Romania's Lenin statue comes down
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from March 1990.
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"He was built to last a thousand years, but luckily he couldn't withstand us," said Duri Gomfedele, a member of the work crew that finally freed the 8-metre (25-foot), 7 ton Bronze statue from its pedestal. Workers laboured all day Saturday and Sunday with jackhammers and blowtorches to take down the statue in front of the massive, Stalinist-style state publishing house in the recently renamed Free Press Square.
On Monday morning, the statue was lifted from its marble base, placed on a flatbed truck and driven to a storeroom, workers said.
"To our surprise, there was a bronze plate of ten millimetres width protecting the concrete foundation, which also went up through his legs, explained Gomfedele. "It was much more difficult than we expected."
The ruling Provisional Council of National Unity, acting as a mini-parliament until national elections are held 20 May, decided on Friday to remove the 30-year-old statue -- a symbol of the 45 years of Communist rule that ended in December with a popular revolt against dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Ceausescu was executed together with his wife Elena on Christmas Day after a summary trial.
