During the Soviet era, many thousands of statues and monuments commemorating the Communist revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, were erected throughout the region and beyond. Lenin statues could be found prominently displayed in many cities in the former Soviet republics, as well as those in satellite states and Soviet-aligned states like Mongolia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Former Soviet Union The Soviet Union's inevitable weakening toward the end of the Cold War prompted the removal of many of Lenin's effigies by their host governments. Nearly all of the Lenin monuments in the Soviet satellite states in Central Europe were dropped in the wave of revolutions that began in 1989. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, Lenin statues began to fall within many of the former Soviet republics as well. Not all monuments were taken down after the fall of the Soviet Union, though.