While in Germany recently, I stumbled upon not one but two enormous monuments erected by the Soviet Union to commemorate the huge loss of life in two different aspects of the Second World War.
The first was nestled away inside Treptower Park in Berlin. It was constructed in 1949 to remember the 80,000 Soviet lives lost during the Battle of Berlin four years earlier.
When you first walk into the memorial, all you can see in front of you is a hunched figure on top a plinth surrounded by trees. As you draw nearer, it becomes clear that what you are looking at is a female who it turns out is “the Motherland weeping at the loss of her sons”….
As you turn to the left, it is now possible to see the rest of the enormous memorial directly in front of “the Motherland”….
Two huge triangular towers form a gateway into the main part of the memorial. The red granite was allegedly taken from the ruins of Hitler’s Reich Chancellory 4 miles away….
At the foot of each tower is a Soviet soldier kneeling to those who pass….
Turning back to look in the direction that you came, “the Motherland” is now a small figure in the distance shielded by trees….
Walking on through the gateway, past the two kneeling soldiers….
You enter the vast central area of the memorial. Here, over 5,000 Soviet soldiers are buried in mass graves….
Surrounding the graves are sixteen stone sarcophagi….
Each with detailed carvings of military scenes and quotes from Joseph Stalin….
This particular sarcophagus shows Soviet soldiers charging into battle below the ghost of Vladimir Lenin….
Watching over the graves and acting as the centrepiece of the entire memorial is a hugely imposing 12 metre statue upon a stone plinth….
It depicts a Soviet soldier carrying a German child while cutting a swastika in half using a giant broadsword….
As you climb the steps leading towards the statue, you begin to feel extremely insignificant in relation to the looming figure….
Inside the stone plinth is a circular room containing a mural of Soviet people….
From the top of the plinth, the whole memorial can be seen….
From here, the true scale of the memorial can be appreciated. The enormity of it is at times overwhelming which is likely the effect intended by the architect Yakov Belopolsky….
As you spend time at the memorial, you begin to realise that the 5,000 soldiers buried underneath the manicured lawns aren’t the only ghosts that haunt the vast space. The spirit of a once mighty empire, now long dead, can also be felt as you walk around. The memorial was built at a time when the Soviet Union was on the rise and well on the way to becoming a world superpower. The grandiose architecture is evidence of this and demonstrates how important grand symbolism was in Soviet life. Today of course, the Soviet Union is no more and the Treptower Park Memorial serves as a reminder of the transitory nature of powerful empires.
Fractalis - An ongoing journal 