Former Soviet town erects new Lenin statue - as a tiny, green, urinating man

Former Soviet town erects new Lenin statue - as a tiny, green, urinating man

Tourists to the Polish city of Krakow have long been visiting Nowa Huta, a former town constructed as a Communist ideal.

But unlike the previous imposing statue, this version is 27 inches tall, fluorescent green, and urinates in public.

[comment] Video, in French, via AFP.[/comment]

The modern interpretation, from artist Bartosz Szydlowski and his wife Malgorzata, was created in sarcastic homage to the towering original.

Nowa Huta – the new steel mill – was built during the communist era in east Krakow, as a model town for industrial workers. The Lenin steelworks served as Poland's largest steel mill, despite being located far from sources of coal and iron.

An enormous statue of Lenin stood on the city's Avenue of the Roses until 1989, when it was dismantled and sold off.

In contrast, its replacement is 10 times smaller than the original, to "cut the ideology down to size", a local art historian told AFP.