Monument to the tragedy of peoples on Poklonnaya Hill. "tragedy of nations"

Arch. M. Posokhin, V. Bogdanov, sculptors Yu. Alexandrov, V. Klykov, O. Komov;
1979

Interesting information about the history of the design of the Victory Monument on Polkonnaya Gora is presented in his memoirs by V.V. Grishin, who was in 1967-85. First Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. I will give an excerpt from his book, providing the narrative with projects collected by me from various sources.

"The decision to build a monument in honor of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and a museum was made by the Government of the USSR in September 1952. Then an open competition was held to develop the project. The project proposed by the architect L. Rudnev was recognized as the best. Internal part of the Museum of the Patriotic War was finalized by the architect Ya. year in a solemn atmosphere, the laying of a monument took place on Poklonnaya Hill (more precisely, near this mountain), in which, together with representatives of party and public organizations, the workers of Moscow, the soldiers of the Moscow garrison, as well as the famous military leaders - marshals of the Soviet Union R. Ya. Malinovsky, took part, IS Konev, VD Sokolovsky, SM Budyonny, Air Marshal K.A. Vershinin, Admiral of the Fleet of the USSR S.G. Gorshkov and others. Muscovites carried out work on planting trees and shrubs in the future Victory Park.



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153 proposals with drawings and drawings were submitted to the second All-Union competition for projects of the Victory Monument, which were exhibited for public viewing and discussion in the Exhibition Hall of the pavilion of the Central Park of Culture and Recreation. Gorky. The jury of the competition, which included prominent artists, sculptors, architects, public and military figures (E.V. Vuchetich, I.S. Konev, etc.), determined that none of the submitted projects could be accepted. In subsequent years, many (about 20) all-Union and Moscow open, custom, closed and other competitions were held for the best monument to the Victory. But they all failed.

In 1980 in the Exhibition Hall of the Manege another exhibition of competitive projects of monuments was launched. It was examined by many people, representatives of labor collectives of Moscow. Projects made by architects, sculptors and artists M. Posokhin, B. Bogdanov, Yu. Alexandrov, N. Tomsky, L. Golubovsky, E. Rusakov, V. Klykov and others received support. Based on the results of the consideration of the projects by the jury, the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, Gosstroy of the USSR, and the Moscow City Executive Committee were instructed to finalize the selected project by two groups of architects and sculptors headed by M. Posokhin and N. Tomsky. The finalized project was approved by the jury, the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, Gosstroy of the USSR, and the Moscow City Executive Committee. It was coordinated with the Unions of Artists, Architects, and other competent organizations, reviewed and approved by representatives of workers' collectives, and submitted for approval to the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

Project of the Victory Monument on Poklonnaya Hill;
Sculptor N. Tomsky, architect. L. Golubovsky, A. Korabelnikov, artist Yu. Korolev, sculptor V. Edunov;
1979

On February 11, 1983, after reviewing the project by members of the Politburo of the Central Committee, members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee approved the design proposal for the Victory Monument by sculptor N. Tomsky, architect M. Posokhin. The complex of the monument included: the main monument of the Victory (the theme is “The Soviet people under the Red Banner of V.I. Lenin, under the leadership of the Communist Party won the Great Victory in the Patriotic War against German fascism”). Next - the Museum of the Patriotic War with the Hall of Fame and, finally, Victory Park. The construction site is near Poklonnaya Hill.

Then two resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of April 21, 1983 No. 349 and September 14, 1984 No. 972 were adopted. (And before them came two decisions of the CPSU Central Committee of February 11, 1983 and April 14, 1983). These decrees approved the project of the Victory Monument. The Ministry of Culture of the USSR and the Moscow City Executive Committee were instructed to carry out the construction of the monument. The deadline for completion of construction was 1989. The project of the Victory Monument was repeatedly considered at joint meetings of the Moscow City Planning Council, the artistic and expert council of the USSR Ministry of Culture, the Union of Artists of the USSR, the Union of Architects of the USSR, the Ministry of Defense and others. It has been endorsed and approved by these organizations. The project of the monument was exhibited in the Manezh, in the Exhibition Complex on Krymskaya Embankment, published in newspapers, shown on television, and was widely discussed by residents of Moscow and other regions of the country.

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About 150 leaders and representatives of creative organizations, including the chairman of the board of the Union of Architects A.G. Rochegov, chairman of Gosgrazhdanstroy I.N. Ponomarev, President of the Academy of Arts B.S. Ugarov, First Secretary of the Union of Artists of the USSR N.A. Ponomarev, Secretaries of the Board of the Union of Artists of the USSR Vol. Salakhov, A.E. Kovalev, I.P. Abrosov, V.V. Goryainov, Chairman of the Board of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR S.P. Tkachev, secretaries of the Union of Artists V.M. Sidorov, O.K. Komov, M.N. Smirnov, People's Artists of the USSR L.E. Kerbel, Yu.K. Korolev, director of the Institute of Military History of the USSR Ministry of Defense P.A. Zhilin and many others.

At the beginning of 1984, construction work began on the construction of the Victory Monument with funds earned by the working people of Moscow on communist subbotniks and voluntary contributions from citizens (about 200 million rubles in total).

