It is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lenin.
He was one of the founding influences of the Beard Liberation Front, the politics perhaps, but the beard definitely. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky had beards while Stalin could only manage a moustache.
Lenin’s image with the goatee beard became a sort of cult in Russia, only after his death. This to the extent that the razor which he allegedly used to shave his beard on one occasion remains preserved in a museum.
The reality of course was different. For Lenin the beard was a revolutionary tactic. He usually wore one but he also often worked in conditions either of political illegality or, before the revolution in 1917, where he risked arrest or possible serious personal injury from opponents.
On such occasions Lenin shaved his beard off and disguised himself. The beard was characteristic of Lenin’s image but a workers revolution even more so and he knew, when it came to it, which was the more important.
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