Russian ally Kyrgyzstan on Saturday quietly took apart Central Asias highest monument to Vladimir Lenin, the innovative creator of the Soviet Union.Ex-Soviet states throughout the area are looking for to strengthen their national identities, renaming cities that have Russian-sounding names and changing statues of Soviet figures with regional and national heroes.Russia, which has military bases in Kyrgyzstan, is striving to preserve its influence there in the face of competition from China and the West and in the middle of its invasion of Ukraine.Officials in the city of Osh where the 23-meter (75-foot) high monument stood on the central square alerted against politicizing the choice to move it.Osh is the second-largest city in the landlocked, mountainous country.The figure was quietly removed over night and is set to be moved, Osh authorities said.The choice ought to not be politicized, city hall stated, indicating a number of other circumstances in Russia where Lenin monuments have likewise been taken apart or moved.
This is a typical practice targeted at enhancing the architectural and aesthetic look of cities, it said in a statement.Despite some attempts to de-Sovietize the region, memorials and statues to Soviet figures prevail throughout the region, with monoliths to Lenin common in the large bulk of cities in Kyrgyzstan.Kyrgyzstan was annexed and included into the Russian Empire in the 19th century and then entered into the Soviet Union following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.It gained self-reliance with the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
in 1991.