Russia's 7 Most Important War Memorials

Named after the air craft carrier that transported bodies of deceased Soviet soldiers back home during the Soviet-Afghan War, this works sees a lone soldier slump contemplatively with his weapon, exhausted and defeated. Etched on the pillars that give the memorial its name are the names of the Yekaterinburg local soldiers who died in the war that took up most of the 1980s, as well as in the Chechnya War, which followed in the 1990s . Some 620,000 soldiers served in the Soviet-Afghan War, which lasted nine years and saw around 14,500 of those soldiers die. The Chechnya War, which lasted two years, clocked up around 5,500 fatalities.

Not in Russia, but in a former Soviet state, this memorial sees a soldier’s furrowed brow stick out of an enormous slab of stone, starting at the ruins of the Brest Fortress, which was destroyed by a surprise Nazi attack in 1941. Over 30 metres (100 feet) high, with a hammer and sickle etched into the slab, it is part of several memorials that pay tribute to the war time atrocities. When the Nazis launched a surprise attack, civilians, including children were also holed up in the fortress, along side the soldiers. The town’s water supply was cut off during the attack as well, in efforts to lure people out to shoot at while attempting to collect supplies.

This memorial is a tribute to another brutal battle between the Red Army and the Germans during WWII, when German and Romanian forces took the south-easterly city in September 1942. A unit of Soviet sailors commenced an attack on the forces at the beginning of 1943, and the city was finally liberated by the Red Army, a year after it was occupied. On the site where the sailors defended the city, known as Malaya Zemlya or Little Earth, a colossal memorial pays tribute to the sailors efforts that enabled the Soviet Union to retain power over Novorossiysk’s port, which was key in transporting military supplies to the State.e