Nearly one hundred Vladimir Lenin statues have been toppled in the Ukraine since anti-government protests began in December. A Lenin statue that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere is the most random one of all. On the corner of N. 36th Street and Evanston Avenue N in the Fremont neighborhood is one of Seattle’s strangest attractions, a 16-foot-tall bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin. Sculpted by Bulgarian Emil Venkov under commission from the Soviet and Czechoslovak governments, his statue fiercely marches while surrounded by flames and symbols of war. Several months after being removed from Lenin’s Square during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, a Seattle resident named Lewis E. Carpenter (who happened to be working in what is now Slovakia) found the statue, which was ready to be discarded and saved it after much effort and expense. He died in a car accident and the statue was left in his backyard. In 1995, his family placed it in Fremont with the help of a local brass foundry. The statue has evoked a wide range of responses, both good and bad, but has become an artistic part of the community as it is decorated with Christmas lights, dressed up in drag for Gay Pride week, and has even been painted as a clown. We’ve covered weird statues before, like the Boll Weevil Monument in Alabama, the Beatles of Kazakhstan and of course the “Child Eater” of Switzerland, but nothing beats a random statue of a Communist revolutionary in an American city. Especially when you consider the fact that the current U.S. President is a socialist communist fascist atheist progressive Nazi…or something.
16-foot-tall bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin, Seattle
