Vladimir Lenin was responsible for the brutal slaughter of five million people, but this tribute to the deranged dictator is plenty of fun to take photos with, so I’m sure we can all look past that!
Yes, it’s unusual – although far from unheard of – to find a massive recreation of a cold-hearted killer, and the story of how he arrived in the liberal enclave of Fremont is absolutely bonkers. Honestly, if the real ‘Lenny’ turned up on The Masked Singer to perform a surprisingly spritzy rendition of We Don’t Talk About Bruno whilst dressed as a crab, it would be less odd than what’s already happened.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which was apparently a lot less fun than it sounds) commissioned the statue for $US210,000 in 1981, to be displayed in the grim city of Poprad as a warning to anyone flirting with the twin ideas of democracy and decent living standards.
Slovak artist Emil Venkov took more than seven years to complete his work – just in time for the fall of the republic, at which point Lenny was toppled by enraged locals and dragged through the streets. Hope you got paid up front, Emil!
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation”
Vladimir Lenin, Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party
Coming to America
A quirky American named Lew Carpenter (no relation to the much-loved Neighbours character) found the statue in a Czech scrapyard sometime later, and was shocked but impressed to discover a homeless chap living inside. Lew grabbed a big stick and whacked the statue a few times and – rychle! – no more homeless chap.
Hopefully the hobo landed on his shoeless feet, because it’s so hard to find a good vanquished leader to live inside these days.
Lew Carpenter had grand plans to take the statue back to his hometown of Issaquah, Washington, to lure customers into his struggling ethnic restaurant, Crazy Lew’s Slav Shack. Sure, it would’ve been easier to offer two-for-one borscht on Tuesdays, but where’s the fun in that?
After years of legal wrangling, he finally received the go-ahead to transport the much-feared dictator to the Land of the Free. At a cost of $US80,000, Lenny was sliced into three pieces and shipped off via Rotterdam. Who knows why he had to stop off in The Netherlands; maybe Lenny just wanted one more reign of terror in Europe before heading into retirement.
Lew and Len, tragically, would never embrace again, with the rambunctious restaurateur driving his car off a cliff whilst practising his speech for the statue’s unveiling. Make that five million and one deaths for ol’ Vlad!
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted“
Vladimir Lenin, What the Friends of the People Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats
Yankee Doodle Lenny
With the good people of Issaquah voting to ban the giant hate symbol from their town, Lew’s relatives decided to melt down the statue and have it resurrected as something more palatable. They didn’t, however, count on the owner of the foundry being a student of Marxist theory and a lifelong admirer of Vladimir Lenin.
Peter Bevis (don’t ask him where Butthead is!) refused to recreate the ending of Terminator 2: Judgment Day by dropping Lenny into a fiery pit of molten magma. He instead bothered the Fremont Chamber of Commerce into agreeing to put the statue on display until someone bought him. So now Vladimir Lenin hangs around outside a taco shop, engaging in illuminating conversation with the stoners who turn up at 2am.
With a bargain price of just $250,000, it’s a surprise nobody’s snapped Lenny up, considering the price of real estate in Seattle. You couldn’t even get a two-bedroom Leon Trotsky for that price!
“There she was just a-walkin’ down the street, singin’ ‘Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do’. Snappin’ her fingers and shufflin’ her feet, singin’ ‘Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do’”
Vladimir Lenin, Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin
Vladimir Lenin: Gay Icon
In statue form, as in life, Lenny has proven to be a divisive figure. There are those who claim a statue of a deranged child murderer who brought widespread misery and mayhem has no place in a loving and accepting town such as Fremont.
Like their Czech cousins, they want to tear poor ol’ Len to pieces and drag him through the streets. Those people haven’t seen the kinder side of Mr Lenin, who is often seen sporting reindeer antlers, clown facepaint and flags of the local sporting franchises.
Lenny isn’t afraid to exhibit his feminine side by dressing in drag, and has been seen with an oversized penis protruding from his pants. If one of the most bloodthirsty demagogues the world has ever known can show his softer side, to lay himself bare to judgement, to become a beacon of hope in the LGBTQI+ community, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.
After a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from the Bolshevik Revolution to the disappointing Queer Eye revival, Vladimir Lenin and I sat silently in the brooding Seattle evening. The last bus back to my hostel had long since left. The taco shop was slopping out its last scoop of guac. I yawned, Lenny yawned, and he peered down at me as if to say, “Go on. If a homeless man can sleep inside me, so can you.”
And that’s how I spent a surprisingly comfortable night inside Fremont’s divisive Vladimir Lenin statue.
