The copper statue of Vladimir Lenin stood above the Lower East Side cityscape for more than 20 years, facing southwest with one arm perpetually raised as if in mid-oration. Visible from neighboring buildings and the sidewalk below, the statue topped a 13-story luxury apartment building on Houston Street and presented an unusual juxtaposition: the founder of Soviet Communism perched atop a decidedly capitalist enterprise.
Over time it became one of the more familiar pieces of art in the neighborhood, seen by some as a bit of kitsch and by others as a contextual nod to the days when Communist meeting halls dotted the nearby blocks and May Day marches drew tens of thousands. Then, last week, the statue disappeared, removed from the roofline as swiftly and efficiently as Josef Stalin once purged rivals from power.
Michael Rosen, the developer and one of the owners of the building, called Red Square, said last week that he had learned that it could soon be sold to someone who might not want to keep the likeness of Lenin. He said he then arranged with a business partner to take down the statue, which he installed in 1994 as a sort of experiment with symbols.
“I wanted to do something creative, fun, an homage to the history of the Lower East Side, which had been a hotbed of political thought,” he said, adding that the statue originally had been positioned to appear as if Lenin was waving toward Wall Street….
Hmmm, I wonder if people would feel quite so relaxed—if the New York Times would chuckle quite so benignly—if the statue had been of a different twentieth century dictator, Mussolini say, not to speak of Hitler…
The New York Times:
…Whatever reservations people may have had about the building, the 18-foot statue, which was created in the Soviet Union by a sculptor, Yuri Gerasimov, appeared to have more fans than detractors. Among them was Joe Sims, a member of the Communist Party USA’s national board, who said he used to include the statue in a walking tour of Lower Manhattan and saw it as an example of changing political attitudes.
“At certain points in our history, particularly during the McCarthy era and afterward, Communists were demonized,” Mr. Sims said by phone. “A lot of that is gone now.”
Because it’s so passé now to ‘demonize’ despotism, mass-murder and genocide: close to one hundred million dead on some calculations.
Late in his life, Molotov, the veteran Soviet statesman who had known both men very well, commented that ‘compared to Lenin, Stalin was a mere lamb.’ He had a point. It was Lenin, who was the killer who presided over the early stages of what became the gulag, it was Lenin who was the tyrant who laid the foundations of Soviet totalitarianism, and acted as the creator of the system that Stalin, in some senses, perfected.
In any event, the old monster will soon be back….
The New York Times:
Mr. Shaoul said the statue would be on display again within about a month, installed on the roof of a building a half-block south of Red Square, which is owned by investors that he and Mr. Rosen organized.