Posted on July 1, 2009 - by Venik

Vandals arrested after attack on statue of Lenin in Kiev

Ukrainian nationalists say raid reflects growing mood against Soviet monuments

Five people have been arrested for smashing the face and ripping the arm off a large statue of Vladimir Lenin, on display in Kiev, in the latest ignominious attack on the Bolshevik leader.

Police said the five had links with a Ukrainian nationalist organisation that wants to remove all Soviet monuments from the country. According to the Moscow Times, they scaled the statue with a ladder before bashing it with a sledgehammer.

The 1950s-era statue, situated in Kiev’s busy Shevchenko Boulevard, will now be torn down, police said. They added that the vandals, who were caught immediately, had been charged with hooliganism and could face four years in jail.

Yesterday’s assault is merely the latest indignity to befall Lenin, whose statues still litter cities, towns and small villages across the former Soviet Union. Eighty-five years after his death, the revolutionary remains a potently divisive figure, in Russia and elsewhere.

Groups who revile Lenin include rightwing Russian monarchists, liberals, orthodox believers and nationalists in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltics. The monarchists dub him a German-Jewish-masonic spy. The nationalists say he deprived them of independence and freedom.

Other groups, however, revere Lenin as a great and wise leader. These include Russia’s communists – a diminishing but still influential force – as well as elderly Russians nostalgic for the days of Soviet power and the idealism that is in short supply in today’s ultra-capitalist Russia.

So far, the Russian authorities have made no real effort to take down statues of Lenin, or to remove his embalmed body from its tourist-drawing mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square. Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has decided to leave things as they are for fear of provoking social discord.

Others, however, have taken matters into their own hands. In April, unknown miscreants blew a large hole in a bronze statue of Lenin in St Petersburg, removing most of his bottom. A small bomb apparently caused the damage. The statue stood next to the railway station where Lenin spoke in 1917 after his return from exile.

Today police named the man who led the attack on the Kiev Lenin as Nikolai Kokhanovsky, a member of the Congress of Ukrainian nationalists. “We didn’t sanction it and don’t approve of it. But I think it reflects the mood of society,” said Stephan Bratsyun, spokesman for the Congress of Ukrainian nationalists.

He added: “We are not simply nationalists. We believe in the renaissance of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian language. A majority of Ukrainians believe that, in time, memorials to Lenin and other totalitarian leaders will vanish. We have our own Ukrainian heroes.”

Asked why the vandals had hacked off Lenin’s arm and nose, he said: “The stone is rather hard. These are the easiest bits to chop off.”

According to the reports, the vandals were protesting at the failure to remove Soviet symbols in Ukraine. Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, has asked for their removal. The attack took place on the birthday of the Ukrainian nationalist Roman Shukhevych, a controversial figure who led Ukraine’s wartime insurgent army.

Original article

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