Lenin, the Mythology Unravels

A statue of Vladimir Lenin has returned to a Polish town which was constructed by the communists in the hope of it becoming a proletarian bastion.

But instead of striking a dramatic pose designed to inspire revolution, the new Lenin statue in Nowa Huta comes bright green in colour, and depicts the revolutionary leader relieving himself, with a water feature providing the necessary effects.

Poland’s post-war communist government built the industrial town of Nowa Huta as a socialist tonic to subdue the intellectual influence of the nearby city of Krakow, and it once boasted a huge statue of the Russian leader striding down a main boulevard.

To the government’s dismay, however, rather than becoming a shining example of one-party progress, Nova Huta’s workers resisted attempts to make them die-hard socialists, with some even trying to blow up the original Lenin statue in 1979. The attackers failed to use enough explosives and only succeeded in damaging the Russian’s feet.

Called the “Fountain of the Future,” the bright green Lenin has appeared in Nowa Huta as part of an art festival, and is also designed to stimulate debate over what should be the subject of a permanent statue on the same spot.