The diorama showing how Ulyanovsk looked when Vladimir Lenin was born here in 1870 is noticeably full of Orthodox churches.

Their gleaming onion domes are positioned overlooking the Volga River in the model Ulyanovsk, which was renamed for its most famous son. He was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, and then changed his name to Lenin before spearheading the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the atheist Soviet Union superpower 100 years ago.

Yulia Skoromolova, head of Ulyanovsk’s state-run tourism board, looks down at this miniature idyll. For a moment, her eyes soften. “Lenin was educated and he came from a good family, from a good city.” Like other exhibits in the sprawling Lenin memorial complex which she oversees, the diorama has been carefully put together. But then she sighs: “Why did he lead this revolution?”

The self-described Lenin devotee is not the only one conflicted by 1917. The whole country seems at a loss over how to mark the events, from the October revolution through to the bloody end of the Russian monarchy the following year, with the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by firing squad.