Lenin

Andrey Nekrasov

From the ash heap of history to the underwater musuem....

I first dived Leaders' Alley by accident. Off Tarkhankut Cape -- the westernmost part of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula -- my buddy and I were shooting photos, when suddenly I had a feeling there was someone watching us. I started looking around nervously, until my partner pointed: Framed by swaying algae was the face of the great revolutionary Vladimit Ilyich Lenen. After the the breakup of the Soviet Union, hundreds or even thousands of such busts were headed for landfills; instead, many now reside here, along with high-tech installations, toys and other deep-sea folk art.