This is a statue of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) in Moscow. In 1989 when Katie Funk Wiebe and her friends visited, Lenin’s shadow was still palpable. On December 26, 1991, after 70 years of Soviet communism, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved. Under Lenin’s administration all of Russia’s great wealth—including land, industry, and business—began to be nationalized or Sovietized based on Marxist principles.