In 1986, at the Congress of Writers of the USSR, the poet Voznesensky made a speech about the monument under construction (“I will drive along the Minsk highway at night and I will see a black ax on Poklonnaya Gora ...”) Then a wide criticism of the monument project was organized on the pages of newspapers and magazines ("Soviet Russia", "Moskovskaya Pravda", "Spark"). In the exhibition hall on Krymskaya embankment, project materials and a model of the main monument were again exhibited. Radio, television, and the press strongly urged people to visit the exhibition and express their negative attitude towards the project. During the exhibition, all the negative reviews about the project were collected. Criticism was openly fueled by a group of interested persons, representatives of the media. With these efforts, the project of the monument was overwhelmed. The central and Moscow governing bodies decided to suspend the construction of the complex.



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In the fall of 1986, an open All-Union competition was announced for the monument to the Victory Monument. Then the project proposals were put up for review in the Manege. In the course of viewing and discussing proposals, due to incorrect and biased information, proposals were made to “restore” Poklonnaya Gora, allegedly dug up during the construction of the Victory Monument, to restore Victory Park as if destroyed by the builders, to dismantle everything that had already been built, and the like - extremist and provocative demands. Particularly active in this matter were members of the so-called association "Memory", journalists and writers - Voznesensky, Korotich, Roy Medvedev and the like, as well as the newspaper "Moscow News", the magazine "Ogonyok" and others. The irresponsibility of these statements is obvious. The construction of the Victory Monument began on one of the high-rise buildings (with a mark of 170.5), located one kilometer from Poklonnaya Hill. The land on which construction began was not torn off (on the contrary, soil was added). There was no Victory Park as such. There was organized a stunted forest nursery for growing planting material.

As a result of the competition in 1986-1987, not a single proposal for the monument was accepted. A new competition has been announced. The Moscow City Executive Committee, under pressure from extremists-“subverters”, decided to stop construction work on the monument.



Victory Monument on Poklonnaya Hill;
Sculptors N. Tomsky, O. Kiryukhin, Yu. Chernov; arch. Ya. Belopolsky, L. Golubovsky, A. Polyansky, B. Rubanenko; muralist Y. Korolev;
Project proposal, 1983-86

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By this time, 32 million rubles had been invested in the construction of the monument. In addition, 13 million rubles from the funds of the Moscow Council were spent on the expansion of the Minsk highway and the construction of sidings at different levels to Fili. The museum building was 86% completed. Works on the construction of a number of structures of the administrative and economic zone were at the completion stage. A large amount of work has been done on paving the main and other alleys of the park, laying collectors for thermal and electrical supply of the facility. Work was underway to plant valuable tree species. The ongoing project of the Victory Monument caused no objections to many people, especially war veterans. During the discussion of the project and construction of the complex, city organizations received many letters, there were many publications with the approval of the designed and constructed monument and requests to speed up its construction.



The main monument is the Victory Memorial in Moscow. Competitive project;
Arch. E. Rozanov, V. Shestopalov, E. Shumov, sculptor L. Kerbel;
1986

Great indignation, especially among war veterans, was caused by the cessation of the construction of the monument. On this occasion, many letters were sent to the central and Moscow party and Soviet bodies. So, for example, a large group of war veterans, representing 4.5 thousand people, turned to the Central Committee of the Party and the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU with a letter stating: “The cessation of the construction of a monument demanded by individuals is a blow primarily to veterans, war invalids and labor ... "They asked to complete the construction of the monument to the 45th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. 183 veterans of the 1st Guards Tank Army in a letter asked the CPSU MGK not to freeze the construction of the Victory Monument and thereby give the veterans the opportunity to see the memorial while they are alive. 28 war veterans, participants in military parades on Red Square in Moscow in 1941 and 1945, wrote: “We must speed up the construction (and not stop) of the Victory Memorial Complex ...” A large group of veterans of the Patriotic War wrote in the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya on April 1, 1987 year: “Lost 30 years. But it's not just time. After all, the victory was won by the Soviet people with their blood... Is it possible that none of those who defended their homeland and the whole world from the brown plague will ever be able to see the national monument in honor of our Victory? .. We believe that the party bodies of Moscow, creative unions should make every effort to rectify the situation and open a memorial for the forty-fifth anniversary of the Victory. These and many other letters are in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

So, the museum complex of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 in Moscow, which was planned to be built and opened by the 45th anniversary of the Victory, as a result of the malicious efforts of a number of people, their desire and others to discredit everything that was done in the 70s and 80s years, was not built on time..."

From the book: Viktor Grishin. Catastrophe. From Khrushchev to Gorbachev". M.: Algorithm: Eksmo, 2010. - 272 p. (

A city with an incredibly interesting history, ancient architectural monuments, modern shopping centers and a vibrant life that many provincial residents dream of. Moscow can rightfully be called one big attraction. Here, wherever you look - everywhere there is a place of great interest to tourists: the Kremlin, Red Square, Arbat, the Tretyakov Gallery and many, many other objects. One of these is the "Tragedy of Peoples" - a monument that is located on Poklonnaya Hill. It is here that we will make our journey today.

