"The Wax Museum will buy hair of no less than 20 centimeters' length," proclaims a notice above the ticket office. "Gray, Fair and Blonde. Prices negotiable." A macabre welcome to a macabre museum, which, though no Madame Tussaud's, offers what must be Moscow's most surreal exhibition.


A display cabinet on the stairs sets the tone for the weirdness to come; in it is a display of plaster death masks, including likenesses of Napoleon, Lenin and Gorky. But on closer inspection, several of the "death masks" turn out to be of people who are still in the land of the living, such as painter Ilya Glazunov and singer Iosif Kobzon. Sadly, neither could be contacted for their reaction to their premature relegation to the Great Beyond.


In the main exhibition hall itself, historical figures mingle with a blithe disregard for chronology, like some sort of mad, Bulgakov-inspired cocktail party for the residents of the next world.


Pushkin lies, eyes glazed, in the arms of a demented-looking Ivan the Terrible while Gagarin and Khruschev look on. Stalin smokes his pipe with a skeleton at his feet, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky (in a horrible suit donated by the great man himself) stands over a model Kremlin against which a wooden Kalashnikov is propped. The ballerina Maya Plisetskaya looks slightly, well, waxy and is posed next to a one-meter-high hourglass held in a giant latex hand which rotates every few minutes -- presumably a profound statement on the nature of the passage of time.


Further on, Hitler, Napoleon, Kutuzov and Zhukov play chess, and a very thin-looking Boris Yeltsin in a surgeon's gown operates on a very unwell looking patient symbolizing Russia. Prophetically, the tableau is called "Operation on the Heart," though why a crown of thorns hangs behind the president is not quite clear. His spread-armed pose is perhaps an attempt at crucifixion symbolism, though he seems to be enjoying himself more then the grimacing victim of his ministrations.


A wistful Nicholas II with a bullet hole in his forehead observes Ivan the Terrible's hatchet man Malyuta Skuratov having a chat with the executor of Stalin's purges, Lavrenty Beria.


Last, but not least, comes a tableau of Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong chatting amiably; Margaret Thatcher, originally included in the group, was unfortunately "under restoration," rather like the real thing.


A cast of other unconnected characters, including Ghengis Khan, Grigory Rasputin, Catherine the Great, Leo Tolstoy and rock star Viktor Tsoi (wearing the clothes he actually died in, donated by his friends) completes the wax museum's theater of the surreal.


Whichever genius organized the design of the museum had a finely tuned sense of the bizarre; on the sound system, Beethoven piano sonatas alternate with snatches of political speeches.


Founded five years ago as a commercial enterprise, the wax museum rents premises from the apartment-museum of Alexander Ostrovsky, the revolutionary writer. Eight artists prepare new mannequins for the exhibit, although there is already a queue of waxy candidates because of a lack of space in the one-room exhibition area. Who will be purged to make way is a secret, says the management.


The offbeat themes of the wax museum are echoed next door, chez Ostrovsky, which is currently featuring an exhibition of jewelry fashioned from fishbones by blind people and pictures painted by limbless invalids with their teeth or toes.





The Museum of Wax Figures, located at 14 Tverskaya Ulitsa, is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.