Brexiters buy KGB artefacts for ‘museum of communist terror’

Portrait of Lenin and spy tools among items snapped up at auction by group planning UK exhibition

It depicts the Russian revolutionary leader in characteristically serious mood, staring across Red Square, perhaps, and rendered with more than a touch of kitsch.

But while a Soviet-era oil painting of Vladimir Lenin, which sold for nearly $2,000 at auction in the US, might capture the man as many know him, its buyers are not exactly Bolsheviks.