Poklonnaya Gora

There is a place in Moscow dedicated to the victory over the German fascists. His name is Poklonnaya Gora. It is a gentle hill, which is located in the western part of the capital, between two rivers - Setunya and Filka. Already in the 16th century, the existence of Poklonnaya Gora was first mentioned. But in those distant times it was located not in Moscow itself, but far beyond its borders.

Today, scientists continue to struggle to unravel the origin of the attraction's name. With the name "mountain" everything is more or less clear: in the Central Russian zone, this was the name of any place that rose at least a little above the ground. And about the word "bow" various theories are put forward: one of the most common versions is the judgment that the name "bow" came from the word "bow". It was with a bow in those centuries that it was customary to express one's respect and respect. Travelers, arriving or leaving Moscow, bowed to the city in the place where the monument is located.

Poklonnaya Gora has experienced a lot in its lifetime: both the meeting of the ambassadors of the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray in 1508, and the camp of Polish troops in 1612, when they were about to storm Moscow. And in 1812, here Napoleon was waiting for the keys to the capital of Russia.

Today it is where there are many monuments dedicated to the victory in the Great Patriotic War. "The Tragedy of Peoples" is a monument located on Poklonnaya Hill and deserving the greatest respect.

Tsereteli and his offspring

Before the description of the monument "The Tragedy of Peoples" appears in our article, I would like to say a few words about its creator Zurab Tsereteli. The monument is dedicated to the millions of people who died in gas chambers, concentration camps and ditches. Tsereteli decided to perpetuate the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The sculptor created his masterpiece solely from his own motives. Neither the state nor the municipality of Moscow ordered the sculptor to create such a statue. Tsereteli cast this composition in bronze exclusively at his own expense and by order of his own soul and memory. Zurab survived the war as a child, he saw and remembered those soldiers who were not destined to return home.

Tsereteli decided to create a monument on Poklonnaya Hill during his work in Brazil.

Description of the monument

The sculptural composition reaches a height of almost eight meters. It was installed in 1997. "The Tragedy of Nations" is a monument depicting an endless series of people sentenced to death. The gray queue consists of naked and emaciated women and men, old people and children. These people differ in height, and their shaved heads, frozen faces, unseeing and lowered hands make them similar. All of them are doomed and silently stand in line for death.

The monument on Poklonnaya Hill begins with three figures. This is a man, a woman and their teenage son. The family must be the first to accept death. The husband and wife are trying to somehow protect their child: the mother covered his eyes with her hand, the father also made an attempt to protect him. But all in vain: no one will be able to survive. The rest of the queue follows, not noticing each other. Everyone thinks about their own - these are their last seconds on Earth.

The last figures are attracted by the earth, they become conditional and resemble stones and merge with granite steles. On these 15 plates in different languages ​​of the republics that were part of the carved words "Let the memory of them be sacred, may it be preserved for centuries!" And on the last, 16th stele, these words are written in Hebrew.

The scandal around the composition

"The Tragedy of the Peoples" is a monument that caused mixed opinions among the population of Moscow. It even wrote an appeal to the then mayor of the city, Luzhkov, with a request to move the monument to another place. Citizens motivated their desire by the fact that the sculpture causes melancholy, evokes mournful feelings, and in general, provokes depressing feelings.

The people simply demanded that the building be removed away from human eyes, if it cannot be destroyed at all. As a new home for the monument, they called the backyard of the museum. In their opinion, there is the place for him, since not all guests will visit this territory.

He will live forever

Poklonnaya Gora (the monument "The Tragedy of the Peoples"), despite the dissatisfaction of Muscovites, continues to amaze the minds of the guests of the capital with its monumentality and grandeur. Tsereteli's powerful work is designed to live forever. A strong composition has withstood difficult trials, as well as the people to whom it is dedicated, and continues to exist, despite all the oppression and intentions to destroy it and break it.

MOTHERLAND (WHOSE?) WAS VICTORIOUS (OVER WHOM?)

One spring, another monument of Zurab Tsereteli appeared on Poklonnaya Hill - "The Tragedy of the Peoples", which was a line of ghouls who came out of the grave and headed towards Kutuzovsky Prospekt near the Arc de Triomphe.

Oleg Davydov then worked at Nezavisimaya Gazeta and had not yet thought of writing his own , but went to Poklonnaya Gora. He took out a compass, determined how the works of Tsereteli, placed on Poklonnaya Hill, were oriented in the cardinal directions. He compared it all with other Soviet war memorials and made such interesting conclusions that soon after his article was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a letter from the Moscow City Hall came to the editorial office with a promise to remove the dead. And they really were removed, but not very far. Even today, a passer-by can suddenly turn gray, or even completely turn around, stumbling at night on huge ghouls that crawled out of the ground in one of the nooks and crannies of Poklonnaya Gora. This one article , up-to-date even today.

I'll start from afar. Perhaps the most famous work in the memorial family is the Monument Ensemble to the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd on Mamaev Kurgan. Author Vuchetich. The most notable sculpture is the Motherland. When you walk under it, some unpleasant, heavy feeling covers you. Something wrong. Some say that this is due to fear - that this colossus will take it and collapse on you. And crush (by the way, when I recently wandered among the people on Poklonnaya Hill, there was also constant talk about “crush”). But this distrust of technology is more than just a rationalization of a more fundamental horror, a horror that lies dormant in our blood, and which, as it were, awakens when we crawl like boogers at the feet of monstrous statues. And the matter is not only (and not even so much) in scale, but in something else. In what? But let's figure it out.

