whats the name/history of these statues?

[wasteman]

http://hr.columbia.edu/%7Ebeecher/prague/Museum_of_Communism/stalin_statue.jpg

http://cotrgallery.cotr.bc.ca/gallery/albums/China/Mao_statue_in_Lijiang.jpg

[ComradeOm]

The first is the old Stalin Monument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin%27s_Monument_(Prague)) that used to stand in Prague. There was once a rash of such statues across the Eastern Bloc (and indeed the USSR) but between political turmoil and de-Stalinisation very few have survived. It was the latter that did for the statue in Prague with it being dynamited on the orders of the country's ruling Communist Party in 1962

A quick search for the second statue turned up nothing except that it stands in the city of Lijiang. I'd imagine that most Chinese cities would have a similar statue of Mao