First dismantled statue of Lenin auctioned off for $8,000 in Ukraine

Ukraine’s first dismantled statue of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin has been sold at an auction organized by the Semyonovka city legislature in Ukraine’s Chernigov region, the press service of the ProZorro electronic public procurement system said on Friday.

"The first Lenin has been sold at a transparent auction! The Semyonovka City Council has auctioned off interesting scrap - the demolished bronze monument to Lenin," ProZorro said.

The statue was contended by fourteen bidders, with bids starting from 45,500 hryvhias ($1,500). The four-meter tall statue weighing 2.5 tonnes was ultimately sold for 220,000 hryvnias ($8,000 US dollars).

Chief of Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory Vladimir Vyatrovich said in August 2018 that all the 1,320 statues of Lenin had been demolished throughout Ukraine as part of the implementation of de-communization laws. According to Vyatovich, plaster busts were destroyed, bronze statues were either re-melted or sent to museums. In his words, it is planned to open a museum of "Soviet monumental propaganda" in Kiev by the end of 2018.

The so-called de-communization law was passed in Ukraine in May 2015. Among other things, it envisages renaming topographic objects named after Soviet figures. Thus, the city of Dnepropetrovsk was given the name of Dnepr and the city of Kirovograd was renamed Kropivnitsky under this law. According to the Ukrainian authorities, a total of 987 populated localities received new names.