Remember: in Volgograd, Motherland with a sword stands on the banks of the Volga. Facade to the river. And turns back a little. Calling his sons. Everything seems to be normal. We are so accustomed to this monument that we no longer notice its flagrant absurdity. But if you look with an impartial eye, seditious thoughts will inevitably come into your head: whose mother is this and, in general, to whom and what is this a monument to? The heroism of the soldiers who survived in Stalingrad? But then the figure of a woman would have to hold back the onslaught of the enemy, rushing to the Volga, and not depict an unstoppable impulse to the Volga. Since it is impossible to determine the nationality of the Vuchetich Motherland by any means, it remains to be assumed that it represents the power of Germany, which reached the Volga, which came out (as it was in reality) to the very banks of the great Russian river. But how could it be otherwise, if the symbolic woman is all in a rush to the east and, as it were, calls her faithful sons to follow her.

However, in front of a woman with a sword (Valkyries?), there is also a man armed with a machine gun and a grenade. He, too, stands facing the Volga and portrays himself as a front fighter. What army? This is not very clear, since it is naked, and the anthropological type at the level of totalitarian sculpture does not differ between Russians and Germans (Central European with Nordic elements). If he had at least a Russian military uniform on, one could argue about why this Russian soldier swung a grenade at the Volga? And so it turns out that Fritz took away the machine gun from Ivan (our PPSh with a disc-shaped magazine - the weapon is still more powerful than the German "Schmeiser") and went out to the Volga. This soldier, by the way, is standing right in the water, in some special pond, apparently depicting the Volga, he is piled on a block covered with graffiti, such as “Stand to the death”, but - the figure of a soldier is still located above all these usual our heroic graffiti. ..

That is, we can say that the soldier tramples on this sacred thing for the Russian heart by “standing up” with his feet. But the most striking thing is that on the left and right in the direction of the movement of the naked soldier and his mother towards the Volga there are really Russian soldiers, dressed in Russian uniforms, but - for the most part, kneeling and bent. They, as it were, make way for the powerful movement to the east of the selfless berserker, accompanied by the monstrous Valkyrie, form a corridor for the free movement of the adversary to the river. But this is already, so to speak, a monumental slander. Everyone knows: the Soviet army survived the Battle of Stalingrad, although in some places the enemy reached the Volga itself, washed, so to speak, boots in it.

In general, some ambiguous memorial was created by the sculptor Vuchetich. But by the way, in this regard, it is remarkable that a few years ago Volgograd was shaken by protests against the installation of a small monument to the Austrian soldiers who died in Stalingrad. And then it never occurred to anyone that a huge monument to the Germans and their allies had long been erected in the city of Russian military glory.

However, one can interpret the symbolism of the memorial on Mamaev Kurgan a little differently. A woman with a sword is a symbol of the retreating Soviet Army (or, more broadly, Russia), an allegory of our favorite “Scythian war” (forward, deep into Russia), when the enemy is lured into the bowels of the country and successfully destroyed there. Then this is a monument to Russian masochism, which (masochism) is worthy, of course, to be immortalized in rough reinforced concrete, but - after all, such things must be clearly understood and treated accordingly: here we should no longer talk about heroism, but about some painful deviation from the norm . Meanwhile, there is no doubt that both the defense of Stalingrad and the victory in the Great War as a whole are precisely heroic deeds. But they are maliciously rethought by Soviet sculptors.

The Volgograd Motherland is not alone. For example, a woman personifying the Motherland and Victory in the city of Kiev (also left the workshop of Vuchetich) is located on the right bank of the Dnieper and, accordingly, looks to the east. That is, almost everything that was said about the Motherland on Mamaev Kurgan can be repeated here. Well, except to add that, perhaps, this is some kind of specifically Khokhlyat Motherland, the divine patroness of warriors, say, the SS division “Galicia”, staffed mainly by Western Ukrainians, or, perhaps, Bandera gangs. By the way, the raised hands of this Kyiv mother (in one - a shield, in the other - a sword) together with the head form a “trident”, which has now become the coat of arms of Ukraine.

However, let's return to Moscow, to Poklonnaya Gora, to the Tseretel memorial. Here, too, of course, there is a woman. It is called Nike (in Russian - Pobeda). It is located high, on something like a needle. The face is turned - not quite to the east. Rather, to the northeast, exactly - to the Arc de Triomphe, but, in any case, not to the west at all. As you can see, the trend continues. It is, of course, a woman on a needle in this case is not called the Motherland and holds in her right hand not a sword, but a wreath, that is, as if crowning someone with this wreath. Obvious difference.

But if you take a closer look, the typological similarity of the Moscow monument to the memorial on Mamayev Kurgan will come to the fore. The common thing here and there is a woman at a high altitude, and under her, a little ahead, a certain warrior. On Poklonnaya Gora, he is still dressed - in some kind of armor, which can be easily mistaken for ancient Russian. He sits on a rearing horse, in his right hand he holds not a grenade, but a spear resting on the dragon's neck. The dragon is enormous, it serves as a pedestal for a relatively small rider, all streaked with fascist symbols and already dismembered into pieces (when the rider managed to do this butcher's work, one can only guess).

