The last Lenin statue in Finland is to be moved to a museum

THE last Lenin statue in Finland is to be moved to a museum following a newspaper poll and a 41-9 vote by the Kotka City Council on June 13.

Finland has a long and often uneasy relationship with Russia, being annexed into the Russian Empire in 1809 and only gaining independence in 1917 following the Bolshevik revolution.

Lenin himself spent some time in Finland before the revolution and the country found itself in the shadow of its giant neighbour for most of the 20^th century, going to war with Russia in 1939 and then again in 1941, losing some 89,000 combatants.

Trying to act as a buffer between the East and the West Finland did have many links with the Soviet Union and the statue in question was a gift from the city of Tallinn, capital of Estonia in 1979.

Ironically, the statue was situated near to a building where civilians were bombed by Soviet planes in 1939 and there were an increasing number of requests for the statue, which was regularly vandalised, to be removed and placed in a museum.

As the country matured and relations with Russia took a more balanced position, many argued that it was inappropriate for statues of the Bolshevik leader to be sited on public land and many were removed, the most recent being in Turku in April due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Now, this the last of Finland’s large Lenin statues, is to be removed although there is some question as to which museum (if any) will be prepared to take it.

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