An anti-war sticker on the defaced sign of the Lenin Park in Helsinki, 2022. Photo: Hannu Häkkinen, Finnish Heritage Agency.
Pavel Petrov, a Master’s student in History and Eastern European Studies at the University of Helsinki, wrote this text as part of his internship at How to Reframe Monuments (July-September 2024) project. Besides publishing this and other texts on our blog, Pavel assists at the international workshop at Narva Art Residency.
Vladimir Lenin left a lasting impact on both the history and public space of Finland – during his lifetime, as well as posthumously. In Alppila, a central area of Helsinki, there is still a park named after Lenin (Lenininpuisto). However, in 2023, the city council of Helsinki passed the decision to rename the park that had been a subject to controversies for decades. Still, the question of how to call the place remains unsolved and Lenin holds his ground, if only in name. In the following, we shall look at the debate around the Lenin Park of Helsinki as a case illustrating complexities in Finnish views on the first Soviet leader and cultural heritage related to him in the public space of Finland.
Originally colloquially known as the Flower Park (Kukkapuisto), the Lenin Park of Helsinki was designed by the Finnish landscape architect Maj-Brit Rosenbröijer and received its contested name in 1970. As such, the location lacked any direct connection to the Bolshevik leader who had otherwise visited Finland and its capital on several occasions and under different circumstances. Lenin stayed at a handful of addresses around Helsinki, for example – in 1917 at the home of Kustaa Rovio, the head of city police. In 1965, a memorial plaque commissioned by the city council to highlight this fact was attached to the said building. As for the Lenin Park in Alppila, the name could be explained by contemporary political circumstances – and a neighbouring house.
Peaceful moment in the Lenin Park of Helsinki during the final stage of the Cold War, 1984. Photo: Simo Rista, Helsinki Art Museum.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union’s influence on both domestic and international affairs of Finland was at its zenith. Finalndisation, as the phenomenon came to be known for its contemporaries, found its spatial manifestation in the “sculptural diplomacy”, to quote Finnish historian Olga Juutistenaho. With his numerous historical connections to Finland and Finns, Lenin became the revered symbol of Finnish-Soviet cooperation amidst the Cold War. Around the time of Lenin’s centenary in 1970, several initiatives to commemorate the Bolshevik leader in Helsinki were submitted. Establishing a park named after Lenin was proposed by Mirjam Vire-Tuominen, a prominent communist activist and member of parliament from the Finnish People’s Democratic League.
Lenin Park is just behind the Culture Hall of Helsinki by Alvar Aalto (centre). Originally, the house was designed for activities of the communist Finnish People’s Democratic League, which partially explains the name of the neighbouring park. Photo: Liisa Tuomikoski, Finnish Heritage Agency.
As the location, the 3,5 hectare park was assigned to the immediate proximity of what is now the Culture Hall of Helsinki (Helsingin kulttuuritalo). However, the building from 1958 was originally designed by the internationally acclaimed Finnish architect Alvar Aalto for purposes and activities of the FPDL – essentially a communist organisation and predecessor of the contemporary Left Alliance. The building was assigned its current role in the aftermath of the FPDL’s bankruptcy in 1990, an event of certain historical irony reminiscent of contemporary developments to the east and south of Finland. Coincidingly, cultural heritage related to Lenin faced its own devastating recession across Moscow’s former sphere of influence and control.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in 1991, the spatialised memory of Lenin fared surprisingly much better in neutral Finland than in many places in the post-socialist Eurasia. Nevertheless, parts of the Finnish public began to openly discuss commemorative objects and sites related to Lenin as symbols of oppression, Soviet crimes and, not the least – Finlandisation. Many came to look at the legacy of the latter with embarrassment. Despite recurring criticism and initiatives for renaming, the Lenin Park of Helsinki, like many other similar products of Finnish-Soviet cultural diplomacy remained largely unaffected by the course of events both home and abroad up until the 2020s.
As Finnish historian Joni Krekola optimistically concluded in 2008, the continued display of the Lenin Park and other Soviet-related monuments in the public space proved that the Finns could afford to keep visible even ambiguous historical strata. Indeed, this view had support among Krekola’s colleagues, such as Professor Laura Kolbe, who vocally advocated for preserving diversity in representation of the past. Krekola also thought that few of his compatriots felt passionately about symbols of former Soviet influence. Be it as it may, Finland certainly diverged from the Baltic States where numerous monumental reminders of the Soviet era were relocated or removed from the public space altogether.
