Engels returns to Manchester

The Soviet Union spent millions planting its icons in the West. Lenin devised a plan to use sculpture to propagate communism. Now, 100 years after the Bolshevik revolution, his plan has been realised in Britain—free of charge. On July 15th a Soviet-era statue of Friedrich Engels was installed in Manchester, where the Marxist thinker lived and wrote about the condition of the proletariat. Phil Collins, an artist, brought the concrete Engels—in two parts, cut at the waist—from Ukraine, where it had been toppled and dumped along with other Soviet monuments after Russia’s military aggression in 2015. It testifies to the new vitality of socialism in the West (though revolutionary statues are under fire elsewhere—see article). For tips on where it leads, Russia and Ukraine are good places to dig.