Karinska’s reasons for leaving Russia are multiple: (1) the death of Lenin in 1924 and the uncertainty of what was to come; (2) within weeks after Lenin’s death the new regime nationalized her embroidery school and turned it into a factory to manufacture Soviet flags[1] (in exchange, she was awarded the title of “Inspector of Fine Arts”); (3), importantly Mamontov, a chronic alcoholic was incapable of performing any kind of work and thus seen as symbol of bourgeois decadence; his arrest was imminent.[13]