EDITORIAL PAGE — Lenin’s folly

According to reports in The Globe and Mail, scrap metal exports from Estonia, formerly within the orbit of the Soviet Union and now an independent state, have risen to the point that it has become the world’s fifth-largest exporter of non-ferrous metals. Yet the country hasn’t a single mined source of any metal.

Apparently, shipments are funneled through Estonian ports from points east — including Russia (an estimated $3 billion worth last year) and from Estonia itself.

However, this plays havoc with the country’s infrastructure (and its statuary, as you’ll soon read). The base and precious metal loot is so valuable that anything not heavily secured against marauders gets ripped out, torn down or otherwise dismantled for unofficial resale.

More than 12 tonnes of copper cable for trams and electric trains were stolen in 1992. Telephone lines have been another favorite target, as have the remaining Soviet army bases.

But perhaps the most telling of all thefts occurred in Tallinn, the Estonian capital. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union a few years ago, the statue of the founder of Soviet Communism, V.I. Lenin, was dumped in a scrapyard.

Recently, thieves armed with hacksaws decapitated the statue and, say news reports, melted down the head for its base and precious metals. We find this event more than mildly ironic. It was Lenin who once suggested that citizens “re-educated” under the dictates of Communism would never again lose their heads lusting after gold. And now, alas, poor Lenin himself, in effigy at least, loses his own head over the precious metal.