Statue of Lenin

The Statue of Lenin is a 16 ft (5 m) bronze statue of Russian Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. It was created by Bulgarian-born Slovak sculptor Emil Venkov and initially put on display in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1988, the year before the Velvet Revolution. After the dissolution of the USSR, a wave of de-Leninization brought about fall of many monuments in the former Soviet sphere. In 1993, the statue was bought by an American who had found it lying in a scrapyard. He brought it home with him to Washington State but died before he could carry out his plans for formally displaying it.

Since 1995, the statue has been held in trust waiting for a buyer, standing on temporary display for the last 27 years on a prominent street corner in Fremont. It has become a local landmark, frequently being either decorated or vandalized. The statue has sparked political controversy, including criticism for being communist chic and not taking the historic meaning of Leninism and communism seriously (or taking it too seriously), or by comparing the purported acceptance of such a charged political symbol to the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials. Much of the debate ignores the statue's private ownership and installation on private property, with the public and government having virtually no say in the matter.


Cast in Czechoslovakia, rescued from the scrap heap, and
installed in Fremont in 1995, the statue of Lenin is as much
an emblem of Fremont as the Troll or the Rocket.
The God-Machine put a great deal of distributed effort into
getting this statue in place. It had to arrange the statue’s proper
construction under the appropriate occult circumstances in
what is now Slovakia. Construction was timed such that it
would soon be disposed of after the Velvet Revolution. It had
to coincidentally be found by an art-loving English teacher
from Washington, who was inspired to buy it on his own and
move it across an ocean. Finally, the God-Machine had to
arrange things such that it would end up installed in Fremont.
All that, and the thing ends up suborned within a year.
It took the focused and rather inspired effort of a ring
who called themselves Yesterday’s People. Their adventure in
prying the statue free of the God-Machine’s grip and ensuring
that the statue stays off its radar in the future is a popular
story in certain Seattle circles; most any of them can tell it.
The only part they disagree on is how the Demons’ Republic
got a hold of it.

Comrade West insists that Yesterday’s People donated it to
the cause before they left town. Those who like to antagonize
him prefer different stories, including the one about how
he got the ring flagged by the angels in order to open up
ownership of the statue.

Not that this makes much sense. The statue barely
produces any Aether, instead pouring most of its energy into
another effect. It was originally supposed to detect Aetheric
activity and broadcast its position, alerting agents of the
God-Machine. Now, it does the opposite, filling the air with
Aetheric interference, the equivalent of static on the demon-
finding radar.

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