May 9th 1945 – Victory Day in the Soviet Union (Russia)

Posted on 09/05/2020 by Michael

The triumph of the Conquering People

May 9th – Victory Day in the Soviet Union (Russia)

Whilst much of western Europe commemorate May 8th as the official end of the Second World War in the Soviet Union the date for the end of the Great Patriotic War was, and has been since 1945, May 9th. After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 the celebrations have been sporadic but in recent years Putin has realised there’s political capital to be made out of the event and it has now become a major affair, especially in Moscow, and under normal circumstances there would have been hundreds of thousands of Moscovites, covering four generations, on the streets today. It was only in the middle of April, when the covid-19 outbreak started to really take hold in Russia, that the planned parade was cancelled.

Soviet Troops – Berlin – 9th May 1945

Why the difference in the end of the same war?

When the defeat of the Nazi forces was only a matter of time the Fascist leadership after the death of Hitler started to play a bit of a game – deadly for those needlessly killed in the last 6 or 7 days of the conflict.

The Red Army was coming from the east like a steamroller, destroying everything in its path. The British/American et al were making equally fast progress from the west. By the beginning of May it wasn’t a matter of when the Fascists had to surrender it became to whom – and when. The Fascists knew they would be able to get the best deal for themselves if they negotiated with the allies coming from the west – after all British and American capitalism wasn’t that far removed from German Fascism. They knew they would get short shrift from the Soviets.

The Soviet flag flies above the Brandenberg Gate, Berlin

Somehow (and I don’t know if anyone ever discovered exactly how this was allowed to happen – the documents coming into German hands during the Ardennes Offensive – also called the Battle of the Bulge which came to an end in January 1945) the Fascists got hold of a map that had been drawn up which showed how Germany would be divided between the allies. With that knowledge Karl Dönitz’s, Hitler’s ‘appointed successor’, main task was to let the war drag on for as long as possible so as many Fascists as possible could escape into those sectors that would be under the control of the British, American or French forces.

To get an idea of Dönitz’s ideology a couple of quotes from national radio broadcasts in the early part of May 1945.

On 1st May, just after the broadcast of the news of Hitler’s death, Dönitz added the following;

‘My first task is to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy. It is to serve this purpose alone that the military struggle continues.’

For ‘Germany’ read as many as possible Nazis and Hitlerites.

A public broadcast, so these words and intentions would have been known by all the Allies’ commanders. Added to this Dönitz had never made a secret of his sympathies, being a staunch supporter of Hitler (so much so that even the normally paranoid and suspicious ‘Führer’ had designated him ‘heir apparent’), anti-Communist and anti-Semite.

(To show how correct the new Fascist leader was in his approach to surrender he was only given a 10 year prison sentence at the Nuremberg Trials (arguing the ‘just obeying orders’ defence) – then surviving till 1980 – whilst of those sent to negotiate with the western allies one (von Friedeburg) committed suicide and two (Jodl and Keitel) were hung.)

Soviet flag flies over the Reichstag, Berlin, May 1945

After the end of hostilities he wasn’t arrested in Flensburg (almost in Denmark), by British forces, until 23rd May. Why it took so long demonstrates the attitude of the western allies to the Nazis especially as, on the day the unconditional surrender was signed, he had made the following broadcast.

‘Comrades, we have been set back as thousand years in our history. Land that was German for a thousand years has now fallen into Russian hands … [but] despite today’s military breakdown, our people are unlike the Germany of 1918. They have not been split asunder. Whether we want to create another form of National Socialism or whether we conform to the life imposed upon us by the enemy, we should make sure that the unity given to us by National Socialism is maintained under all circumstances.’

But back to the machinations of the Nazis, in efforts to save as many of their kind as possible, and the collaboration in this by the top commanders of both the British and American armed forces. By Montgomery sticking to protocol (and sending the Fascist envoys to Eisenhower – the Allied Supreme Commander) and then Eisenhower giving the Nazis an extra 48 hours before borders were closed) an untold number of war criminals were allowed to escape to and then later prosper in the parts of the country controlled by the western allies. Although not breaking the letter of the agreement with the Soviets it certainly went against the spirit of those agreements. But then what do you expect?

After all the time wasting, game playing and vacillation the first unconditional surrender was signed in Rheims on 7th May. However, there was a very large and angry Red Army coming in from the east and on Stalin‘s insistence any final capitulation had to be signed in the presence of the Commander of the Red Army in Germany, Marshal Zhukov.

That unconditional surrender was signed just before midnight Central European Time on 8th May – which was already 9th May in Moscow – hence the difference in dates.

