De-Leninization

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The toppling of a Lenin statue in Khmelnytsky park, Ukraine

A toppled Lenin statue next to the Mogoşoaia Palace, Romania

De-Leninization (Ukrainian: Ленінопад, romanized: Leninopad, lit. 'Leninfall') is political reform aimed at refuting Leninist and Marxist–Leninist ideology, ending the personality cult of Vladimir Lenin, removing images and toppling statues of Lenin, renaming places and buildings, dismantling the Lenin Mausoleum currently in Red Square, Moscow, and burying his mummified corpse.

De-Stalinization began in the former Soviet Union in the mid-1950s during the Khrushchev thaw following the latter's secret speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences". But this was framed as a return to orthodox Leninism and thus the cult of Lenin remained^[1] until the dissolution of the USSR, when public challenges to the cult and its ideology and iconography began.