting in the classroom. In that time, his images decorated the walls of schools and numerous other public buildings.

Throughout the last hundred years, Lenin’s physical representations – portraits, statues and street names – have been present all over the world, from the USSR to Antarctica and Las Vegas. Whilst he was still alive, a cult following developed around him. After his death in 1924, a public mausoleum was built to exhibit his embalmed corpse; ever since, Lenin’s visual representations were inseparable from the USSR’s official state ideology. Public spaces such as parks, streets, cities and public buildings came to accommodate Lenin’s images. Later, countries that adopted the Soviet ideology underwent a similar process: public statues were erected in places like Ethiopia, Cuba and Eastern Europe; streets and cities were named after Lenin. Even in Western Europe, notably in France, a considerable number of streets hold his name to the present day. This is, however, not the case for most Eastern European countries. With the dissolution of socialist state systems, they oversaw a process of de-Leninization to some extent, removing sculptures and renaming streets. Some of the removed Lenin statues embarked on an adventurous journey, such as one from Czechoslovakia which was bought by an American teacher as a historical relic. After the death of its new owner, it became a public attraction in the Fremont neighbourhood of Seattle where it is still exhibited.

Although statues of Lenin in public spaces are relatively uncommon in the United States, you often bump into him upon entering various Russian or communist-themed private spaces such as bars or clubs. His statue would greet you at the entrance of Red Square, a restaurant in Las Vegas. Thanks to the profitability of the so-called communist chic – using symbols, images, and aesthetics of communism to sell products and services – Lenin’s visual representations appear all over the private spaces of the world. Places in the former Eastern Bloc particularly capitalise on the communist chic’s potential to attract tourists. Large pop-art Lenin portraits can be found in the Red Ruin Pub in Budapest, Hungary or in the Goodbye Lenin Hostel in Zakopane, Poland. Funnily enough, the removal of communist chic Lenins is quite frequent as well, but the motives here are economic, not political. The Las Vegas Lenin statue fell victim to market forces as well: it disappeared when the Red Square restaurant closed in 2019. The wide variety of Lenin’s visual representations are an integral part of the cultural landscape in different contexts.

The landscape serves to naturalise the hegemony of the dominant class and to hide ongoing struggle (Mitchell, 2003); similarly, the emergence and disappearance of Lenin’s image is usually an exercise of control. Who decides to depict Lenin in a certain place? Why do they choose to place his portrait here? In state-socialist regimes, it was usually the state or municipality bodies who ensured his wide public presence. Appealing to Lenin serve d as the measure for the one-party system to maintain its hegemony and to justify political violence and the USSR’s influence on satellite states. Symbols of Lenin perpetuated the idea that the working class is holding power in socialist countries – this, however, hid the fact that discontent among the workers was high and workers’ protests were repressed (Pittaway in Gyáni and Rainer, 2007). Similarly, huge Lenin portraits on the wall of pubs and clubs might hide the fact that workers in the very same club are exposed to sexual harassment (Kondratyuk, 2015) or may work under unsafe conditions. Moreover, the cultural landscape of communist chic can work as a form of control. In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher argues that anti-capitalist aesthetics in fact reinforce capitalism, as they no longer present a real alternative and are only consumed individually (Fisher, 2009). Even though people might enjoy a club night next to Lenin’s face, the possibility to overcome capitalism seems in their eyes further than ever before.

Lenin is represented not only as a ‘cool revolutionary’ or as a legitimisation of Soviet state power, but in a wide variety of other ways. Stamps with the face of Lenin can be found in the drawers of plenty of Eastern European elderly as a form of ostalgie: a nostalgia for socialist times. History textbooks depict him as a historical figure and promise to give an objective account on his life (if that’s possible at all). The end of socialism in Eastern Europe saw a museumisation of objects and artwork of the socialist era (Pyzik, 2014): posters of Lenin are now depicted in the DDR-Museum in Berlin, and public busts and statues in Lithuania were taken to Grutas Park, a socialist-realist museum near Vilnius. Lenin’s presence in classrooms raises interesting questions – did his portraits hanging in the classroom perpetuate official state ideology to pupils? Could it be that little girls also concluded that you need to be male if you want to be a high-ranking party official?

However, thinking of the cultural landscapes of Lenin as purely control and hegemony would be reductionist. The image of Lenin as an anti-capitalist revolutionary has been used by groups who do challenge the hegemony of dominant classes, such as workers’ movements. Nowadays, some neo-leftist organisations in the post-socialist context reclaim Lenin’s representations from the Soviet-type understandings. The St Petersburg group of artists and intellectuals chose Chto Delat as a name (both Lenin’s book Chto Delat and this group were named after Chernyshevsky’s book What is to be done?). Note that they are not advocating for Soviet-style policies, but rather deal with the unfulfilled promises of the capitalist turn (Pyzik, 2014). Overall, multiple meanings are inherent in Lenin’s image, occurring in landscapes of control, nostalgia, memory, and revolt. As part of the landscape, it signifies different things depending on the wider context and on the receiver.