If we compare the two monumental compositions, it becomes obvious that the Moscow Dragon is (semantically) the same block covered with heroic slogans on which the naked soldier in Volgograd is based. And George with Poklonnaya in this case corresponds to a naked soldier with a Nordic face, installed on Mamaev Kurgan. Behind each of these two warlike figures is a gigantic woman: in one case she is just dizzyingly high, and in the other she is at a dizzying height. These women of different names, inspiring (driving, encouraging, calling) monumental warriors to fight, are not just allegories of the Motherland or Victory, they are sculptural images of a certain feminine deity emerging from the unconscious depths of the sculptor’s soul when he takes up his sculpture, they are different incarnations of one archetype...

Actually, the triangle is archetypal: Woman - Serpent (Dragon) - Serpent Fighter. At the heart of this is the Indo-European myth about the duel of the heavenly thunderer and the reptilian chthonic deity struck by it. The woman, because of which the fight takes place, crowns the winner (gets or betrays him). This is in the most general terms, the details can be very different. Some of them are discussed in detail in my articles “Calvary Serpent” and “The mockery of the sky over the earth” ( see the book "Demon of writing", publishing house "Limbus press", St. Petersburg-Moscow, 2005). You should not dwell on the details here, but it is worth saying that in Russian mythology (from Nestor to) the Serpent Rider is always associated with some kind of alien, and the Dragon with a native deity ( this is just a lot of talk in Oleg Davydov. — Red . )

Of course, the Dragon can be painted with swastikas from head to tail (this is how children draw and write all sorts of nonsense on the fences), but the essence of the myth will not change from this: the Dragon is a local deity who is destined to be pierced by an alien, and even a woman who attracts (and thereby pushes) the stranger, whoever she may be, will crown the winner. This is, so to speak, the general basis of the serpent-fighting myth, but by telling it in words or by means of sculpture, a person usually brings something new and interesting to it. Tsereteli introduced dismemberment into the myth. This is an original motif, and although, of course, you can find images in which something is chopped off from the Serpent, but so that’s it - directly sliced ​​​​sausage (the limbs are also naturally separated) on the festive table ... I don’t remember this, here is the author of the famous monument to the unity of the Soviet peoples (remember, such a phallic thing near the Danilovsky market?) managed to say a new word.

I have no doubt that the reader has already guessed what the dismembered Dragon is a symbol of. Of course - a symbol of the dismembered Soviet Union. And the fact that the Dragon is depicted with swastikas is a common metaphor of the perestroika years, when the communist ideology of the “scoop” was identified with fascism and the term “red-brown” was invented. That is, the monument on Poklonnaya Gora is by no means dedicated to the victory over Nazi Germany (as we are told), but exactly the opposite - to the victory over the communist Soviet Union. And accordingly, this woman with a foreign name Nike has nothing to do with the Victory over Nazi Germany, but is directly related to the victory over communism and the Soviet Union. Who defeated him? Well, let's say, some agent of Western influence in medieval armor and on a horse. The rider is about to jump off the dismembered Dragon and move towards the triumphal arch (he is aiming at it), but for the time being he is still waiting for the keys to Moscow, just like Napoleon once on the same Poklonnaya Hill.

Now I'm not at all interested in the question - is it all good or bad. For some it might be good, for others it might be bad. But things still need to be called by their proper names: Tsereteli built a monument to the dismemberment of the Soviet Union (as Vuchetich built a monument to the exit of Nazi Germany to the Volga). And this singer of a close-knit family of peoples could not build another monument (by the way, his monument to friendship resembles the Friendship Fountain at VDNKh). He could not because he was not at all worried about the victory in the Great Patriotic War, but the destruction of the Soviet Union that was happening before his eyes.

Generally speaking, sculpting monuments is far from harmless. If only because they are very expensive, they are visible to everyone, but they are made, like any work of art, in a kind of delirium. In the same way as poems or novels are written, something rushes from the soul of a person and turns into a text. And what came out of you there - the blackness or the divine chant - will be seen later by others. And maybe very soon. But, in any case, poems or drawings are things that do not require such material costs as monuments, and are not so eyesore. Wrote a bad verse - well, failure: they laughed and forgot. But the monument remains. And what to do with it? Dismantle like a monument to Dzerzhinsky? Or leave it as a monument to the madness of time, which has lost elementary common sense to such an extent that it is unable to distinguish the right hand from the left and brown from red.
In short, what are the times, such are the memorials. In the end, it is even commendable that a monument to the destruction of the Evil Empire appeared so quickly. The only bad thing is that there was an unfortunate confusion, an unintentional substitution (I do not even allow the thought that Tsereteli understands what he, in fact, made up). And as a result, the unfortunate veterans were once again deceived - they were offered to worship not their victory, but victory over themselves (since they fought for the Soviet Union and later on, as a state, for the most part had nothing against it).

