Polar outpost saying goodbye, Lenin
At the most inaccessible part of one of the world’s most inhospitable regions stands a chimney. Perched on the chimney is a bust of Lenin, with a steely gaze that has been fixed towards Moscow for the best part of 60 years.
Its location in a frozen, featureless part of Antarctica means this remnant of the revolution has escaped the tearing down of statues in the post-Soviet world. The weather, however, is about to have its own say.
Once held aloft on top of the 10-metre chimney, rising snows have left the bust less than a metre above the surface – and it will be only a matter of months before it starts to disappear.
A pole of inaccessibility (POI) is the point on any continent or landmass that is farthest from the coast. The southern POI is 880 kilometres from the South Pole, in the part of the frozen continent
where Russia has a territorial claim, and where temperatures can reach minus 58 degrees Celsius.
The bust has received few visitors since it was erected by a Soviet research team in 1958, which left behind a small building with a chimney and the bust.
In 1965, an American team turned the bust to face Washington, DC. The Soviet researchers returned and turned it back.
Henry Cookson, the owner of British adventure tour company Cookson Adventures, visited the site in 2006 with three friends.
‘‘We’d seen only white, white snow and sky, and our own cells and tent, for the last 50-odd days,’’ he said. ‘‘I see this tiny little black dot on the horizon . . . Then suddenly, you can make out the outline of a man.
‘‘We walked in silence up to this statue, and there was Lenin.’’ He said the team was surprised to find that the bust was made of ‘‘some sort of weird yellow plastic’’.
Since then, there have been two further visits – the last by Australian explorer Geoff Wilson in 2019, when he found only 60 centimetres of plinth left.