Has Nikita Khrushchev suddenly changed color?


In reports this weekend, The Associated Press and Itar-Tass said that the bust of the former Soviet leader on his tombstone had turned dark from its original bronze color. Both cited a Friday newspaper description of the change in Trud.


Yes, indeed, Khrushchev's bust in Novodevichy Cemetery was once bronze, and it was darkened at the request of his son, Sergei, according to Valentina Ignatova, who works as a guide at the cemetery.


The original color was seen as giving Khrushchev a silly smirk in the sunlight, and it was toned down in the recoloring.


"When he was bronze and the sun shined, people laughed at it; it was funny", Ignatova said.


Yet the darkening of Khrushchev did not happen overnight.


The change was made in 1977, three years after the monument designed by sculptor Ernst Neizvestny was unveiled, Ignatova said. Few witnessed the makeover into a shade of ebony.


Khrushchev's grave has always been an oddity among Soviet leaders. Whereas even the least distinguished of the Kremlin chiefs such as Konstantin Chernenko earned a place behind Lenin's tomb at the foot of the Kremlin, Khrushchev was quietly buried in this cemetery for the lesser elite.


Itar-Tass, which happily transmitted the story about the new color this weekend -- 15 years after the event, was considerably more muted when Khrushchev died in 1971.


"The honorary pensioner Khrushchev" passed away, the news agency said, adding that this had caused the Party "sorrow".


That report was only two days late.