Chasing Lenin! 7 Discoveries From My Twisted Soviet Treasure Hunt In Ukraine & Georgia

From fake tanks to faded murals, my search for Soviet-era symbols turned into a wild adventure. Here’s why these relics of the past are more important than they seem.

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Lost Lenins and Forgotten Histories

When I first landed in Ukraine in 1998, I expected a Cold War time capsule: towering Lenins, hammer-and-sickle murals, and heroic workers marching toward utopia.

What I found instead felt like a bad game of hide-and-seek.

The statues? Many gone. The murals? Painted over or peeling away.

Soviet history hadn’t greeted me, it had packed up and left town.

But disappointment soon gave way to adventure.

The hunt reminded me of childhood walks out in the deserts of New Mexico with my step-grandfather, searching for arrowheads and pottery fragments.

Now, halfway across the world, I was chasing Lenins instead of arrowheads and pottery, uncovering stories hidden in the weeds.