Ukrainian History In Wax

I don’t know how many life-size wax figure museums there are in the world, except the famous Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition in London. In any case, precisely such an exhibit opened in Kyiv last week. A small one so far, a couple dozen figures, including personalities from Soviet history we have seen or heard about throughout the past century: Arkadiy Raikin (old-timers visiting the exhibit claim the man looks strikingly alive), Nikita Khrushchev wearing a Ukrainian embroidered shirt, peacefully coexisting with Joseph Stalin sporting his khaki jacket, and Vladimir Lenin clad in his cap. Among other figures looking as impressively real are former Soviet pop and movie stars that are no longer among the living: Tsoi, Talkov, Papanov, and Leo Di Caprio.

The exhibit was organized by Yevhen and Oleksiy Sazhyn, father and son living in Kyiv. Oleksiy, who conceived the idea, says the wax figures were bought with their own money (no price was mentioned, this being a commercial secret) from Russian artists. There are also professionals making life-size wax figures in Kyiv. The organizers plan to stage an exhibit featuring latter-day Ukrainian historical figures (among them the Presidents, Comrades Petro Symonenko and Natalia Vitrenko, “and maybe others”). In fact, the only problem is getting the local authorities to cooperate in terms of premises being provided on a permanent basis, with adequate conditions. And of course wax-modeling (incidentally, the figures are not all made of wax; wax is used only for the hands and face; hair is natural and the rest is a typical dummy). Someone must make the clothes, because original garments cannot always be obtained as was the case with Valery Leontiev and Andrei Makarevich.