A city in southeastern Finland removed the country’s final public statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin on Tuesday amid increasing pressure from citizens over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Construction workers in Kotka, a port city not far from the country’s border with Russia, completed the removal after transporting the final statue, a bronze bust of Lenin, to the local Kymenlaakso Museum.
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Kirsi Niku, director of the Kymenlaakso Museum, said the statue will likely be displayed in an exhibit or placed in a warehouse.
“Even if this generation doesn’t see it, future generations will certainly be interested in it. It is history in its own time,” Niku told the Finnish publication YLE.
Kotka’s city council voted to remove the statue, which was the last one of Lenin in Finland, in June. Two other cities in Finland removed their Lenin statues earlier this year. The moves came after Russia invaded Ukraine more than seven months ago.
The statue was originally a gift from its twin city, Tallinn, in 1979. Tallinn was the capital of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic at the time. Presenting statues was a common practice by Moscow at the time to celebrate the Finnish-Soviet friendship. Russia and Finland share an 830-mile land border.
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Finland was a part of Russia’s dynasty until Dec. 6, 1917, when it declared independence in the wake of the Russian Revolution, which was led by Lenin. The Russian leader was exiled to Finland multiple times prior to the revolution. One city in Finland, Tampere, still has a Lenin Museum at the location where Lenin met with future Russian dictator Josef Stalin in 1905.