And then it's time to understand what kind of emaciated naked people move gravestones and come out of the graves... What the author wanted to say by this is more or less clear: no one is forgotten, the dead will rise from the graves, and so on. Perhaps, in the spirit of the new political conjuncture and fashion for religion, he even wanted to depict the Resurrection of the Dead. But I did not bother to find out what it means and how it should happen. I have not heard that "There is a spiritual body, there is a body and a spiritual one." I didn’t read from the Apostle Paul that “we will not all die, but we will all be changed suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. When this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then the saying that is written will come true, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Agree, there is some resemblance in this text to Tsereteli's delusional fantasies, but at the same time - how unlike, even the exact opposite ... Tseretel's dead rise from their graves untransformed, in complete decay. These are not exactly resurrected from the dead, but ghosts, ghouls, even, perhaps, ghouls, feeding on living human blood. It is hell itself that comes to earth to reign here, and not the resurrected from the dead. What a sick fantasy And what meaning does it have?

In the context of everything that we already know about the Tseretel memorial, everything is very logical. Look: the ghouls are heading towards Kutuzovsky Prospekt and must cross it in front of the Arc de Triomphe. For what? Is it really only to go down underground again where the Park Pobedy metro station is being built? No, they will soon stand as a wall in the way of the equestrian Victorious, who has dismembered the Dragon, ready to enter through the triumphal arch into Moscow. These people have already died once here and now they are again defending the capital. So Tsereteli is not inspired by the Apostle Paul at all, but by Galich: “If Russia calls its dead, it means trouble.”

However, these are all vague allusions. The realism of real life lies in the fact that specific people stand in the way of the victorious march of Western reforms - these are the very deceived veterans and pensioners, whom many radical comrades tend to consider dead men who grab the living. And it was precisely this collision of the collision of the old with the new that the memorial-builder involuntarily embodied in his remarkable creation. After all, the idea that until the old people die, reforms are impossible, was very popular in certain circles when the monument was still being created. Now it is less popular, but nevertheless it was immortalized in the monument. But note: the monumentalist does not yet know who will win, the dead are still only moving forward to a defensive position, the horseman who destroyed the Dragon has not yet moved (perhaps, by the way, that he grew out of the Dragon), stands on the corpse and waits "Moscow on its knees". He hopes: what if these naked poor fellows will now hand him the keys to the city? Will not wait. The composition of the memorial does not allow. So this fundamental uncertainty, reticence will remain in our collective soul...

Or does anyone think that bronze people on their knees can also be placed in front of the Arc de Triomphe, facing the west?

Other publications by Oleg Davydov at Change can be found.

Victory Park is located in the west of Moscow, between Kutuzovsky Prospekt and the branch of the Moscow Railway in the Kyiv direction.
During the walk, we will see the Triumphal Gates, Poklonnaya Hill with a flower clock, the Church of St. George the Victorious, as well as the multi-meter stela of the Victory Monument.

And if we look back, we will see the Triumphal Gate archlocated on Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

We will definitely return to it, but first we will go to Victory Park.

Now it is already difficult to imagine the capital without a memorial complex on Poklonnaya Hill, but it appeared relatively recently, in 1995, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Victory. Prior to this, the Victory Park, founded in 1958, was one of the many garden and park areas of the city.

Poklonnaya Gora is part of the Tatar Upland, which also includes the Krylatsky Hills and the heights of the Filevsky Forest Park. Previously, Poklonnaya Hill was much higher and larger in area, it opened a panorama of the city and its surroundings. Travelers stopped here to look at the city and bow to its churches, which is why the name of the mountain appeared. Guests of the city were solemnly welcomed here. Knowing this fact, it was on Poklonnaya Gora that Napoleon Bonaparte was waiting for the keys to Moscow in 1812.

In 1966, most of Poklonnaya Gora was demolished. Only a small hill remained from it, located in the eastern part of Victory Park, directly at the exit from the metro.

The hill is decorated with a flower clock - the only one in Moscow. They were built in 2001 and were listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest in the world. But due to the fact that the technical elements of the watch system are constantly in conditions of high humidity and pollution, they do not always work, sometimes they are just a big flower garden.

On the top of the hill you can see a small wooden cross. It was installed in 1991 to the glory of all Orthodox soldiers - participants in the Great Patriotic War, anticipating the construction of the Church of St. George the Victorious, erected by 1995.

It is not necessary to climb the hill itself, since there are no steps or any other devices, you will have to climb directly on the grass, and if in winter, then on the snow. But if you are confident in your abilities, then you can rise. From the top of the mountain you have a good view of the city.

The alley "Years of War" is decorated with the complex of fountains of the same name. It consists of 15 bowls, from each it shoots 15 jets, thus forming the number 255 - so many weeks the war went on. At night, the fountains are illuminated, the illumination is made in red tones, for which the fountains are sometimes even called “bloody fountains”.

On the left side of the fountains there is a sculptural ensemble consisting of 15 columns dedicated to the fronts and other units of the Soviet army.

From afar, the sculptures look the same: a column mounted on a granite pedestal, the top is decorated with a five-pointed star and military banners.

And at the base of each of the columns is a bas-relief dedicated to one of the units.

This is in turn: Workers of the home front; Partisans and underground workers; Black Sea, Baltic and Northern fleets; 3rd, 2nd, 4th and 1st Ukrainian fronts; 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts; 1-Baltic front; Leningrad front.

