Lenin's blow out

Today may live in infamy. Today is the day that Lenin flatulated so vociferously that he blew his own ass off. This is only half a joke. This morning, someone planted a small incendiary device on the statue of Vladimir Lenin that was located near Ploshatz Lenina Metro and Finlandsky Voksal for those of familiar with SPB. It caused a hole over three feet wide.

The incident occurred at 04:30. Near a metro that doesn't open until 6am (although maybe there are trains leaving that early). It only blew his ass off (however, he is made of bronze, so this was still probably pretty strong) (I just read it was 300grams of TNT, which means nothing to me, maybe you know if this is alot or not). No one was hurt. My guess is this was just to make a point, though what I don't know. I can't imagine they meant to only blow his ass off. I mean, is there some group of terrorists sitting in a hole somewhere terribly embarrassed?

Now a friend of mine suggested that this was an April Fools joke. This is quite plausible. I found the article on the BBC, on RIA Novosti (a Russian news agency) and in one other paper. Now each article has at least one fact that the others don't. Which means that they probably didn't just line up to copy the BBC. Though it doesn't mean that some jokester didn't just call each agency and gave each one, one more piece of information. Well, perhaps tomorrow I'll pay a visit to the site. Unfortunately, if the story is true, the statue has already been removed and I won't get a picture of Lenin with blown-out trousers.

This one is from the BBC.



But if the story is true, maybe they should just buy a new Lenin. I know where you can get one cheap. ( I don't purport that wikipedia is a valid reference, but I'm in a hurry) There's one for $250,000 in America. It's original Soviet, and hell, the owner will probably lower the price, I mean, it's a crisis right?

Where's Becka??



ADDENDUM:

I just read that "Authorities ordered the monument be dismantled to carry out restoration work, after fears the statue could collapse. The work is expected to cost up to 8 million rubles ($236,000)."