Statue of Lenin (Seattle)

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Lenin statue in Fremont, Seattle, Washington

The Statue of Lenin in Seattle is a 16 foot bronze sculpture of Russian Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin located in the Fremont neighborhood.

The statue was constructed by a Slovak Bulgarian sculptor, Emil Venkov, under commission from the Soviet and Czechoslovak governments. While following the bounds of his commission, Venkov intended to portray Lenin as a bringer of revolution, in contrast to the traditional portrayals of Lenin as a philosopher and educator. His Lenin marches ahead fiercely, surrounded by torrid flames and symbols of war.

Venkov's work was completed and installed in Poprad, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), in 1988, shortly before the fall of Czechoslovak communism during the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Despite popular belief, perhaps reinforced by toppling of Saddam's statue, the Poprad Lenin was not toppled "in the mass demonstrations that shook the Soviet bloc during the fall of communism".^{[citation needed]}Instead, it was quietly removed from Lenin's Square, in front of Poprad's main hospital, several months after the Velvet Revolution.

Lewis E. Carpenter, a resident of Issaquah, Washington teaching English in Poprad, found the monumental statue lying in a scrapyard ready to be sold for the price of the bronze. In close collaboration with a local journalist and good friend, Tomáš Fülöpp, Carpenter approached the city officials with a claim that despite its current unpopularity, the sculpture was still a work of art worth preserving, and he offered to buy it for $13,000. After many bureaucratic hurdles, he finally signed a contract with the mayor on March 16, 1993 (see the original article, in Slovak).

Close up of the effigy

Working with the original sculptor, the statue was professionally cut in three pieces and shipped to the United States at a total cost of $41,000. Lewis Carpenter financed much of that via mortgaging his home.

On February 18, 1994 in the midst of the uproar in Seattle that was set off by his import of a statue of a communist leader, Lewis Carpenter was killed in a car accident (see the original announcement in Slovakia), leaving the statue in the hands of his estate, lying in his backyard. The family contacted a local brass foundry, who offered to move it off the property. In 1995 the statue was first placed in Fremont at the corner of N 34th St & Evanston Ave N, one block south of a salvaged Cold War rocket fuselage, another artistic Fremont attraction. It now stands two blocks northward at the intersection of Evanston Ave N, N 36th St, and Fremont Place, outside a Taco del Mar and an ice cream parlor.

The Carpenter family continues to seek a buyer for the statue. The asking price as of 2006 is $250,000, up from a 1995 price tag of $150,000.

Lenin statue with red star for Christmas

Fremont is considered a quirky artistic community, and like other statues in the neighborhood (such as Waiting for the Interurban), the Lenin statue is often the victim of various artistic projects, endorsed or not. A glowing red star and sometimes Christmas lights have been added to the statue for Christmas since 2004. For the 2004 Solstice Parade, the statue was made to look like John Lennon. During Gay Pride Week, the statue is dressed in drag. Other appropriations of the statue have included painting it as a clown.