You will probably never find a more perfect embodiment of Shelley's ' Ozymandias' than this story of a surprising discovery by a joint Norwegian-U.S. antarctic expedition. The team traveled to 'Inaccessibility Pole,' which lays about 550 miles from the South Pole, at the furthest point from the ocean.
Scientists trekking across a little visited part of Antarctica have discovered a bizarre relic of the Soviet Union is dominating the South Pole of Inaccessibility. In the middle of nowhere - literally the point on Antarctica furthest from the sea - an imposing bust of revolutionary Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin peers out onto the polar emptiness... The group's website says Soviet scientists first visited the Pole in December 1958 and built a small cabin there. After several weeks they left, putting the bust of Lenin on top of the chimney facing Moscow. "Today the bust is clearly visible from many kilometres away, and remains as they left it on the chimney, although the cabin itself is buried under the snow," the explorers say... They all speculated on what the bust might have been made out of; marble or concrete. "You wouldn't believe it. He's plastic," he said.
The accompanying photo is from the team's website. As the chief architect of one of history's most genocidal regimes, a man responsible for the death of millions, it's fitting that his statue is made of plastic. And just like Shelley's Ozymandias, his memorial sits amidst a desolate wasteland.