Abstract. The image of Lenin, the founder of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, was widely used in the USSR, being replicated on various carriers, including banknotes and coins. At the same time, the contradiction between the sacred person of Lenin, depicted on the banknote, and the functional purpose and feature of turnover of currency in the economy were added to the already existing inconsistencies between the communist ideology and the monetary relations. All this was reflected in the poem «Get Lenin off the money» by the poet-sixties A. Voznesensky, in which he depicted a picture of the contact between the pure image of the leader and the unclean hands of the scoundrel. However, the correct use of Lenin (»for the heart and for the banners») caused the overload of the surrounding space with ideological artifacts, giving the opposite effect: mass irony and a large number of anecdotes.