It was created by Bulgarian-born Slovak sculptor Emil Venkov and initially put on display in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1988, the year before the Velvet Revolution.

"[4] Venkov's work was completed and installed in Poprad, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (now Slovakia) in 1988 at a cost of 334,000 Kčs, (equivalent to US$230,000 in 2023), shortly before the fall the communist regime in Czechoslovakia during the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

[1][5] Lewis E. Carpenter, an English teacher in Poprad originally from Issaquah, Washington, found the hollow monumental statue lying in a scrapyard with a homeless man living inside it.

[5] In close collaboration with a local journalist and good friend, Tomáš Fülöpp, Carpenter approached Poprad city officials, saying that despite its current unpopularity, the statue was still a work of art worth preserving, and offered to buy it for US$13,000 (equivalent to US$30,000 in 2023).

[11][14] The statue of Lenin became a Fremont landmark and object of curiosity, representing the quirky nature of the artistic neighborhood, whose motto is Libertas Quirkas – freedom to be peculiar.

[14][16] Knute Berger, acknowledging that "we are supposed to be amused" by the "hippie whimsy" of a Soviet symbol in the middle of an American city, said that seeing the statue cannot help but remind us of the killing and repression Lenin inspired.

[17] But Berger reflected that perhaps the meaning of this Soviet relic is the opposite, that it is "a trophy of Western triumphalism", representing the victory over communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

[18] Some of Seattle's most iconic 'totem poles' (actually Alaskan Tlingit carved house posts) were brazenly stolen from an Alaska village by respected members of the scientific and business community, the Harriman Alaska expedition, so immersed in the triumph of their own culture over that of Native Americans that little thought was given to what Dr. Robin K. Wright of the Burke Museum called "a very clear case of theft".

[14] The Taco del Mar restaurant, one of the retail property's tenants, constructed a monumental-scale burrito wrapped in foil for the statue to hold, which one Fremont publisher said did not turn out as intended, but rather "looked like a doobie.

[25] On August 16, 2017, in the wake of the Charlottesville, Virginia Unite the Right rally, conservative commentator Jack Posobiec led a gathering of several protesters at the statue to demand its removal.

[25] The same day, Mayor Ed Murray said his office contacted Lake View Cemetery to "express our concerns" about the United Confederate Veterans Memorial there, and ask for its removal.

[28] In an article discussing Confederate monuments in USA Today, Allen Guelzo said that there should be a movement of protesters asking that the statue be removed, as Lenin's "murderous ideas and deeds dwarf any of [the] sins" of Robert E.