Monument to Lenin rebuilt as skate ramp induces communist rage

The monument to Lenin in the town of Verkhnyaya Pyshma (Russia's Sverdlovsk region) will not be used as a skate ramp. The skate park will be relocated, city council chairman Ivan Zernov said.

Last week, construction and architectural team Legato Construction and the Russian Skateboarding Federation reported that the Lenin monument had become part of a skateboarding area. The project was implemented at the initiative of the Verkhnyaya Pyshma administration, representatives of Legato Construction added. There were initial doubts from the client about integrating the monument into the skate park, “but thanks to open dialogue and collaborative work on the concept — everything worked out.”

After photos of the Lenin monument skate ramp appeared on social media, deputies from the Communist Party (CPRF) expressed dissatisfaction with the setup and threatened the creators with criminal charges.

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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism. Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's execution in 1887. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government, and devoted the following years to a law degree before relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and becoming a leading Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years, after which he moved to Western Europe and became a key figure in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In the party's 1903 schism, he led his Bolshevik faction against the Mensheviks. Lenin briefly returned to Russia during the failed Revolution of 1905, and during the First World War campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution, which he believed would cause the collapse of capitalism and the rise of socialism. After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government.