Regardless of what you think of the Apple co-founder, a lot of people have mountains of respect for Steve Jobs. When he passed away last year, people showed their respect in a variety of ways. Budapest went the strange route and built a statue of Steve Jobs flashing gang signs. St. Petersburg, Russia is now continuing that fine tradition.

RT is reporting that a private foundation has announced a competition for local artists and designers to come up with a design for the proposed Jobs monument. There will be no limits on creativity so we could end up with another strange statue that confuses and amazes. It could also be something entirely different. The foundation says that it could be a “memorial board” or “electronic installation.”

So why is the statue being built in St. Petersburg? According to the foundation, it’s the center of Russian information technology. The city is host to the Leningrad School of Programming while the Russian Facebook, VKontake, was also founded in the city.

The city does not yet have a location to which they will place the statue as that will be decided after the winning concept is selected. Who knows? The winning monument could be a Steve Jobs version of Lenin’s crypt. People can visit a wax dummy of the late Jobs lying in a crypt perfectly preserved for the rest of time. A little macabre, sure, but the Russians have already proven that they’re fine with worshipping dead historical figures like gods.

I’m sure whatever the Russians come up with won’t be nearly as bad as the statue in Budapest or those creepy action figures that were being made in China.