De-Leninization

The toppling of a Lenin statue in Khmelnytsky park, Ukraine

A toppled Lenin statue next to the Mogoşoaia Palace, Romania

File:2014-02-21 16-00 Euromaidan in Zhytomyr.jpg

A beheaded Lenin statue in Zhytomyr, Ukraine

File:LeninInBox.jpg

A toppled Lenin statue in a stylized wooden coffin in Cēsis, Latvia

Three Arrows through a red flag of Marx, Engels, and Lenin

De-Leninization (Ukrainian: Ленінопад, romanized: Leninopad, lit. 'Leninfall') is political reform aimed at refuting Leninist and Marxist–Leninist ideology, ending the personality cult of Vladimir Lenin, removing images and toppling statues of Lenin, renaming places and buildings, dismantling the Lenin Mausoleum currently in Red Square, Moscow, and burying his mummified corpse.

History

De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union began in the mid-1950s during the Khrushchev thaw following the latter's secret speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", but this was framed as a return to orthodox Leninism and thus the cult of Lenin remained until the dissolution of the USSR.

In Russia

In 1992, Lenin's likeness disappeared from the currency as Russia's bank system transitioned to the Russian Ruble.

There was some reform in education, and Lenin's name began to disappear from books, articles, and dissertations, but only partial and intermittent removal of his statues and likenesses in Russia. As historian Yury Pivovarov notes, “All these metamorphoses predominantly took place in publishing, on TV and the radio… the dismantling of Lenin happened only verbally and almost didn’t materialize in any other way.”

Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin tried and failed to establish the new regime on a basis of Anti-communism. Russian president Vladimir Putin made peace with the Communists when he came to power in 2000, but after his 2012 election began denouncing the Bolsheviks for their treachery in "betraying the country's national interests" to Germany in World War I, usually without mentioning Lenin by name, who retains broad popularity in Russia. In 2016, he denounced Lenin's concept of a federative State divided along ethnic lines, each with a right of secession. He denounced Lenin for executing the czar and his family and servants and for killing priests. A 2017 survey showed that 56% of Russia's population had a favorable opinion of Lenin, higher than when the survey had first been conducted in 2006.

In 2012, the state-sponsored Russia Today media network announced that Liberal-Democratic party (LDPR) deputy Aleksandr Kurdyumov proposed the removal of monuments to museums, citing high maintenance costs due to the prevalence of vandalism, and saying that Lenin's dominance was "unfair” to other outstanding personalities – such as Peter the Great, Alexander Suvorov, Ivan the Terrible and others. The lawmaker proposed regional referendums to decide the question.

Lenin's Mausoleum controversy

Many have proposed burying Lenin's corpse and dismantling the Lenin Mausoleum, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and hierophants of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2017, legislation was proposed by six lawmakers, including 3 from Putin's United Russia Party and three from the LDPR, but was opposed by the Russian Communist Party. The embalming and Mausoleum had been opposed from its outset by Leon Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, by Lenin's widows Nadezhda Krupskaya, and reportedly by Lenin himself before his premature death.

In other post-Soviet states

After the dissolution of the USSR other post-Soviet states also began removing many of their Lenin monuments, although some have remained. In 1991, Ukraine had 5,500 Lenin monuments, and until November 2015, approximately 1,300 Lenin monuments were still standing. More than 700 Lenin monuments were removed or destroyed between February 2014 and December 2015, On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation on de-communization, which provided for their removal, signed into law on 15 May 2015.

See also

• Decommunization
• Anti-communism
• Demolition of the Vladimir Lenin monument in Kyiv
• Muzeon Park of Arts
• Good Bye, Lenin!

References

Books

• Shub, David (1966). Lenin: A Biography (revised ed.). London: Pelican.
• Lenin, Vladimir (1948). "Appendix: Essentials of Leninism". Lenin: A Biography. By Shub, David (revised ed.). New York: Mentor Books.
• Sebestyen, Victor (2017). Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror. Pantheon Books. ISBN 9781101871638.
• Volkogonov, Dmitri (1994). Lenin: A New Biography. Translated by Shukman, Harold. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-255123-6.
• Velikanova, Olga V. (2001). "The Public Perception of the Cult of Lenin Based on Archival Materials". UNT Digital Library (in Russian). Retrieved 2022-04-14.
• Shub, Anatole (1989). "De-Leninization" Or "post-Leninism"?: New Soviet Thinking on the Past and Future. U.S. Information Agency, Office of Research.

Articles and Reviews

• Clines, Francis X. (1992-01-22). "Moscow Journal; Temple to Lenin Opens Its Doors to Freethinkers". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-04-14.
• Sinelschikova, Yekaterina (2021-12-25). "What Russia felt IMMEDIATELY after the USSR's breakup". Russia Beyond. Retrieved 2022-04-14.
• "The Next Line of Hills: The Challenge of Peace Revisited | George Weigel". First Things. Retrieved 2022-04-14.