‘Skaters know their history’ A Russian town turned a Lenin monument into a skateboard ramp. Not everyone is pleased.
In a Russian town not far from Yekaterinburg, officials transformed a public square featuring a monument to Vladimir Lenin into a skate park — with the statue’s pedestal repurposed as a ramp. The project was commissioned by the local government, but after backlash from Communist Party members, authorities announced that the park would be relocated. Journalist and architecture critic Asya Zolnikova explains how the project inspired skaters and designers alike — and struck a nerve with Russia’s communists.
In Verkhnyaya Pyshma, a town just outside Yekaterinburg, there are two large monuments to Vladimir Lenin. One, created by renowned “Lenin sculptor” Sergey Merkurov, is tucked away on the grounds of a long-abandoned Soviet youth camp. (Vandals have painted this Lenin’s suit jacket yellow.) The other, by an unknown artist, stands in a park in the town center.
According to Russia’s Skateboarding Federation, the square where the second Lenin statue stands had been in a semi-abandoned state for years, although several attempts were made to improve it. In 2019, a street food kiosk was installed at the base of the monument, prompting outrage from residents. It was dismantled six months later, officially because the kiosk’s appearance was “inconsistent” with the approved design.
In April 2025, local authorities took a different approach: they built a skatepark around the statue. The lead designer of the park was M4, a Moscow-based design firm. The architectural concept came from Blok Studio in Yekaterinburg, and the skate structures were developed by Legato Construction, a Moscow architecture bureau specializing in spaces for extreme sports.
The original plan was to install standard skating platforms around the monument. But Legato proposed integrating the statue itself. There was some hesitation from the local government, the Skateboarding Federation said, “but thanks to an open dialogue between [the architects and local officials], and a shared effort on the concept, it came together.”
All of the features were built from polished concrete tinted with blue pigment. Semi-circular ramps now surround all four sides of Lenin’s pedestal. Nearby, designers added a stretch of benches, ledges, rails, and a funbox — a classic skatepark element that’s shaped like a sloped platform with a flat top.
“We hope to see more projects like this — where skateboarding isn’t just a hobby, but a language through which we can talk about art, architecture, and a new urban culture,” Legato said in a statement.
‘Sacrilegious, criminal, and unacceptable’
Russia’s Skateboarding Federation noted that the project had been approved through public hearings and published in the local press ahead of construction. But after photos and videos of the ramps appeared in the media on April 18, lawmakers from the Communist Party called the idea “stupid and criminal.”
In response, the Verkhnyaya Pyshma mayor’s office confirmed that the area around the statue was being redeveloped but insisted that the images of the skate park were merely “visualizations,” dismissing them as “someone’s bad joke.” Ivan Zernov, chairman of the town’s council, said skateboarders would not be allowed to use Lenin’s pedestal as a ramp and that the skate park would be moved “elsewhere” — though he did not specify where. However, journalists from the Yekaterinburg-based outlets It’s My City and Svet Yekaterinburg visited the site and confirmed that the skate park was indeed real, though the ramps had been covered with plastic sheeting.
Alexander Ivachev, first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional Communist Party and a member of the regional legislature, argued that residents would no longer be able to lay flowers at the monument on Lenin’s birthday. He also pointed to what he called a “serious systemic problem” with Soviet monuments in the region: in 2024, a nine-meter (30-foot) cast-iron Lenin monument was dismantled in the town of Revda, and in Irbit, another Lenin statue was dressed up as Father Frost.
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Communist Party members in the State Duma also condemned the project. Lawmaker Mikhail Matveyev said he was prepared to file an official inquiry to determine “who approved this, for what purpose, and whether it constitutes a legal violation.” Dmitry Novikov, deputy head of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, compared the ramps to Pussy Riot’s 2012 protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Lawmaker Nina Ostanina called the skate park an “act of desecration,” saying, “It’s like dancing a wedding waltz on your parents’ grave.”
Another Communist Party lawmaker, Alexander Yushchenko, described the local government’s actions as “sacrilegious, criminal, and unacceptable.” He demanded accountability: “Whoever allowed this needs to explain themselves to the public and be held responsible.” Otherwise, he added, “By that logic, we might as well grill kebabs over the eternal flame.”
