A far-left German political party installed a statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin over the weekend in the city of Gelsenkirchen.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany erected the statue, similar to the one in Seattle, in front of its offices over the weekend, according to the BBC. City officials tried to stop the statue’s installment, but courts blocked their efforts.
“We live in a time in which many countries of the world are reflecting on memorials,” said the city’s mayor, Frank Baranowski.
While statues of heroes such as George Washington, Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt are being vandalized knocked down or removed, Vladimir Lenin’s statue is being erected of all places in Germany that suffered years of communist oppression while it was divided. Pathetic! pic.twitter.com/C7EuC5YxNL
— Amir Tsarfati (@BeholdIsrael) June 22, 2020
“It’s hard to put up with the fact that a dictator from the [20th] century is being placed on a pedestal and a memorial is being made out of it. Unfortunately, the courts have decided otherwise. We must accept that, but not without comment,” the mayor added.
MLPD’s chairwoman, Gabi Fechtner, described Lenin as “an ahead-of-his-time thinker of world-historical importance, an early fighter for freedom and democracy.”
Lenin rose in power amid the Russian Revolution as the head of the Bolshevik Party, which would later become the Communist Party, in the early 20th century. He was the leader of the world’s first communist state, the Soviet Union, which brought death and oppression to tens of millions of people.
The move to erect the Lenin statue in Germany comes amid protests across the world to remove various historical statues.
In the United States, monuments across the country have been defaced and torn down in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minnesota while he was in police custody.
Christopher Columbus statues are among the historical likenesses that have sparked the ire of vandals and protesters. Police found a statue of Columbus beheaded in Boston. Another Columbus statue in St. Paul, Minnesota, was destroyed, and another in Richmond, Virginia, was also pulled down.
The destruction and vandalism of statues has gone beyond those depicting Columbus. Confederate statues have been toppled, the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington was defaced during protests that turned violent, and the Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, and others have also been defaced.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron said the country will not tear down and “erase” statues of colonial-era leaders as protests against racial inequality and police brutality take place throughout the country.
