Lenin Teeters Across Central Asia

The fad for dismantling Lenin statues across Central Asia is continuing apace.

Privately owned Kazakh television station KTK reported this week that authorities in the central town of Karaganda have begun work on "overthrowing" the hulking 270-ton granite leader, the largest monument of its kind in the country.

Removing Vladimir Ilyich is proving as hard as expunging the legacy of his ideologies, however. Ironically, it is from Switzerland, Lenin's home-in-exile in the years ahead of the Russian Revolution, that Karaganda authorities have turned to buy the equipment needed to cut the 12-meter statue into more easily transportable sections.

Lenin will be re-erected just a few streets away from his current location -- on Lenin Street, fittingly enough. Attempts to remove these enduring reminders of Central Asia's Soviet past invariably meet resistance from the old guard of adherents, such as retiree Gani Isakakova, who charged in decidedly seditious tones in an interview with KTK that "what we learned from Lenin was: 'Learn, learn, learn,' and all you learn today is to steal."

RFE/RL's Kazakh-language service Azattyk offers details of even more concerted efforts to halt the perceived desecration. According to local journalist Ainur Aldanysheva:

KTK says disassembling the statue into seven sections is expected to take three days. One day later, with almost Jesus-like timing, he will begin to rise again (with the aid of some "special glue"). A monument memorializing Kazakhstan's independence will go up in Lenin's current spot.

Central Asia-watchers will recall efforts this year to rid Tajikistan of Lenin statues. Several of them have reportedly been taken down in Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon's native Khatlon province.

In one case, the removal in September of a Lenin statue in Kulob, Rakhmon's hometown, raised the hackles of local Communists, who described the unannounced act in the most incendiary terms. It later emerged that the statue was only being taken down for restoration and, sure enough, the shiny-domed Bolshevik last week returned to his rightful place.

And in the northern Tajik of Khujand (formerly Leninabad), Communists raised the alarm over the summer amid rumors that authorities were planning to fell the largest Lenin statue in Central Asia. Those fears proved unfounded, but for how long?