Pissing Lenin

Poland’s post-war communist government built the industrial town of Nowa Huta as a socialist tonic to subdue the intellectual influence of the nearby city of Krakow, and it once boasted a huge statue of the Russian leader striding down a main boulevard. The communists hoped it would become a model proletarian bastion.

In the old days Vladimir Lenin's statue loomed high on a main boulevard. In 1979 to the government's dismay, rather than becoming a shining example of one-party progress, Nova Huta’s workers resisted attempts to make them die-hard socialists, with some even trying to blow up the original Lenin statue in 1979. Only enough explosive material could be scrounged up  to take a chunk out of Vlad's feet. It took another ten years after Poland threw off the yoke of Soviet domination to get the old statue of Lenin permanently removed.

Now the old geezer is back in Nowa Huta, but instead of striking a dramatic pose designed to inspire revolution, the new Lenin statue is bright green in color, and depicts the revolutionary leader relieving himself, with a water feature providing the necessary effects.

Called the “Fountain of the Future,” the new Lenin statue has appeared in Nowa Huta as part of an art festival, and is also designed to stimulate debate over what should be the subject of a permanent statue on the same spot.

Bartosz Szydlowski, one of the creators of the new Lenin, also said the statue would show people that Nowa Huta is not just a “gray and gloomy” town, and that its residents have a “sense of humor”.

According to the Polish press, the statue has become something of a local attraction and the subject of tourists’ photographs.

 Pole's not wasting anything, sold the old statue to a Swedish millionaire in 1992.