ULAANBAATAR: The Mongolian capital has removed its last statue of Lenin, one of the last remnants of the country’s longstanding alliance with the Soviet Union as it forges ever closer ties with the West and China.

Ulaanbaatar Mayor Bat-Uul Erdene called late communist leader Vladimir Lenin a “murderer” after the statue was hoisted onto a truck on Sunday as a small crowd of passers-by threw old shoes at it.

Mongolia was effectively a Soviet satellite state during the Cold War until it abandoned communism without a shot being fired in 1990.

“About 100 million people were killed during the communist era. So we saw that the communists killed even more people than those who died in the world wars,” said Bat-Uul, a staunch opponent of communism and former protest leader who helped usher in a new era of democracy.

“And the person who started it all was Lenin,” he said.

The 58-year-old statue will be auctioned off, with a starting price set at 400,000 tugrik (just under $300).

For decades, Lenin was revered as “Master Lenin” by school children in Mongolia, a landlocked country which, despite rich mineral and other resources, remained impoverished during seven decades of Moscow rule because it was limited to trade mainly with Soviet Union.

AFP