#soviet monuments

[victusinveritas]

KFC in Minsk, Belarus...Komrade's Fried Chicken? What can the Palkoŭnik do for you?

[geekysteven]

"Yeah, we gay, keep walking"

[Image description Photo of a statue of two men standing and holding hands while looking defiant. One of them is holding a rifle in his left hand and is holding the second man's hand, the second man also has a hand on the first man's shoulder.]

[brunogremez]

Lenin monument in Vladivostok, Russia. The city is located in the Russian Far-East on the Pacific Ocean, not far from Russia’s borders with China and North Korea. It is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and is the largest Russian port on the Pacific coast. Japan is about 775 kilometres East across the Sea of Japan. The region had been under the rule of various Chinese dynasties, before Russia acquired the entire Maritime Province and the island of Sakhalin by the Treaty of Beijing in 1860. As the main naval base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was officially closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. Its population as of 2018 was around 600.000. This is an old digitised photo taken by my dear friend Vincent Scaillet during a trip we made together across Siberia in January 2000.

[skipstjori]

Sylvain Heraud

[victusinveritas]

The Motherland Calls Stalingrad Monument under construction, April 1963 -- Daily LIFT #1212

From the Soviet Press, April 1963:

Overgrown with wormwood, torn by shrapnel, furrowed by grenades and soaked with blood, Mamayev Hill, where the heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 stood their ground to last. Now the ring of the stonecutters' chisels fills the air, and the jibs of tower cranes float slowly in the sky: a monument to the men who fell in that battle is nearing completion.

The photo shows a section of the monument: a soldier with a submachine gun in one hand and a grenade in the other rises from a huge boulder. Engraved on the rock are the words, "Stand to the last, not a single step backward." Although the monument is not yet finished, visitors have been coming to Mamayev Hill to pay tribute to the heroes.

https://www.theleftchapter.com/post/daily-lift-1212

[brunogremez]

Statue of Mikhail Kalinin in Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad is the main city of a Russian enclave of the same name located between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. Known as Königsberg from 1255 until 1945, the city was heavily damaged by a British bombing attack in 1944 and the massive Soviet siege of the city in spring 1945. At the end of WWII, it became part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets started to completely rebuild the city after the war. The survivors of the German population were forcibly expelled in 1946–1949, and the city was repopulated with Soviet citizens, mostly ethnic Russians. The city’s language of administration was then changed from German to Russian. The city was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 after Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin following the death on 3 June 1946 of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (titular head of state) of the USSR, Mikhail Kalinin, one of the original Bolsheviks. Please note that this is an old digitised photo (Spring 1999).

[brunogremez]

Giant Lenin Head of Ulan Ude, the capital of Buryatia, in the Russian Far East. It is arguably the largest head of Lenin in the Former Soviet Union (and the world). With a height of 7.7 m (45 ft), it weighs 42 tons. It was built in 1971 in honour of the centenary of Lenin’s birth. The ethnic Buryatian peoples are related to the Mongolians and practice Buddhism or Shamanism. Somehow, I cannot refrain from thinking that this Lenin face has some Asian traits. Would it be a local variation of the leader’s representation?

[brunogremez]

Lenin status in a suburb of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. I took this picture  in the late 90′s, soon after the country decided to move its capital from Almaty, located in the South-Eastern corner of the country, to Astana, in the middle of Kazakhstan. At the time, the city of Astana was already undergoing a major facelift and the days of this statue were obviously numbered. The city has continued its transformation from a provincial city into a real, modern and proud capital city to this day. I am sure that the statue has since disappeared or has at least been displaced to an undisclosed location. In 2018, the city was renamed Nur-Sultan after former President Nursultan Nazarbayev.