In fact, the early 2000s turned out as something of a brief Indian summer for Lenin’s commemoration in Finland. Getting to Lenin Park a small bust of the namesake developed into a full-scale campaign initiated by the local activist Ritva Hartzell at the turn of the millennium. Surprisingly, the initiative received enthusiastic support from the city of Tartu who was willing to donate four Lenin statues for free. Even though the initiative failed to get enough support at the city council, it regained momentum in 2007 when multiple professors, like the above-mentioned Laura Kolbe, artists and trade union leaders expressed support for a Lenin statue to his park in Helsinki.
Just half a year after the so-called “Bronze Night” in Estonia in May 2007 when the relocation of a Soviet war memorial caused violent riots in Tallinn, the Finnish capital was looking into getting a new monument of the Bolshevik leader. However, this second and, so far, last attempt to erect such a sculpture in Helsinki failed to get the majority votes as well. In the media, both initiatives were criticised and ridiculed. The opponents suggested that a public Lenin monument would be offensive to the memory of the victims of Soviet atrocities. While that might be true, one could also wonder why the city Tartu whose population had seen its share of suffering was willing to donate Lenin statues to be displayed in Helsinki.
Originally known as the Flower Park, the Lenin Park’s area was developed in cooperation with the Helsinki Garden Society in the 1960s close to the amusement park Linnanmäki, part of which can be seen to the right. The Society was also first to propose renaming the park in 1991. Photo: Seppo Jalander, Helsinki City Museum.
Still, keeping old statues of controversial figures displayed publicly is one thing, but creating or importing new ones is a quite different matter. This may be the main reason why the initiatives for a Lenin monument failed in the city council of Helsinki. Nevertheless, these proposals are illustrative of the Finnish view on both Lenin as such and public display of Soviet-related cultural heritage in recent decades. On the other hand, similarly unsuccessful were the many initiatives to rename Lenin Park, which might prove Krekola’s conclusions. With the Soviet Union out of the picture, the Helsinki Gardening Society was the first to suggest the Gardener or Head Gardener park as the new name for the park it assisted in creating in the 1960s.
Ultimately, it took Russia initiating the largest military conflict in Europe since WWII for the renaming camp to prevail in decision-making. Only in 2023 and after a second hearing did a renaming proposal manage to get the decided majority. At the first hearing, the Urban Environment Committee did not find the proposal sufficiently motivated. Presented by Otto Meri, a city councilor from the centre-right National Coalition party, the proposal’s motivation stated that the reference to the Soviet leader in the park’s name was unacceptable and described Lenin as one of the most brutal dictators in history which was hardly a new argument in this case.
Considering the experience of the past three decades and most recent years, the success of renaming Lenin Park in 2023 might appear both sudden and logical. Such a change of attitude could hardly be explained by much else than the extreme confusing anxiety caused by the magnitude of the Russian aggression against Ukraine that has evoked both transgenerational traumas and security concerns related to the eastern neighbour among many Finns. By extension, it has most likely reduced the general level of inclination for a dialogue with what might be perceived as symbols of Russian or Soviet imperialism such as the Lenin Park and other similar monuments.
Now the park behind the former hall of the long-gone communist FPDL that has despite many attempts never received a statue of the namesake is set for reframing. Its new name is yet to be decided, though. Last year, an initiative proposed to dedicate the park to Lotta Svärd, a paramilitary auxiliary organisation whose female volunteers had been indispensable for the Finnish WWII effort. The proponents have also cited the underrepresentation of women in public space toponyms of Helsinki. Changing Lenin to Lotta Svärd in the name could also carry a sense of both historical requital and irony, as this female organisation was disbanded at the demand of the Soviet Union in 1944 – an early manifestation of the later developed Finlandisation.
However, the Finnish National Languages Centre has already advised to prefer something neutral, for example simply referring to the city area – the Alppiharju park. In this sense, the Gardening Society’s proposition from 1991 seems to have the best chances, but even that will require pending updates to the city or area plan. Therefore Lenin will stick around until further notice, if only in name. However, it might also survive even longer in the daily speech of some local residents. Perhaps, this will in turn provide a barometer for how regular Finns and residents of Helsinki actually view Lenin and his legacy in the city landscape.
Read more:
Juutistenaho, Olga. “The End of Spatialised Finlandisation? The Fate of Soviet Statues in Finland since 2022.” Kunsttexte.De, no. 1 (2024). https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/kunsttexte/article/view/102628/100879.
Krekola, Joni. “Lenin Lives in Finland.” In The Cold War and the Politics of History, 107–125. Edita Publishing Ltd, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10224/4029.
Pavel Petrov