Not everyone was outraged, however. Vitaly Milonov, a member of the ruling United Russia party, dismissed the controversy. “It’s not like Lenin is buried there,” he said. “If that space has been put to good use, I’m happy about it. The important thing is that teenagers understand Lenin has no connection to this place — and that he’s more of a negative historical figure than a positive one. […] The fact that skateboarders are using the space is good. Otherwise, it would just be a lifeless space.”
‘A really cool idea’
According to Legato, the architecture bureau behind the design, the skate park received “overwhelmingly positive feedback from skaters and the professional community.” Despite the backlash from communists, the project has indeed drawn plenty of praise — including from Verkhnyaya Pyshma locals. “It’s sad to read that there are complaints and that the spot might be dismantled,” one Instagram user commented on Legato’s post. “It’s a really cool idea — ‘Ilyich’s little ramp.’”
Russia’s Skateboarding Federation also defended the project, saying there’s “nothing disrespectful” about it and calling it a creative way to spark interest in the past through modern forms:
Skateboarding today isn’t just a sport — it’s part of urban culture and a means of self-expression. Integrating historical objects into new contexts can foster curiosity about the past, encourage learning, and even inspire civic engagement. Across the country, many monuments are in poor condition. The public attention this project has received could become a catalyst for their restoration.
Urbanist Arkady Gershman argued that there are no real grounds for criticism — which is precisely why, he said, people are now threatening to open a criminal case. “[The skate park] already exists de facto,” he said. “To spend public money tearing down a completed project that was formally approved — and likely passed review — would itself be a misuse of funds, and a surefire reason for investigators to get involved.”
Kirill Korobkov, a researcher of Russian skateboarding, was one of the first to try out the new park. He recalled that until recently, the area was a “long-forgotten square with crumbling paths” and “a generic Lenin statue with no real artistic or architectural value.” The redesigned space, he said, could breathe life into the area, drawing in not only skaters but the wider community — and potentially even renewing interest in Lenin himself, who, as Korobkov noted, was often depicted with children.
Now, he said, “[they’re promising] to send the skaters — and everyone else who came to ride — packing, while the Verkhnyaya Pyshma Lenin is left to fade back into obscurity.”
The star of today will, by the day after tomorrow, go back to being one of those nondescript statues scattered endlessly across Russia’s eleven time zones. At best, people will remember him twice a year — with a few carnations on April 22 and November 7. Why do I mention those dates? Because skaters know their history a lot better than some would like to believe.
A longstanding tradition
Skateboarding has long gravitated toward overlooked and abandoned places. In California, for instance, the droughts of the 1970s gave rise to the first iconic concrete bowls in emptied, kidney-shaped backyard pools. Around the world, disused spaces beneath highway overpasses, inside factories, and even in former churches have been repurposed into skate parks. Sometimes, skate parks are built in places where skaters had already carved out a space of their own. In London, the underground level of the brutalist Southbank Centre — used by skateboarders since the 1970s and often referred to as the birthplace of British skateboarding — was officially reoutfitted as a skate park in 2019.
In Russia, skaters have gathered around Lenin monuments since the late Soviet period. In 2021, Vans Russia produced a special project documenting skaters riding at 20 Lenin statues in 15 cities. After the fall of the USSR, these monuments lost their primary audience. But for skaters, they remained convenient, centrally located meeting places.
As Korobkov explains, such monuments are typically set in pedestrian zones and built with durable materials like granite or marble. Their very architecture — multi-level and massive — makes them ideal “obstacle courses” for skating. Still, until the project in Verkhnyaya Pyshma, no one in Russia had ever formally attempted to turn a Lenin monument into a skate park.
Unofficial estimates suggest that around 7,000 Lenin statues were erected in Russia during the Soviet era — nearly half of all Lenin monuments built across the USSR. Today, roughly 6,000 of those statues still stand. But redesigning the spaces around them remains a challenge. Any effort to modernize or reimagine these sites tends to meet strong resistance. Gershman noted that altering Lenin monuments remains one of Russia’s “urban taboos” — despite there being no formal ban.
In 2020, for example, the Moscow-based architecture firm Megabudka developed a redesign proposal for Lenin Square in Nizhny Novgorod, titled “Lenin in the rye.” “It’s a subtle reference to the time he hid out in a hut,” the firm explained. However, according to the architects, local residents opposed the idea.
Story by Asya Zolnikova