From the alley "Years of War" turn left, to the Church of St. George. It, like most of the monuments included in the memorial complex, was erected in 1995, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Victory.

The facade of the Temple is decorated with bas-reliefs with the faces of the Savior, the Virgin and St. George.

Near the entrance to the Temple, we will see a sculpture depicting a wounded soldier. This is the Monument to the Missing Soldiers without Graves. It was presented as a gift to Moscow by the Republic of Ukraine.

From the Temple, you can return to the main alley of the park, or, if we have already examined everything there, go straight up to the Victory Monument. The stairs start immediately from the monument to the missing.

The architectural complex, including the Victory Monument and the majestic building of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, makes an indelible impression. The stele is one of the tallest monuments in Moscow, its height is 142 meters. The top is crowned with a sculpture of the goddess of victory Nike.

And at its base there is a monument to George the Victorious, slaying the dragon - a symbol of the victory of good over evil, taken from Orthodoxy.

If we digress a little from the military theme and look around, we will see that from the hill on which the monument is located, a magnificent view of the city opens up. On the left - skyscrapers of the Moscow City Business Center.

On the right - one of Stalin's famous skyscrapers - the main building of Moscow State University on Sparrow Hills.

The Eternal Flame burns between the Monument and the entrance to the museum.

It appeared in Victory Park relatively recently, much later than the erection of the sculptural ensemble of Poklonnaya Hill. In December 2009, the Eternal Flame was moved here from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Engineering and technical communications were being repaired in the Alexander Garden, and since the Eternal Flame should not die out even for a minute, it was decided to temporarily reschedule it. And in April 2010, on the eve of the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Victory, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the Eternal Flame entered the Victory Park memorial on a permanent basis, becoming the third in the capital after the lights in the Alexander Garden and at the Preobrazhensky Cemetery.

Having passed the Eternal Flame, we come to the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. Inspection of the museum's expositions can take a whole day, so we will not go inside today, leaving the visit to the museum for another day. Having seen the artillery pieces of the times of the Great Patriotic War, located at the entrance, we will head to the passage between the columns of the building.

Let's go to the right wing of the building. Here is the Monument to the front-line dog, erected in memory of the four-legged fighters who helped the soldiers during the war years. Dogs served in the medical troops (delivering medicines, and sometimes pulling the wounded from the battlefield), on guard duty, found explosives, and helped scouts. Demolition dogs, hung with explosives, rushed under enemy tanks. In this way, about 350 units of military equipment were destroyed.

Behind the trees we will see another monument. Even from afar, it makes a depressing impression.

Coming closer, we will be convinced of the correctness of our emotions. This sculptural composition is called "The Tragedy of the Nations", it is dedicated to all the victims of Nazi concentration camps.

In the center are sculptures of emaciated people without clothes, and on the right and left are books, children's toys, clothes, shoes and other household items scattered in a chaotic manner.

On the right side of the composition, there is a granite slab on which the inscription "May the memory of them be sacred, may it be preserved for centuries" is engraved.

And if we come closer and go through a narrow passage between the fragments of the monument, we will see that there are many such slabs. The same words are written on them in different languages ​​- Ukrainian, Tatar, Armenian, Hebrew, etc., symbolizing the multinationality of the victims of fascism.

Next to the "Tragedy of the Nations" there is another memorial sign, a small granite plaque with a bronze bas-relief located directly on the ground, is called "The Spirit of the Elbe". It is dedicated to the meeting of Soviet and American troops on the Elbe River in April 1945.

Passing by the rear facade, in the distance we will see another monument, located with its back to us.

We will definitely come to him, but later. If we go there now, we might get off track and miss other equally important sights.

Entrance to the territory is paid, however, the price is purely symbolic (70 rubles). You can also walk along the exposition fence, which is made of metal rods, through which most of the exhibits can be viewed without entering the museum, but moving along the fence.

The first part of the exposition, located at the main entrance, presents a reconstruction of the battle from the beginning of the war, when the Soviet army was defending its own territories. On one side of the imaginary front line are tanks, artillery installations of the Nazi army,

on the other - Soviet technology.

The front line is personified by trenches, anti-tank hedgehogs and other defensive structures. You can go down into the trench to look at the exposition from the bottom up, as the soldiers sitting in the trenches had to do.

Artillery guns:

Railway technology:

And even aviation.

The collection includes not only small fighters, but also more powerful winged vehicles.

From afar, the territory fenced off from strangers looks like a scrap metal dump, but when we get closer, we will see that these are parts of military equipment found on the battlefields, from which the exhibits are collected. After all, there is not a single dummy in the exposition, all the equipment presented really participated in the battles of the Great Patriotic War.

Having passed the main part of the exposition, we will find ourselves in a small copse. A model of a partisan camp has been set up here: dugouts, a watchtower and other wooden structures.

The next part of the exhibition is dedicated to the navy: there are ship engines, guns, and a submarine cabin:

And even whole parts of ships:

At the exit from the territory of the exposition there is a collection of military equipment of one of the main German allies - Japan.

From the territory of the exhibition you can clearly see the building in oriental style with crescents on the domes. This is a memorial mosque in honor of the Muslim soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War.

Leaving the gates of the exhibition, we will find ourselves at a crossroads, from which four roads diverge in different directions. In the center is a small monument, made in the style of a Catholic chapel.

