[MSN] Lenin Goes Missing in Latvia, Police Perplexed Over Theft

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Lenin Goes Missing in Latvia, Police Perplexed Over Theft
Created: 13.12.2006 20:43 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 23:55 MSK, 11 hours 25
minutes ago


MosNews


Officials in central Latvia said they were stumped by the theft of a
300-kilogram (660-pound) bust of Lenin from in front of a museum in the town
of Rujiena, AFP reports. 

The headless torso of the first leader of Soviet Russia, which had been
displayed outside the museum since 1998, disappeared one night late last
week. The head had been detached by hooligans in an earlier incident and was
kept inside the museum.

"We have no tangible leads as to what happened," Normunds Sulcs of the
Rujiena police told AFP. Sulcs said the job would have been a cinch to pull
off, partly because the bust's prominent, outdoor position made it easy
prey. "It could have been taken away by two men. It was easily accessible --
just stood outside the museum," he said.

Rujiena Museum boss Laura Silina said she was "convinced it was taken by
somebody who works with metal. You couldn't just take the bust to a scrap
metal yard. Everyone would recognize it," she told AFP.

The statue-nabbing was not a local job, she added, saying that someone had
noticed a bus not far from the museum on the night Lenin disappeared.

Police are continuing to search surrounding scrap yards, but so far have
turned up nothing.

The statue of Lenin was made by Latvian sculptor Janis Zarins. During the
50-year Soviet occupation of Latvia, every town in the then Soviet republic
had a statue of Lenin in its central square.

The majority of the iconic statues of Lenin and other Soviet-era leaders
were torn down when the Soviet Union began to crumble in the late 1980s.
Many ended up in private collections or were abandoned in junk yards. Today
such statues are considered exotic.

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