Lenin in Warsaw
joke · history ·
retold in 12 talks
Lenin heard Beethoven's Appassionata at a friend's apartment and was almost moved to tears, but then pulled back, saying he must not listen to it too much or he will become too gentle to beat the enemies, Žižek praises Lenin's honest acknowledgment of the contradiction between beauty and revolutionary violence.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 10
“Lenin at least experienced the contradiction. The true horror for me is the someone who tortures you while listening to passionata, to Appassionata.”
“Lenin himself when he was slowly dying in his dacha outside Moscow he learned that there is an Old Believers group toiling land there and Lenin was so interested in that that he sent one of his friends there offering them and they took it electricity”
“Lenin was so interested in them that he sent one of his friends there offering them and they took it electricity.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 4 jobsuses
Lenin in Warsaw
×2
Vorstellung
×2
the reflexive signifier
×2
absentia
×2
Its cast and sources
populated by
Hamdan Ballal2Emilie Morin2Esther2Jordan Bardella2Kellyanne Conway2Balaji Srinivasan2Yuval Kremnitzer2Tim LaHaye2
alongside works
Every retelling 10
Lenin heard Beethoven's Appassionata at a friend's apartment and was almost moved to tears, but then pulled back, saying he must not listen to it too much or he will become too gentle to beat the enemies, Žižek praises Lenin's honest acknowledgment of the contradiction between beauty and revolutionary violence., illustrating the gap between enlightenment and ethics,Lenin's honesty
49:41 Žižek Chillstep Lofi background lecture for cleaning with ADHD | 2025 Slavoj Zizek Downtempo2025-09-04 · 1:12:48
Dying in his dacha, Lenin learned of an Old Believers group farming nearby and sent friends to offer them electricity, showing Bolsheviks initially saw them as resisting centralized imperial power., illustrating history,religion-theology
Dying Lenin sent friends to offer electricity to a group of Old Believers (Russian Orthodox schismatics) who resisted centralized imperial power, showing Bolsheviks initially valued their resistance to the state., illustrating religion-theology,communism-socialism
A Soviet exhibition painting titled 'Lenin in Warsaw' shows Lenin's wife making love to a young Komsomol member. A shocked visitor asks where Lenin is; the guide calmly answers: 'Lenin is in Warsaw.' Used to illustrate that Lenin's absence enables (and explains) what is visible., illustrating absence as enabling condition,dialectical reading,Lacanian structure
1:22:13 Slavoj Zizek – Transcendental Subjectivity, Sexual Difference, Brain Sciences2017-10-06 · 2:02:10
A painting shows Lenin's wife being screwed by a Komsomol guy; when asked where Lenin is, the answer is 'Lenin is in Warsaw.', illustrating Lenin in Warsaw
An anti-Soviet joke: a Komsomol member is having sex with Krupskaya (Lenin's wife); the painting is titled 'Lenin is in Warsaw.' The guide explains: Lenin is in Warsaw, that is why she can be doing this in Moscow. Žižek uses this to say his talk title Sex and the Absolute is 'Lenin in Warsaw', the absent title accounts for the presence of everything else., illustrating gap / absent center structures the field,sexuality,comedy and ideology