Karla's appearance at the end of the series, played by Patrick Stewart, had him looking very like Lenin. Was Karla supposed to be a relative of Lenin, or was his appearance a coincidence?
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
I noticed this resemblance and I believe I commented on it long ago. Surely the make-up people were attempting to create a dye-in-the-wool Russian Communist and chose the iconic Lenin figure for this very purpose?
shareYep, I think that's right. Karla is the ascetic soul of communism, as Lenin tried to be.
shareKarla was a survivor. And he knew that Lenin was the untouchable person in the USSR. Knowing that anyone could fall from grace overnight he took his precautions being a Lenin look-alike.
Stalin became Persona Non Grata over night. Hruschew too. Even in 1989-90 (sic!) - when I was in Moscow - one morning a Metro Station in East-Moscow had changed from Zhdanowskaya to Wychino. Someone had 'suddenly' found out that Zhdanow had been an S.O.B. (and that he surely had been!).
Patrick Stewart has a natural resemblance to Lenin, so the makeup people didn't have to do much. As Karla, Stewart has a full beard (in TTSS) and just stuble in Smiley's People. Lenin wore a van dyke. However, Stewart did play Lenin in The Fall of Eagles.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"