Opposing Rallies in Kiev Highlight Debate on Lenin
A national debate on the historic role of V. I. Lenin was brought into the streets of Kiev on Saturday, with rival rallies praising and denouncing the founder of the Soviet state.
About 1,500 elderly war veterans waving Soviet flags and hammer-and-sickle insignia marched past monuments celebrating Lenin in the capital of the Soviet Ukraine.
At the foot of the city’s largest statue to the Bolshevik chief, about 10,000 people gathered in silence under blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags at an encampment set up by students. Many jeered as the pro-Soviet marchers passed.
The Ukraine, the second-largest Soviet republic, has been the focus of much of the debate on how the country should now view Lenin, for years revered as the infallible architect of modern socialism in the Soviet Union.
Rallies for and against him have been staged in various cities, and fierce arguments have raged over whether to dismantle monuments associated with his name.
The outspoken weekly Moscow News, in a telling example of the new tide against Lenin, reported last week that half the inhabitants of Leningrad want the city to revert to its former name of St. Petersburg or Petrograd.
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