Once worshipped by Mongolian school children as ‘Teacher Lenin’, in Ulan Bator, at least, the legacy of a giant of 20th century politics is to be swept aside in order to make room for dinosaurs of a more literal kind.
p until Mongolia’s 1990 transition from Soviet satellite state to multiparty democracy, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the man who lent his name to more streets, museums, monuments, and public facilities than any other 20th century figure, was an inescapable presence on the streets of the nation’s capital Ulan Bator.
The intervening years, however, have seen a gradual dismantling of the legacy of the country’s Communist past, and the reputation of the one-time Premier of the Soviet Union has, here as elsewhere, take a serious battering. Now, mere months after the city’s last remaining monument to Lenin was removed while Mayor Bat-Uul Erdene denounced the former dictator as a murderer, and a gathered crowd pelted the statue with shoes as a show of distaste, it has been announced that a grand museum once dedicated to the memory of Lenin is to be repurposed to showcase Mongolia’s wealth of paleontological riches.
The museum, opened in 1980, has been occupied by commercial properties, as well as the headquarters of the Mongolian People’s party, since 1990. Now the government has earmarked the grand building to play host to a major exhibition of dinosaur remains including a 70million year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar specimen.
Mongolia has a rich track record of fossil finds but, until now, most samples have been loaned to overseas institutions or illegally smuggled out of the country at the behest of private dealers. The new museum is intended both to educate young Mongolians about the existence of these treasures, and also to act as a means of attracting tourism to the city.
At present the building still plays host to a large bust of Lenin. If the government choses to make the dinosaur exhibition a permanent fixture, it is widely assumed that this statue, too, will be removed.
by Same Jones