The association, created during the Second World War to confront Nazi Germany and its satellites (primarily Italy and Japan), by 1945 consisted of 53 states. Someone really participated in the hostilities, someone helped with food and weapons. Of course, the USSR made the greatest contribution to the victory, and it is customary to single out the armies of the USA, Great Britain and France from other countries. Therefore, against the background of a granite stele crowned with a gilded UN symbol, there are four figures of soldiers in the form of the armies of these countries.

Let's go back from the monument back to the crossroads. Standing with your back to the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, and facing the exposition of military equipment, turn left, deep into the park. After walking a few tens of meters, we will see another sculptural composition.

In the center of it is a sculpture of Soviet soldiers Yegorov and Kantaria hoisting the banner of Victory over the Reichstag. In the spirit of the walls of the destroyed Reichstag, the pedestal under the sculpture was also made, it is painted with the names of various cities of the Soviet Union: Yerevan, Dushanbe, Tbilisi, Tashkent, etc. On the sides of the pedestal are two bronze bas-reliefs. One shows the triumph of Soviet soldiers against the backdrop of the same Reichstag:

On the other - the Victory Parade on Red Square in 1945 with the burning of Nazi regalia.

And on the granite slab behind the monument are the words: “We were together in the fight against fascism!”

This sculptural composition appeared in Victory Park in 2010. The impetus for its creation was the notorious events in Georgia a year earlier, when a similar monument was destroyed in the city of Kutaisi.

The monument is intended to symbolize that only thanks to the unity and cohesion of people of different nationalities and concessions, our country won this Great Victory. Its creation is a call to the fact that today the fraternal peoples must live in peace.

From the monument, we can see a construction site surrounded by a fence behind the trees. There is nothing interesting here yet, but this phenomenon is temporary. Here, the construction of the chapel of the Armenian Apostolic Church in honor of the Armenian soldiers who participated in the Great Patriotic War is in full swing.

Let's return to the intersection again and follow the remaining of the four roads, which leads to Kutuzovsky Prospekt (it can already be seen in the distance). After walking along it, we will come to an unusual building with a triangular dome, decorated with a six-pointed Star of David. This is a Jewish memorial synagogue, also installed in memory of the Great Patriotic War.

If we remember all the religious objects that we saw on our way, we can state that almost all the main religions of the peoples participating in the Great Patriotic War are represented in Victory Park: the Orthodox Church of St. George the Victorious, an Islamic mosque, a Catholic chapel and a Jewish synagogue.

At the exit from the park there is a sculpture depicting a Soviet soldier. If you look closely, even from afar you can see that the form on it is much more modern than that one. What was worn during the Great Patriotic War. The monument is dedicated to soldiers - internationalists who died in Afghanistan.

The monument was erected in 2004, and five years later another one appeared next to it: a self-propelled gun BMD-1 (Airborne Fighting Vehicle) was installed right on the alley of the park.

A commemorative plate on the armor says that in 2009 two anniversaries took place at once: the 20th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, as well as the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.F. Margelov, a Soviet military commander who is considered the founding father of modern airborne troops. Among the paratroopers themselves, there is even a joke that the abbreviation "Airborne Forces" does not mean "Airborne Troops", but "Uncle Vasya's Troops" - in honor of Vasily Margelov.

Leaving the territory of the Victory Park, we will find ourselves on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. However, let's first turn not to the right, towards the metro, but to the left. After walking a couple of tens of meters, we will see another monument located on a small hill. The composition consists of three figures of warriors from different eras: an ancient Russian hero, a grenadier of the Patriotic War of 1812 and a soldier of the Soviet army.

The monument is called "To the Bogatyrs of the Russian Land" and symbolizes the connection of times and the inevitability of victory in the war, if this war is of a liberating nature.

On this, our walk is almost over, but we were quite far from the metro. If you are not tired and the weather permits, you can go back to the park and just walk along one of the alleys running parallel to Kutuzovsky Prospekt. And you can take any public transport that runs along the avenue and get to the metro station "Park Pobedy", from which we started our walk.

Here it is worth paying attention to the monument, which at the beginning of the journey we saw only from afar - the Triumphal Gate. The arch, located directly above Kutuzovsky Prospekt (cars pass between its columns), was erected in honor of the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812.

The tradition of installing triumphal gates has existed since ancient times. In 1814, such a gate, then still wooden, was installed at the Tverskaya Zastava. It was along the Tverskaya road that Russian troops entered the city, returning from Europe after the victory over Napoleon. In 1834 they were replaced by stone ones.

In 1936, during the execution of the General Plan for the reconstruction of the center of Moscow, the Triumphal Gates were dismantled, its components were placed in the Museum of Architecture, located on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery. According to the plan, upon completion of the reconstruction of Tverskaya Zastava Square, the gate was planned to be returned to its original place. However, for a number of reasons this was not done, and the monument lay in storage for half a century. Only in 1966 it was decided to install it on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, not far from the Battle of Borodino Panorama Museum. So, by 1968, the Triumphal Gate appeared on Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

In 2012, during the anniversary celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Victory in the Patriotic War of 1812, the gate underwent a major reconstruction, so today it looks great.

This completes our walk.