Tactility of the Sacred

The Soviet system was organized around the figure of Lenin, which embodied the foundational and unquestionable truth of the communist project. This figure stood partially outside of Soviet political, legal, and aesthetic language; hence, representing Lenin in external signs (linguistic, visual, material) was challenging. To be successful, representations of Lenin had to be linked to his physical body. Focusing on visual representations of Lenin, this paper asks: how were images of Lenin linked to his physical body? What techniques of “tactile visuality” were used for this style of image production? What does this regime of visuality tell us about the relationship between the sacred, the sovereign, the material, and the image in the early Soviet context?