How Lenin sheltered Aleksander Wat from the NKVD.

Wat spent his first day in Alma-Ata wandering the streets, searching for a place to sleep. In the end he reached the delegation hotel where many people were spending the night in the lobby and there was no place left to sit. He noticed a statue of Lenin with his arm oustretched and curled up in a small hidden corner behind the revolutionary leader. At one point during the night Wat awoke; documents were being checked and as a former prisoner he had no right to be in the Kazakh capital. Wat remained unnoticed, however. Lenin had sheltered him.

(from Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968 by Marci Shore).