Bomb blows big hole in Lenin statue's butt

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - A bomb has blown a large hole in one of Russia's best-known statues of the founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin.

The blast hit the towering statue in the square outside Finland Station in St. Petersburg.

The bronze statue, portraying Lenin with his arm raised, commemorates a speech he gave outside the station when he returned to Russia from exile in April 1917, a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution.

City police spokesman Vyacheslav Stepchenko says no one was injured in the blast that took place before dawn Wednesday. The bomb had the power of about 400 grams of TNT, he says.

St. Petersburg was the cradle of the revolution, which overthrew the tsarist system and allowed the formation of a communist state that lasted until 1991.

The city was renamed Leningrad in Lenin's honor in 1924 but the name was switched back to St. Petersburg after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Lenin's remains are still on display in a mausoleum beneath Moscow's Red Square. He died in 1924.

More on  Russia  |  Vladimir Lenin

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