Celebrations in Moscow

News of the surrender was broadcast over the radio at around 02.00 Soviet time and people congregated in Red Square soon after. Although you rarely see pictures of the reaction to news of the end of the Great Patriotic War by the citizens of the Soviet Union Red Square was as full that day as Trafalgar Square in London or Time Square in New York.

For Motherland, for Stalin – 9th May 1945

Red Square – 9th May 1945

I have read reference to, but haven’t been able to confirm it or seen photographic proof, that there was a simple ceremony later in the day of the 9th when captured standards of the Nazi army were thrown down on to the ground in front of the Lenin Mausoleum with Soviet leaders on the podium. This did happen, but the only time I know for certain when it did was during the Victory Parade which took place on 24th June 1945.

Early on the day of the 9th May, Comrade Stalin issued the following Order of the Day;

ORDER OF THE DAY, No. 369, OF MAY 9, 1945,

Addressed to the Red Army and Navy

ON May 8, 1945, in Berlin, representatives of the German High Command signed the instrument of unconditional surrender of the German armed forces.

The Great Patriotic War which the Soviet people waged against the German-fascist invaders is victoriously concluded. Germany is utterly routed.

Comrades, Red Army men, Red Navy men, sergeants, petty officers, officers of the army and navy, generals, admirals and marshals, I congratulate you upon the victorious termination of the Great Patriotic War.

To mark complete victory over Germany, to-day, May 9, the day of victory, at 22.00 hours (Moscow time), the capital of our Motherland, Moscow, on behalf of the Motherland, shall salute the gallant troops of the Red Army, the ships and units of the Navy, which have won this brilliant victory, by firing thirty artillery salvoes from one thousand guns.

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the fighting for the freedom and independence of our Motherland!

Long live the victorious Red Army and Navy!

J. STALIN

Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Marshal of the Soviet Union

Moscow

[30 salvoes from a thousand guns – that’s quite a firework display!]

The end of the Great Patriotic War celebrated in Moscow’s Red Square, May 9, 1945

Joseph Stalin’s Victory Speech

Broadcast from Moscow at 20.00 hours (Moscow time) on May 9, 1945

COMRADES! Men and women compatriots!

The great day of victory over Germany has come. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has acknowledged herself defeated and declared unconditional surrender.

On May 7 the preliminary protocol on surrender was signed in the city of Rheims. On May 8 representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and the Supreme Command of the Soviet Troops, signed in Berlin the final act of surrender, the execution of which began at 24.00 hours on May 8.

Being aware of the wolfish habits of the German ringleaders, who regard treaties and agreements as empty scraps of paper, we have no reason to trust their words. However, this morning, in pursuance of the act of surrender, the German troops began to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops en masse. This is no longer an empty scrap of paper. This is actual surrender of Germany’s armed forces. True, one group of German troops in the area of Czechoslovakia is still evading surrender. But I trust that the Red Army will be able to bring it to its senses.

Now we can state with full justification that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of the great victory of our people over German imperialism has come.

The great sacrifices we made in the name of the freedom and independence of our Motherland, the incalculable privations and sufferings experienced by our people in the course of the war, the intense work in the rear and at the front, placed on the altar of the Motherland, have not been in vain, and have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The age-long struggle of the Slav peoples for their existence and their independence has ended in victory over the German invaders and German tyranny.

Henceforth the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace among peoples will fly over Europe.

Three years ago Hitler declared for all to hear that his aims included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the wresting from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic lands and other areas. He declared bluntly; ‘We will destroy Russia so that she will never be able to rise again.’ This was three years ago. However, Hitler’s crazy ideas were not fated to come true-the progress of the war scattered them to the winds. In actual fact the direct opposite of the Hitlerites’ ravings has taken place. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is celebrating Victory, although it does not intend either to dismember or to destroy Germany.

Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.

I congratulate you upon victory, my dear men and women compatriots!

Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our Motherland and won victory over the enemy!

Glory to our great people, the people victorious!

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle against the enemy and gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!

[Personally I would have liked Comrade Stalin to have added;

Long Live Socialism,

Long Live Marxism-Leninism.]

Soviet Victory Parade

Victory Parade, 24th June 1945

The Moscow Victory Parade of 1945 was a held by the Soviet army (with a small squad from the Polish army) after the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. It took place in the Soviet capital, mostly centring around a military parade through Red Square. The parade took place on a rainy June 24, 1945, and it was during this parade that the Nazi standards were definitely thrown on the ground in front of the Lenin Mausoleum, with Stalin and other Soviet leaders of the podium.

The fate of Nazism

Some of these standards were, for many years, inside a huge glass case on the floor of one of the rooms of the Revolution Museum in Moscow, close to the then Pravda offices and the Mayakovsky Metro station.

