The Motherland Calls — war memorial
Image by alex1983 from Pixabay

The Motherland Calls

  • 2 min read
  • 48.742° N 44.537° E

Interesting facts

  • The body was modelled on Valentina Izotova, a 26-year-old waitress, with discus thrower Nina Dumbadze also an influence; the face is thought to recall the sculptor's wife.
  • Officials on the planning committee wanted the figure in traditional Russian costume, but Vuchetich refused, insisting on a timeless classical drapery.
  • The first sword, 28 metres of stainless steel faced with titanium, swayed almost a foot in the wind and cracked the concrete around the statue's hand.
  • Inside, the figure is divided into concrete cells about three by three by four metres, with passages for inspectors and instruments monitoring its movement.
  • Its concrete used a special mix developed for Moscow's Ostankino television tower, poured by hand in half-metre layers from pedestal to neck.
  • Early ground surveys of the hill went only nine metres deep instead of the 46 needed, so water pipes and reservoirs had to be moved far from the base.
  • Several hundred soldiers from a local garrison helped finish the mosaics of the Hall of Military Glory in under a month before the 1967 opening.
  • Senior generals, including Andrey Yeryomenko, objected that a giant statue would overshadow a planned battle panorama they saw as the truer tribute.
  • It remained the world's tallest statue until 1989, when Japan's Kita no Miyako Dai Kannon overtook it.
  • The statue appears on the coat of arms and flag of Volgograd Oblast, and a replica stands in Manzhouli, China, near the Russian border.

Why it is worth it

The Motherland Calls stands on top of Mamayev Kurgan, the hill above the Volga in Volgograd that was fought over almost continuously during the Battle of Stalingrad, from September 1942 to January 1943. A woman in a wind-blown robe strides forward with a sword raised in her right hand and her left arm flung back, summoning the country to fight. From the base of the pedestal to the tip of the sword the monument measures 85 metres; the figure alone is 52 metres. When the memorial complex was dedicated on 15 October 1967 it was the tallest statue in the world.

The ensemble was the work of the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich with the architect Yakov Belopolsky, the same pair behind the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin's Treptower Park. Their early designs were more modest: a granite group of a kneeling soldier before a female figure of the Motherland, around 30 metres high. The concept changed at the start of the 1960s to a single concrete giant, and the height grew because Nikita Khrushchev wanted it to exceed the Statue of Liberty. The pose owes a debt to the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Making it stand was the achievement of the structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin, who later calculated the Ostankino tower in Moscow: the statue is a hollow shell of reinforced concrete, its walls only 25–30 cm thick, held rigid by internal steel cables, and it is not fixed to its foundation but simply rests on a slab under its own weight. The sword, around 30 metres long, was replaced in 1972 with a lighter version perforated to reduce wind load. The statue had tilted measurably by the 1980s, and a long restoration was completed in 2020.

The statue is the climax of a route up the hill. Visitors climb from the foot of the kurgan through a sequence of stairways, squares and sculpture, past the Ruined Walls with their relief scenes of the battle, with recorded sound accompanying parts of the way. The circular Hall of Military Glory, with no side windows and an opening in the roof, holds an eternal flame held aloft by a sculpted hand with a torch and the names of the dead carved on the walls, while Schumann's "Träumerei" plays continuously. Tradition counts 200 granite steps from the foot of the hill to the top, one for each day of the battle. The remains of more than 34,000 defenders were reburied along the path up to the statue. The complex has been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2014.

Volgograd, the former Tsaritsyn and later Stalingrad, still defines itself by the battle; the Panorama museum near the river completes the story told on the hill.

Getting there

Mamayev Kurgan is within Volgograd, about 4 km from the city centre, and several city bus routes run between the centre and the foot of the hill. Volgograd International Airport (VOG) is about 15 km away in a straight line.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Russia 73The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Russia 6The Most Striking War Memorials 15The Most Beautiful Modern Squares, Streets and Monuments 15The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173

From the encyclopaedia

The Motherland Calls is a colossal neoclassicist and socialist realist war memorial sculpture on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, Russia. Designed primarily by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich with assistance from architect Yakov Belopolsky, the concrete sculpture commemorates the casualties of the Battle of Stalingrad, and is the predominant component of a monument complex, which includes several plazas and other sculptural works. Standing 85 metres (279 ft) tall from the base of its pedestal to its peak, the statue was the tallest in the world upon its completion in 1967, and is the tallest statue in Europe if including the pedestal. The statue, along with the rest of the complex, was dedicated on 15 October 1967, and has been listed as a tentative candidate for UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites since 2014.

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48.74228, 44.53708per Wikidata