1. :Deconstructing Lenin
Lenin, is the name of an important man in Russian history. It is also the name of streets and
buildings and statues all over Russia. But in this particular case, it is the name of the Nuclear
Ice Breaker we visited in Murmansk. Lenin was built in 1956 in St. Petersburg, it served as an
icebreaker for thirty years, has been out of duty for twenty years, and a museum for the past two
years. Nuclear icebreakers are rare ships. There exist only nine of them in the world, and they all
belong to Russia.
When entering Lenin, a whole new world opens. The ship contains 1200 rooms. Everything is
beautiful, but incomprehensible. Objects I cannot describe with words, because I have no vo-
cabular for what they are. Doors leading into spaces, small worlds opening when entering them. A
hospital inside a ship. A small swimmingpool. A sauna. A room with empty chairs. A representation
of how it was. I wanted to look at those objects, that I did not understand. To see if I could tell their
story.

3. :Three conversations in Murmansk
Visiting his grandmother i Murmansk. She is wearing a yellow dress, and her eyes are full of life.
At eightythree. She holds my hand in both her hands. I talk to her i Norwegian and she talks to me
in Russian. Igor calls her Babuschka. All elderly women passed a certain age are called Babuscka
in Russia. Her building is different from the one we visited yesterday. These are Staliniskas, ap-
parantly there are obvious differences from the buildings on the hills. To me the staircase looks the
same, it is worn down and the mailboxes are torn open. But her appartment has big spaces and
beautiful wooden floors. It looks like any grandmother could live here. She talks about the three
photographs on a table. When she was young, thirteen years old and a ballerina. She has lived in
Murmansk her whole life.
I am annoyed to be wearing jogging shoes when I see their high heals. Two girls at work, my age,
they look so elegant. They sit behind their desks in a PR agency. Igor and I sit in the sofa facing
them. I can see their beautiful shoes under the table. They dont speak English. I dont speak Rus-
sian. Igor translates. What part of Murmansk did I prefer? What do I think of the architecture? How
is it to live in Norway? I am impressed by how direct they are. How engaged they are in discuss-
ing Murmansk. Both have been to Norway, though they dont seem really impressed after all. The
only difference she says, is that you live in small wooden houses, and we live in big blocks. But
the people are the same. When I was a kid she continues, we would go to my grandmothers in
the countryside, and construct houses out of cardboard boxes. And those houses where the most
beautiful we knew.
He serves us tea in his office. He is a photographer and speaks English. His shelves are filled
up with cameras from the Soviet period. What a collection, he picks them down one by one and
show me their functions. Hundreds of thousands of these cameras, all over Russia. And this
one, he says, was usually a camera given to kids, as the functions were so simple. But the optic
is really good and durable. And brought on the very first expedition to Mount Everest. I ask him
about being a photographer in Murmansk. He says it is difficult to find good locations in the city. In
particular we talk about wedding photography. It is not like Moscow or St. Petersburg where they
have old beautiful buildings he says. And the photographers from those cities, they tell us it easy
to find good locations in Murmansk. Though we are quite inventive, we take people up to the hills
with the view over the city. Or some young people even think it is cool to shoot their weddingpho-
tos in old and degraded structures.

4. :Thoughts
Deconstructing Lenin, focuses upon the material heritage from the Soviet period. Whilst the three
conversations in Murmansk are a way of understanding a sosial heritage. Though living in the
same building structures as they did during the Soviet regime, people do not live the same lives
as they did then. They renovate their appartments, or search for places in the city to take wedding
photographies, or make a youth house in a degraded building. As Lenin is a place where time has
stopped, the people in Murmansk have not. One can say that the constructed Murmansk does not
answer to todays social culture. The new movements of modern, post-sovietic Murmansk, utilizes
and adapts communist structures to fit with their needs and culture, their way of living. This can
be viewed as the clash of soviet and post-soviet cultures, and an exploration of potential, in the
dynamics inbetween.
In this task I wanted to deconstruct Lenin, and look at each object separatly, to see if I could
understand the language of these aesthetics. And in the making of this, I had to create a new
vocabular for each object. Can the method of deconstructing be applied to existing building
structures in Murmansk? In the case of Lenin, could a total deconstruction of the ship, and putting
it back together again in a different way, lead to contemporary and interesting spaces? I person-
ally think the soviet language/aesthetics, the objects and spaces, developed with limitated exposal
to nonSoviet expressions, are an interesting and important element in the discussion of Russian
identity and future architecture.