I actually remember this

As someone who lived in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle when the Lenin statue went up-

Fremont has a lot of weird public art.   It was even funkier back then. 

It is not a memorial to Lenin. It's an object lesson.
It is a tacky souvenir of the fall of the USSR.   Russians were selling them as scrap metal.  It was practically free.   It was bought on a lark.  The difficult part was shipping it.

It's an iconic reminder that tyrants will be overthrown and that their images become shameful.