Goodbye Lenin: Finland removes statue of Russian revolutionary as country seeks to join Nato

Finland has made the decision to move a controversial statue of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin from the streets to a museum.

While the statue in Kotka, southeast Finland, has often been vandalised, it has received heightened attention since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The monument was presented as a gift by Kotka’s twin city, Tallinn, in 1979, and was sculpted by Estonian artist Matti Varikin. Estonia was part of the USSR at the time.

Proposals submitted to the city and municipal councils stated that the statue was offensive to the memory of those killed in Soviet war crimes.

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The statue’s new home, the Kymenlaakso Museum, had initially wanted the statue to be kept in its place with an additional plaque describing its history. The museum also suggested the statue be transferred to the Lenin Museum in Tampere.

But delegates voted 41-9 in favour of removing the statue from the streets of Kotka. Reports claimed its removal means that no more large monuments to Lenin are left in Finland.

Calls to remove a Lenin statue and plaque in the southwest city of Turku were also recently granted. The monuments were given to Turku in 1977 by authorities in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and have been the centre of controversy for several years.

Lenin hid in Finland in 1917, fleeing the Russian government after it outlawed his Bolshevik party, before returning to help lead the revolution later that year.

Tensions between Finland and Russia have been brewing since the Nordic country announced it would seek to apply for Nato membership following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In May this year, Russia halted gas exports to its neighbour in a highly symbolic move that marked a likely end to Finland’s nearly 50 years of trading natural gas with Russia.

Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia, the longest of any of the EU’s 27 members, and has a conflict-ridden history with the nation.

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