Saying this is the largest statue of a woman in the world doesn’t communicate its majesty. It really is impressive.
The Motherland is approached via a series of memorials. I find them all moving. People are taking each other’s photos at each stage. I always find this strange: „Here I am at the memorial to the event where tens of thousands of people died.“
I really like the bas-reliefs on either side. The figures all seem to inhabit ruins. The impression of people fighting in the ruins of a city is quite effective. Loudspeakers broadcast martial music, a historic radio address, the sounds of diving airplanes, explosions, battle.
Entrance to the site is made via a tunnel, with what seems to be rubble on either side. Again, I think this is all really well-designed and executed.
Elegiac choral music plays.
Four of the six statues on the right have men and a woman helping wounded comrades. One has a soldier striding forward with weapons in his hands past a stricken fellow. Only the last of the six has two men who are whole, triumphant. They have slewn the massive serpent one holds wrapped about his arm.
I see this heroine rallying her compatriots to defend their land and a series of images go through my mind: obese Californians wearing pink knit pussy caps waddling through the streets of San Francisco; Poles of the Home Army finding out the Soviets would keep their Molotov-Ribbentrop gains after the war; street fighters in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and Kiev all apparently facing a shortage of pink knit pussy caps and so hurling Molotov cocktails at the various armies they faced; Lithuania building a fence on its borders. A fence. Friggin‘ Lithuanians.
Red October factory (behind the white buildings) as seen from The Motherland Calls.