After 1991 this museum went through a number of changes and has little to merit a visit today (or at least it didn’t at the end of 2017). I understand that some (or all) of these standards are currently in the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow. If or how they are displayed would be interesting. When I saw them in the early 1970s I liked the idea they were in a jumble (thought well organsiaed jumble) on the floor – as they were at the Victory Parade in 1945. ‘Trophies of war’ are often displayed in the way they would have been when in the hands of their original producers – that was not the fate for the Nazi symbols in the Soviet Union.

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Central Pavilion – Tretyakov Gallery Exhibition – VDNKh – Moscow

Posted on 10/05/2025 by Michael

Pavilion No 1 and Lenin statue

More on the USSR

Central Pavilion – Tretyakov Gallery Exhibition – VDNKh

The principal pavilion in the VDNKh park has undergone a major renovation and it has been brought back (almost) to what it was like when it opened in 1954. Some of the original works have been ‘lost’ – perhaps only mislaid as a number of art works considered ‘lost’ have subsequently been found – but a number that had been distributed to other galleries have been returned.

Although it has received a fine renovation it will never be the building as it was designed. The internal decoration, and even the naming of the various halls, was all connected to the success of the October Revolution and the construction of Socialism. That has not been created with the renovation and, in many ways, feels sterile. It is, not as it was originally, a celebration of the achievements of the Soviet people, now just an art gallery providing a few reminders of what once was.

The two slide shows at the end of the post will, it is hoped, provide some idea of what it is like to be in the building. The first is of the structure and the artistic items in the building. The second is of the high relief composition created by Yevgeny Vuchetich, who also created, amongst many more, the statue of The Motherland Calls! (in Stalingrad), ‘Let us beat swords into ploughshares’ (a version of which is outside the main entrance to the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), and the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (which used to stand in the square outside the Lubyanka Building and now is on display in Park Muzeon, alongside the New Tretyakov Gallery).

Text below from ‘Legendary pavilion and birthday arches. Exploring iconic VDNKh attractions to mark exhibition’s 85th anniversary’

This year (2024), Pavilion No. 1 Central, one of the most monumental exhibition buildings, is also celebrating its 70th anniversary. It rises 97 meters above the ground and immediately amazes visitors with its grandeur.

Designed by architects Georgy Shchuko and Evgeny Stolyarov, the building was erected in 1950–1954 to replace the previous wooden structure. It did not fit into the new VDNKh architectural composition in the 1950s, so it was redesigned. Inspired by the Stalinist architecture, the new pavilion has got a spire with a star on top and the USSR coat of arms and 16 medallions featuring the coats of arms of the union republics on the façades on each side. Until 1963, the pavilion was called the Main Pavilion.

Its history lives in the building’s exterior and interior. The pavilion has nine thematic halls: one central hall and eight exhibition halls connected to it. During construction, all rooms were covered with artificial marble and decorated with pieces of art. The October Revolution Hall features ‘The Storming of the Winter Palace’ (1950s) by the artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalya, while the Constitution Hall houses four panels by different artists dedicated to the happy life of Soviet citizens. Only two of the four paintings have survived to this day.

The Storming of the Winter Palace

In the 1990s, the exhibition halls were divided into two floors by mezzanines, and the entire pavilion space was packed with kiosks. In 2000, they opened a cultural centre, the House of the Peoples of Russia, with a museum. The exhibitions were housed in the building until 2014. In the same year, the pavilion kiosks were being removed. At that time, the experts discovered a plaster high relief ‘Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace, the Soviet People!’, a great work by the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, on the wall in the Hall of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. The work had been considered irretrievably lost for 40 years. It took about a year to restore it to its former grandeur. The lost fragments have been recreated using old photographs. The 90 square meter high relief depicts more than 1,500 people, life-size figures of workers, scientists and pioneers.

Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace, the Soviet People!

In September 2014, experts made another discovery. On the basement floor of the building, experts discovered a painting entitled ‘The Second All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers and Shock Workers of 1935’, which was also considered lost. It is another monumental work: the canvas size is 6.75 X 11 meters. The painting was created by a group of artists led by Aleksandr Gerasimov in 1953. Other discoveries include a 1958 fresco depicting agricultural work.

In 2017, the work started to restore Pavilion No. 1 Central. The specialists have repaired the spire and the golden star crowning it, tinted the capitals, the coats of arms and ribbons on the façade to make them look like gold, and restored the original doors. They have also carried out a large-scale work inside the pavilion. In the central hall, they have discovered and cleared decorative semicircular arches hidden under a layer of plaster for more than 40 years. The experts have restored the ceiling lights, the columns made of scagliola and the parquet floors.

