Finland removes the last statue of Lenin on its soil | Globalism
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A city in the southeast Finland The last publicly exposed statue of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin was removed in the country on Tuesday, after pressure from its residents over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A group of workers in Kotka, a port city of 52,000 not far from the Russian border, loaded the bust onto a truck and transported it to the warehouse of a local museum.
Museum director Kirsi Nikko told Finnish public broadcaster YLE that the bronze statue was designed and built by Estonian sculptor Matti Varek in the late 1970s, at the order of Moscow.
The bust was presented in 1979 to the residents of Kotka as a gift from the friendly city of Tallinn, then the capital of the Soviet Republic of Estonia.
Finland removes the last statue of Lenin on public display in the country – Photo: Lehtikuva / Sasu Makinen via REUTERS
The gifting of this type of figurine was a common practice in the Soviet Union, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, to highlight the friendship between Finland and the Soviets in the post-WWII era.
After two skirmishes against the Soviet Union during World War II, Finland accepted a neutral status during the Cold War in exchange for assurances that Moscow would never again invade.
Finland removes the last statue of Lenin on public display in the country – Photo: Lehtikuva / Sasu Makinen via REUTERS
The bust of Lenin was in a central park in Kotka, next to a wooden house where the founder of the Bolshevik Party, who became the first head of government in the Soviet Union, is said to have erected.
The statue was vandalized over the years, but it remained in the park until the Kotka City Council decided to remove it.
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