First constructed in the 1970s, the statue was originally installed in the village of Mala Pereschepyna in the Poltava Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR.

In 2015 Ukraine passed a series of laws that outlawed the public display of Soviet symbols, and the statue was consequently removed from its original position and discarded in a field, having been cut in half at the waist.

[3] The removal of so many Soviet-era monuments in Ukraine prompted the artist Phil Collins to begin searching for a statue of Engels to bring to Manchester, the city in which Engels had been living when he wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England between 1842 and 1844.

[4][5] The statue was temporarily displayed at several locations across Europe on the journey to England.

It was unveiled in its new location in front of HOME on the last day of the 2017 Manchester International Festival.