Defining what Lenin represents implies dividing space into places that can and cannot accommodate Lenin. As we have seen, these definitions are ambiguous and contestable – “battles between different versions of the past’’ (Czepczyński, 2008, p. 137) – therefore, those who hold the power to define or redefine will have the power to shape and reshape space as well (Anderson, 2015). For example, the mayor of Győr, Hungary, defined the remaining representations of Lenin in the city as memories of a cruel and false ideology that must go. He then removed an old street-name board that marked ‘Lenin Street’ from the wall of a house with his own hands, demonstrating the close relationship between discourse and space. His definition may be contrasted with other ideas which condemn actions of the socialist state but highlight the importance of not eradicating all relics of the past – favouring museumisation over complete erasure. However, state definitions can be redefined by protesters, like during the Euromaidan events in Ukraine in 2014. Even though originally the Kharkiv Lenin monument was registered as an immovable landmark, for protesters it signified the ongoing Russian dominance in the region –so they destroyed it against the will of the state.1 Again, in this case, changing meanings change the delineations of space for Lenin.

What is the difference between having Lenin’s portrait in Revs or having a Lenin statue just 300 metres away, right at the centre of Christ’s pieces? Would people problematise and protest the statue, but happily order espresso martinis with Lenin smiling at them? The differences arise from their place and ownership. Whilst a portrait in the club is deemed as something fun and rebellious, a public statue depicts something that the city is proud of. For a public statue, residents would feel a need to raise their voice and protest a potentially unwanted landmark. Many stakeholders, including the city council, the university, local NGOs, and residents would be involved in the decision-making. General visitors of Revs have less power to change a private space’s interior design. More importantly, they would be less likely to feel obligated to do so, given that they are only temporary consumers. The context in which meanings are attached to the two types of Lenin representa- tion, and the actors who attach these meanings, are utterly different. Here, we see again the division of space into ‘yes-Lenin’ and ‘no-Lenin’ in line with discourses and social relations.

Hopefully this article prompts the reader to question the implicit assumptions we make about spaces and places. This article sheds light on the various social relations – state control, political violence, exploitation, nostalgia, revolutionary potential – that make landscapes of Lenin. I also demonstrated that the power to define who Lenin was delineates the places where Lenin lived, where Lenin lives, and where Lenin will go on living.

References:

Anderson, J., 2015. Understanding cultural geography : places and traces / Jon Anderson., Second edition. ed. London : Routledge, 2015.

Czepczyński, M., 2008. Cultural landscapes of post-socialist cities: representation of powers and needs, Re-materialising cultural geography. Ashgate, Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT.

Fisher, M., 2009. Capitalist realism : is there no alternative? / Mark Fisher. Alresford, Hampshire : Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, 2008.

Gyáni, G., Rainer, M.J. (Eds.), 2007. Ezerkilencszázötvenhat az újabb történeti irodalomban: tanulmányok. 1956-os Intézet, Budapest.

Kondratyuk, K., 2015. Sexual Harassment in Las Vegas Nightclub Industry. https://doi. org/10.34917/8349574

Mitchell, D., 2003. Cultural geography : a critical introduction / Don Mitchell. Oxford : Blackwell, 2000 (2003 printing), Oxford.

Pyzik, A., 2014. Poor but sexy: culture clashes in Europe East and West. Zero Books, Winchester.

1 Note however that the controversial Azov Battalion took an active role in these protests

ImagesourcedfromNatalyaLetunova,Unsplash

Bridget Atkin

Of the 51 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere annually, 6% is methane released from water. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, estimated to be 80 times more effective than carbon dioxide, tonne for tonne, at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the first 20 years after release (CPI, 2022). Reservoirs, wastewater, rice paddies, groundwater and lakes are the main water sources responsible for these methane emissions. Bluemethane, an international climate tech start-up company founded in 2021, is on a mission to capture a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) from water. Beginning with hydropower reservoirs, Bluemethane plans to globally implement methane capturing technology, to capture methane from water, reduce emissions and harness a new source of bioenergy. I spoke to Louise Parlons Bentata, CEO and co-founder of Bluemethane, and University of Cambridge Geography graduate (matriculated 1997, Emmanuel College), about their work to tackle climate change.

