BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, 21 September 2003 — He towered over the city’s main square for a dozen years after his successors were knocked off their pedestals, pointing to the bright socialist future that never arrived and glowering at any who doubted.
But when Lenin finally came down last month, he did not come down easily.
In a secret operation four months in the making, the government of this former Soviet republic in the heart of Central Asia finally took down the mammoth monument to the father of the Soviet Union at Ala Too Square, the capital’s most prominent public space. In Lenin’s place went a statue of a winged woman holding a wreath, dubbed “Freedom.”
“We’ve finally closed the door on Lenin’s era. Finally,” declared State Secretary Osmonakun Ibraimov, who led the effort. “Now we’re opening a new era of national history. That’s our statehood, our independence.”
Yet the door was not exactly slammed shut. Lenin’s fall from grace provoked protests from Communists and an abortive parliamentary attempt this month to sack the government. In the end, the government took its artistic revolution only so far — about 650 feet, in fact. After braving picketing by traditionalists, officials simply put Lenin’s statue back up on the other side of the city’s main museum, in a less conspicuous location.
The “huge storm,” as Ibraimov put it, underscored the striking ambivalence toward Lenin and the Communist legacy all around the empire he once ruled. While 15 countries emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991, all formally casting off the system Lenin built, most still cling to at least some of its symbols.
Lenin’s statue still stands in most towns in Russia, as well as in such Central Asian republics as Kyrgyzstan. Russia recently readopted the Soviet anthem, though with new lyrics. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow last year even proposed re-erecting the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the dreaded secret police founder, on the grounds that he was a great Russian.
Attempts to move on are more sporadic, usually tentative and often explosive. Last month Ukraine’s Federation of Trade Unions finally replaced its 16-foot-tall hammer-and-sickle emblem on their headquarters, but no one dares take down Lenin’s statue in Kiev. On the other hand, the Russian city of Ulyanovsk still welcomes visitors to “the birthplace of Lenin,” but the airport bathroom at one point offered pages from a Lenin biography as toilet paper.
For Klara Ajibekova, that would be sacrilege. Like other Communists, she contends that Lenin was a genius who should still be honored. “He was worth his place here,” she said at Ala Too Square the other day. “He deserved that. He did so much for Kyrgyzstan.”
Ajibekova, first secretary of the Kyrgyz Communist Party, called the winged woman that replaced Lenin a “symbol of bourgeois capitalism” that people refer to as “night butterfly,” a slang term for sex worker.
Lenin’s removal and relocation suggest the slow but noticeable evolution of this isolated nation of five million from Russian vassal to newfound ally of the United States. In the two years since Kyrgyzstan permitted the US military to establish a base here to support the war in Afghanistan, Bishkek has taken on an increasingly American flavor.
Parked at Bishkek’s main airport are rows of US Air Force cargo planes. A late-summer beer festival plays American swing music. American contractors with military-style crew cuts wolf down burgers at the Hyatt Regency bar.
The walls at Stars restaurant are covered with pictures of Hollywood celebrities. And Tsum department store offers discounts to American soldiers.
President Askar Akayev, who was the last Communist-era boss, has distanced his country from its Soviet legacy in other ways as well. A largely nomadic land overrun by the Mongols, the Manchu and eventually the Russians, Kyrgyzstan decided recently that it has been an identifiable nation for 2,200 years, convinced the United Nations to recognize this version of history with a resolution and then staged an anniversary celebration.
“I’m kind of impressed by what I see as efforts by President Akayev to create a national identity here,” said a Western diplomat. “You can smile at it, 2,200. But it’s all part of telling people, ‘You come from somewhere’.”
And so last April, just as Saddam Hussein’s statue was coming down in Baghdad, Ibraimov decided it was time to retire Lenin, at least to a shady, out-of-the-way spot surrounded by fir trees. The 18-ton statue, erected in 1984 at what was then Lenin Square in front of what was then the Lenin Museum, had resisted previous eviction notices, so Ibraimov kept the plan secret even from other parts of the government.
When the Freedom statue was ready last month, Lenin came down, falling to the earth much like the Saddam figure. For several days, Lenin lay on the ground, his outstretched arm pointing toward the sky, as angry Communists shouted betrayal and launched a no-confidence vote in parliament.
“There was a big scandal,” Ibraimov conceded. “With much difficulty we managed to convince a majority of parliament that this wasn’t such a great tragedy.”
Ibraimov said he always intended to put the statue back up elsewhere in deference to Lenin’s role in freeing Kyrgyzstan from the last Russian czar, who oversaw a 1916 crackdown here that killed 120,000 Kyrgyz, roughly one-sixth of the population. “He saved us from dying off,” Ibraimov said. “Our attitude toward Lenin is unique.”
But that was not concession enough for the Communists. Moving Lenin, said Ajibekova, was like shoving him into a closet. “They decided to pay fealty to the West and America first of all,” she said. “I think Akayev was ashamed in front of his guests.”