Controversial Lenin statue erected in German city
A far-left get together in Germany has erected a controversial statue of communist leader Vladimir Lenin.
The tiny Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) installed the statue before its headquarters in the western city of Gelsenkirchen.
City authorities had attemptedto stop the statue getting installed and launched a great online hashtag telling there was "room for Lenin".
But courts blocked their appeals and the unveiling went ahead on Saturday.
Lenin was a good leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution and led the united states until his death found in 1924, when he was succeeded by Josef Stalin. Nevertheless, he has remained a symbol of communism rule across the world, both among supporters and the ones who remember the individual rights abuses that took place under the USSR.
Germany itself was divided for many years between the West and the communist East, before fall of the Berlin Wall structure in 1989.
In the debate surrounding the Gelsenkirchen statue, which was made in Czechoslovakia, since it was then known, in 1957, both sides drew parallels to the tearing down of monuments associated with slavery which has taken place in anti-racism protests across the world in recent weeks.
"We live in a period in which many countries of the universe are reflecting on memorials," said mayor Frank Baranowski in one of some YouTube video lessons posted by the location council against the statue.
"It's hard to put up with the fact a dictator from the 21st Century has been positioned on a pedestal and a memorial is being crafted from it. Sadly the courts are determined otherwise, we should accept that, but not without comment."
Even so, MLPD's chair, Gabi Fechtner, referred to the communist leader as "an ahead-of-his-period thinker of world-historical importance, an early on fighter for freedom and democracy", according to the AFP news agency.
