Russian Lenin statue damaged in attack

The explosion near the old imperial capital of Saint Petersburg blew away parts of Lenin's windswept pewter coat tails and shattered windows of nearby apartments. There were no injuries.

"Anyone who raises their hand to monuments is against history and the feelings of our citizens," Saint Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko told a government meeting on Tuesday, Interfax reported.

Matvienko linked Monday's blast to an attack last year which blew a gaping hole in a large Lenin statue in Saint Petersburg outside Finland Station, where Lenin famously returned from exile in 1917 to spearhead the Bolshevik Revolution.

State TV said Monday night's attack took place at around 10 pm in the Saint Petersburg suburb of Pushkin.

In the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991, statues of Lenin of all sizes were omnipresent. Though most ex-Soviet countries have since removed them, most Russian cities still have at least one, usually in the main square.

Debate still rages over what to do with Lenin's embalmed corpse, on display in a pool of red light in his granite mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square near the Kremlin.

Polls suggest a third of Russians want the firebrand revolutionary removed, but the Russian government has said it will not do so. The Communist Party, Russia's second-largest, wants Lenin left in the mausoleum.

(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman)