Hi guys!
Today I am here with a short post about my relatively short trip to one of the neighbouring Russian cities close to Finland, Vyborg.
Unfortunately, at this trip I wasn’t able to explore and photograph the city for you guys but I did manage to take a couple of pics of the Lenin statue, built in 1957, that is located in the main square of Vyborg called ‘the Red Square’. Previously the same place was known as Punaisenlähteentori in Finnish when the town actually was a part of our country before the wars that took place in the 1940’s. (Up to this day some old people choose to believe that Vyborg or Viipuri in Finnish should ‘belong’ to us, but that is a story about ignorance to be saved for another time.)
If you thought a historical monument like this could only be found in a capital city like Moscow, you’re wrong. What I’ve learned about the history of Soviet Union, is that the party liked to implant symbols of the communist power regime basically in every Soviet city (or town) despite of the location. It could be statues or names of the streets but up to this day many Russian towns still have their own Lenins. I mean, if modern day Russia is a HUGE country, Soviet Union was even bigger with multiple ‘member states’ composing it. Of course you had to remind the people about the story of the one great nation, right?
Mister Lenin-the-Statue was undergoing a series of restorations around him. Apparently the reddish building you can see behind the statue represents the style of ‘art nouveau’; designed by Finnish architect Jalmari Arvi Lankinen in 1929.
I just have to end this post with a pic of a random sweet Russian old lady running errands on a ordinary weekday in Russia. Despite of all the cultural differences, people are still pretty much the same everywhere you go…
Yours,
Miah
Mysterious Yellow 