A hated symbol

The Herald reports:

Pro-European demonstrators toppled the statute of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, from its plinth in central Kiev as record numbers flooded the city streets.

The crowds had gathered to protest against the Government’s decision to pursue closer ties with Moscow at the expense of the West.

In jubilant scenes that demonstrated President Victor Yanukovich had lost control of the heart of the capital, the crowd pulled down the statue and took turns with a sledgehammer to smash its marble hulk to bits.

Sparks flew as each blow landed to cheers. A priest emerged from the throng with holy water and proceeded to bless the hammer as the mood hovered between euphoria and happiness.

The statue of the Kremlin’s first communist ruler is the symbol of Ukraine’s shared history with Russia and sits on the main boulevard leading to Kiev’s Independence Square.

Lenin was a mass murderer who had around 30,000 political dissidents killed, invaded and enslaved neighbouring countries and established a regime which starved and kills its own people for decades. It is fitting the good people of the Ukraine despise him and his legacy – they had to suffer it for many years.