Methane is produced in reservoirs when organic matter from either the pre-flooded environment, aquatic primary producers or deposition from tributaries, is decomposed under anoxic conditions. It is then released into the atmosphere via diffusion, ebullition, or degassing. Whilst diffusion accounts for as little as 7% of this flux, ebullition accounts for an estimated 38% of methane emissions from reservoirs (Harrison et al., 2021). Ebullition occurs when sedimentary gas bubbles are created by an increase in total dissolved gas pressure in sediment pore water due to methane production (Beaulieu et al., 2016). These bubbles are released from the sediments and gradually dissolve as they rise through the water column, eventually releasing any residual methane into the atmosphere (Ibid.). It is degassing, however, which is of most interest to Bluemethane, accounting for an estimated 55% of methane emissions from reservoirs (Harrison et al., 2021). Degassing occurs during the rapid depressurization and/or aeration of water as it passes through turbines and spillways, allowing dissolved gases to escape (Deemer et al., 2016).

“When people think about methane, they usually think about cows or oil and gas. But what people almost never realise is that there’s this other source of methane, methane from water that’s being emitted from water bodies across the world, almost unnoticed. ... It’s like a secret nobody knew.”

– Louise Parlons Bentata, Bluemethane CEO

“The story of methane from reservoirs is a story of outliers. Less than a quarter of hydropower reservoirs are emitting methane emissions greater than 100g CO2-e/ kWh, which is the recognised threshold for green energy, so most of them are sustainable ... we believe we can help those outliers become even more sustainable.”

– Louise Parlons Bentata, Bluemethane CEO

Despite what a glance at the literature on methane emissions from reservoirs might suggest, hydroelectricity is indeed an exceptionally clean source of energy.

The technology being developed by Bluemethane relies on the low solubility of methane, which allows it to rise and escape from water more easily than other dissolved gases. The separation of methane from water is achieved by increasing turbulence, like shaking a bottle of sparkling water. The gas can then be captured, purified, and used as a combustible source of energy. Bluemethane are not the first to remove methane from water. However, existing technology is very expensive because it is high maintenance, more suitable for smaller volumes of water and requires large inputs of energy. Therefore, it would not be feasible to use this technology on larger volumes of water with lower methane concentrations, such as hydroelectric reservoirs. Bluemethane’s technology, however, can process water from these sources with greater energy efficiency and at a lower cost.

When can we expect Bluemethane’s technology to be implemented? Their first prototype, tested this year in the Netherlands, successfully demonstrated that their concept could lead to the separation of methane from water. Following an industrial pilot projected to take place in Poland in 2024, the first commercial deployment of their methane capture technology is likely to be in 2025. The company are also hoping to implement novel financial instruments to encourage investment in methane capture technologies. Louise considers technological and financial innovation to be of equal importance for tackling climate change. A recent report by the Climate Policy Initiative, published in July 2022, revealed that less than 2% of investment into climate change mitigation is targeted at methane abatement measures, despite methane emissions causing nearly half of all observed global warming whilst only representing a fraction of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (CPI, 2022). With at least a ten-fold increase in methane abatement finance required to minimise global warming to 2°C (Ibid.), Bluemethane’s new financial innovation “separates the ownership of the technology from the benefits of using it. It is the first ever methane capture as a service” (Louise Parlons Bentata). If financial barriers to methane abatement could be overcome through increased investment and novel financial instruments, the United Nations Environmental Program estimates a 45% reduction in anthropogenic methane emissions could be achieved by 2030 (Ibid.).

Disclaimer:

Compass did not receive financial gain for the publication of this article.

References:

Acknowledgements: We thank Louise Parlons Bentata, CEO at Bluemethane, for her inputs to this article and for reviewing the draft.

Beaulieu, J.J., McManus, M.G. and Nietch, C.T., 2016. Estimates of reservoir methane emissions based on a spatially balanced probabilistic‐survey. Limnology and Oceanography, 61(S1), pp.S27-S40.

CPI, 2022. The Landscape of Methane Abatement Finance [Paul Rosane, Baysa Naran, Angela Ortega Pastor, Jake Connolly, Dharshan Wignarajah]. Climate Policy Initiative. Deemer, B.R., Harrison, J.A., Li, S., Beaulieu, J.J., DelSontro, T., Barros, N., Bezerra-Neto, J.F., Powers, S.M., Dos Santos, M.A. and Vonk, J.A., 2016. Greenhouse gas emissions from reservoir water surfaces: a new global synthesis. BioScience, 66(11), pp.949-964. Harrison, J.A., Prairie, Y.T., Mercier‐Blais, S. and Soued, C., 2021. Year‐2020 Global Distribution and Pathways of Reservoir Methane and Carbon Dioxide Emissions According to the Greenhouse Gas From Reservoirs (G‐res) Model. Global biogeochemical cycles, 35(6), p.e2020GB006888.