JULY 7, 2025
PAPERBACK | 4 x 6 | 48 PAGES | $15.00
978-1-954992-09-2
FICTION | CHAPBOOK | SHORT STORY
After seventy years of successful preservation, Lenin’s body is deteriorating faster than the morticians and biochemical scientists can manage.
In the tumultuous years following the fall of Communism, Valentina Nikolaevna, a lonely, aging functionary at Lenin’s Mausoleum, is tasked with preserving the steadily decaying corpse of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Dark spots have begun to appear on Lenin’s forehead, and visitors are starting to notice the stench. A few days ago, a piece of Lenin’s ear fell off in Valentina’s hand.
Blending surreal imagery with biting satire, Lioutaia turns the act of embalming into a meditation on history, bureaucracy, and the fragility of human legacy and explores how societies cling to symbols long after their vitality has faded. Preservation is a darkly inventive story about memory, decay, and the impossible task of holding onto the past.
Maria Lioutaia was born in Moscow and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Conjunctions, Master’s Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading.
JULY 7, 2025
PAPERBACK | 4 x 6 | 48 PAGES | $15.00
978-1-954992-09-2
FICTION | CHAPBOOK | SHORT STORY
After seventy years of successful preservation, Lenin’s body is deteriorating faster than the morticians and biochemical scientists can manage.
In the tumultuous years following the fall of Communism, Valentina Nikolaevna, a lonely, aging functionary at Lenin’s Mausoleum, is tasked with preserving the steadily decaying corpse of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Dark spots have begun to appear on Lenin’s forehead, and visitors are starting to notice the stench. A few days ago, a piece of Lenin’s ear fell off in Valentina’s hand.
Blending surreal imagery with biting satire, Lioutaia turns the act of embalming into a meditation on history, bureaucracy, and the fragility of human legacy and explores how societies cling to symbols long after their vitality has faded. Preservation is a darkly inventive story about memory, decay, and the impossible task of holding onto the past.
Maria Lioutaia was born in Moscow and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Conjunctions, Master’s Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading.
