The
Renaissance
Society

Only the first half of Tothtova's life was spent under communism, placing her generation at quite some distance from Lenin. But Lenin and the Maiden is more than a nostalgia for cozy communism. It verges on the idol worship an adolescent girl might reserve for a Tiger Beat pin-up. It starts with Tothtova gently caressing Lenin's bust and ends with kissing, of the hot and heavy French variety. Beneath its immediate humor, the piece is profoundly perverse, bringing out necrophiliac overtones in the longing for an ideological authority figure certainly better known to her grandparents than to her.