Ukraine City Topples Lenin Statue, But He Still Stands in NYC, Seattle, London

Ukrainian nationalists in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, toppled a huge statue of communist leader Vladimir Lenin on Sunday, September 28. A photograph of the event showing the statue tipping, as it was pulled by cables off an even taller pedestal, was carried by Associated Press. Throughout the Soviet Union, thousands of similar monuments to Lenin, Stalin, and other communist leaders became prominent fixtures in every Soviet city. Interestingly, many of these tributes to totalitarian oppression are still standing, more than two decades after the supposed “collapse of communism.” Few of the journalists or “expert” commentators covering Russia, Ukraine, and other former communist-run nations of the U.S.S.R. or Warsaw Pact question why these hated symbols are still standing.

Why has it taken so long for the Kharkiv Lenin to be removed? Why did the “former” communists ruling Ukraine protect it — and others like it — for so long? Why is it only coming down now, and as a sop to “Ukrainian nationalism” versus Russian belligerence; was not communism’s horrendous imprint on Ukraine (not the least of which was Stalin’s mass-genocide-by-famine known as the Holodomor)
sufficient in and of itself to have guaranteed the prompt eradication of these villainous icons?

The cult of personality glorifying dictators and Party leaders became synonymous with fascist and communist regimes in the 20th century and was an essential propaganda feature of the totalitarian state. Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, a thorough de-Nazification program quickly removed statues, swastikas, and other symbols of Hitler’s regime. Understandably, Nazi officials, Gestapo agents, and members of Hitler’s SS were prosecuted and/or barred from holding public office. However, no similar rooting out of ex-Communist Party officials and KGB agents has occurred in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. Lifelong communists simply have declared that they are now “democrats” and have continued to hold critical economic and political power. Many of them have gone to great lengths to thwart and minimize all efforts aimed at eradicating the symbols that glorify the communist regimes that oppressed their nations for most of the past century.

Lenin, Che, Mao Cults Persist in West

Many “Liberals” and “Progressives” still have not gotten over their adolescent infatuation with Marxism-Leninism. They continue to idolize Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Mao Tse-tung. They tenaciously cling to their romantic notions of socialism, ignoring the clear record of history that shows their gods to have been monsters. While no one should be surprised to learn that Fidel Castro’s communist regime in Cuba still has a park in Havana named after the Bolshevik dictator featuring a large bust of Lenin, many Americans would be surprised to learn that a 16-foot-tall Lenin statue can be found in a public square, amid shops and fast food outlets, in Fremont, a “bohemian” suburb of Seattle, Washington. A photo of the Fremont Lenin was featured, along with one of the Havana Lenin, in a January 21, 2014 article entitled “Lenin lives on in bronze and on screens around the world,” in Russia Beyond the Headlines, one of the Kremlin’s many new propaganda outlets in the West.

An earlier triumphal piece in 2009 by another of Putin’s propaganda projects, RT, entitled “Lenin Towers Over New York,” boasted of the large bronze Lenin statue atop Red Square in Manhattan, which it described as “a fashionable apartment rental complex on the Lower East Side surrounded by retail stores and restaurants,” and owned by “revolutionary developer” Michael Rosen.
(Photos of the NYC Red Square Lenin can be seen here.)

A 2013 BBC story, “Five Lenin statues in unexpected places,” provides pictures of Lenin statues/busts in Seattle/Fremont; Antarctica; London, U.K.; Tarhankut, Ukraine; and Cavriago, Italy.