Arnold Schwarzenegger forced to give up Soviet leaders’ busts

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been forced to give up his collection of gold and bronze busts of fallen Russian leaders - because his wife Maria Shriver insisted on a clampdown.

The Terminator star reveals he asked friends in Russian wrestling circles to send him a good bust after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and statues and billboards featuring the faces of Communism were being destroyed - and the dead leaders kept coming for years afterwards.

Schwarzenegger explains, "They sent me this bust of Lenin but the problem was, they kept sending me more and more statues. I'd put them by the pool at home. Andropov and Chernenko and Brezhnev - all these old guys were around our swimming pool.

"Maria thought I was crazy: 'Why do we have all these Soviet statues around our swimming pool?' She had them all carted away.

"But I kept Lenin, since he was the first."

The bust takes pride of place on the former Republican Governor of California's desk in his office at home in Brentwood, California, according to Entertainment Weekly magazine.