Part of Norway that will always be carved out for Lenin…
In the extreme far North lies the abandoned settlement of Pyramiden. Located on the island of Spitsbergen, some 30 or so miles from the only real city on that frozen archipelago at Longyearbyen, was founded in the early 20th Century by Swedish mining concerns to dig coal above the Arctic Circle. By 1927 the Soviets had picked up the lease and continued to mine it through WWII when Norway, who actually owns Spitsbergen, was under German occupation. The lease remained into the Cold War, as a Communist outpost in a NATO country.
Thats where this guy comes in at:
Well, the Soviets turned into the Russians again and in 1998 the coal ran out. The settlement was drawn down and, with the exception of a small caretaker group, is uninhabited. No one had the energy to pull down Lenin’s statute nor relocate the world’s northernmost grand piano. Its estimated that the buildings will last some 500~ years in the icebox there while Lenin may very well be there, Easter Island style, forever.
So now you know.