The photo and its context
The photo shows a man in a denim shirt leaning toward a large red strawberry sculpture, while two busts of Lenin stand on the table beside it, one dark and one white. Stacks of papers lie on the right. The composition works as a joke on its own: a political office, Soviet-era symbolism, and a berry filling almost the entire frame. The author and date of the shoot are not known.
The KPRF candidate
In early 2018, the Communist Party replaced Gennady Zyuganov with Pavel Grudinin, who had run the Lenin state farm in Moscow Oblast. The surprise of the decision and the candidate’s biography, far removed from the usual party profile, drew attention right away. In the March 18, 2018 election, Vladimir Putin received about 76.7 percent of the vote and Grudinin about 11.8 percent according to official Central Election Commission data, which gave him second place. It was precisely this dynamic that made the candidate noticeable to online audiences.
Strawberries as a visual code
Strawberries from the farm became the main visual sign of the campaign, and their sculpture in the office became its most recognizable image. Two examples of captions show how the joke works: “The candidate’s platform: strawberries on every table.” And another: “The candidate brought a berry to the interview, and the journalists brought questions about the platform.” Both captions rely on the contrast between serious politics and an everyday object. The berry becomes a metaphor for something simple and tasty, against which any promises look too loud.
Accusations of bots
During the campaign there were accusations that online support for the candidate was artificially inflated by bots. Such accusations appeared in the media and in comment sections, but there are no confirmed findings about the scale of these activities. In memes, the word “bots” is used as shorthand: it conveys doubt about whether the support is genuine without requiring proof. Jokes on this theme should therefore be read as commentary on the campaign’s atmosphere, not as an established fact.
Connection to Spider-Man
Grudinin is linked with Spider-Man, but the specific line or picture that became the basis for such a joke has not been found. The origin of this association therefore remains unestablished. Similar online memes are usually built on a recognizable phrase or frame transferred into a new context, and such a link depends on knowing both images at once.
How the meme works
A political meme featuring a real person depends on recognizability. To get the joke, it is enough to know that the candidate was a state farm director and that he is associated with strawberries. This makes the material useful as an example of how an everyday symbol turns into a political code. Such memes rarely change opinions, but they capture a mood: interest, irony, and distrust of overly polished promises, which often accompanied the election campaign. Over time, jokes like these leave the news agenda but remain in chats and collections, where they can be read without reference to dates and events. That is why cards of this kind are worth keeping with short descriptions that explain who is depicted and which period the joke belongs to.