Text below from ‘The unknown Tsentralny: secrets of VDNKh Pavilion No.1’

On the right side of the October Revolution Hall, there is another painting by Pavel Sokolov-Skalya. It is called ‘Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power at the 2nd Congress of the Soviets’. It also returned to its original spot. The painting shows factory workers listening intently to the Soviet leader. Some of them applaud, others look up in surprise, as if asking, ‘Could that all be true?’ Lenin is not in the centre of the painting, but everyone is looking at him. That was the painter’s way of showing that Lenin was indeed the main person there.

Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power at the 2nd Congress of the Soviets

……

We move to the Stalin’s Constitution Hall made in pastel colors: cream and blue. It has a caisson-embossed dome with a gold star in the middle. The hall is dedicated to the happy future that revolutionaries were fighting for and that is already here.

Under the dome, along it circumference, the first lines of the Soviet anthem are written in gold: ‘United forever in friendship and labour, Our mighty republics will ever endure’. Below it are coats of arms of the 16 Soviet republics, including the Karelo-Finnish republic that still existed in 1950s.

There used to be painted panels depicting happy lives of Soviet citizens at the four sides of the hall. Only two of them survived. The first one, made by artists’ collective led by Alexander Gerasimov, shows students of all nationalities leaving Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) at Leninskiye (now Vorobyovy) Gory with books and briefcases and walking as if toward the audience, engaged in lively discussion among themselves. The high-rise University building was finished in 1953, one year before Pavilion No.1 opened to the public, and was instantly captured on the painting. It is like the people on it are alive and about to step down from the wall.

Moscow University

On the second panel by Sergey Otroshchenko smiling girls in colorful dresses and men in white linen or striped beach suits (fashionable at the time) are strolling along the Black Sea shore, among cypress trees and palaces with white colonnades.

On the Black Sea

The paintings explain the rights that Stalin’s Constitution of 1936 granted to Soviet citizens. It was considered the most progressive one in the world. It established rights to work, rest, education, etc.

Copies of the two panels that have been lost can be found on information displays. One of them, by Alexander Gerasimov, shows the launch of the Volga-Don canal: Soviet workers greet the first boat passing under the Triumph Arch surrounded by boundless fields that have to be tended and sowed. The other one, by Stepan Kirichenko, is called The Supreme Soviet Deputies in the Kremlin. On it, a crowd of men and women talk solemnly to each other while the background shows Ivan the Great’s bell tower and a Stalin era high-rise: symbols of the past and the present.

Next in our tour is the hall dedicated to Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War and the struggle for peace. There, we come to a high-relief sculpture group made of gypsum and painted bronze: Glory to the Soviet People, Flag-Bearer of Peace! It was made by Evgeny Vuchetich and his team of sculptors. It was covered by a faux wall in the 1960s, and simply bricked over later.

Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace

So restoration architects got a surprise. Life-sized figures: workers, scientists, young pioneers, seem to descend to the audience from a Stalin-era high-rise building, a water power station, the Shukhov tower, main landmarks of that time.

When they found it, sculptures were in a sad state, many pieces had been damaged. They had to be recreated based on old photographs. We think now that those characters were modelled after real people. For instance, the Uzbek man on the right, wearing a national robe and a skullcap is Nazarali Niyazov, Hero of Socialist Labour. He invented a new cotton field irrigation method. Vuchetich had made a chest-high sculpture of him before the high relief project commenced and later used that as a base for a full-height sculpture.

This version of the sculpture is different from the one created in 1954. Back then, there used to be portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels on the flag; after the de-Stalinization, however, only Lenin’s profile was left. The man and the woman up front used to hold the USSR coat of arms which was later replaced by a baby holding a dove, the symbol of peace. Specialists decided to restore the later variant.

……

In the hall known as Collective Farms, Soviet Farms — MTS, restoration artists were able to uncover a painting niche framed in creamy-white bas-reliefs: cabbages, corncobs, apples, bunches of grapes, apricots, other vegetables and fruits around the edges with cows, horses and sheep in the middle and farming machinery on top. Such bas-reliefs, probably used to decorate other walls as well, but were lost.

Dairy and Meat Farming in the USSR, a painting by Boris Shcherbakov, returned to that room after being restored. The oil-on-canvas painting depicts a herd of cattle grazing by the river, surrounded by milkmaids and farmers, barns and power lines. On top of it, there is now a recreated slogan that used to be there in 1958: ‘We will catch up to the USA in per capita production of meat, milk and butter in the coming years’.

Dairy and Meat Farming in the USSR

Shcherbakov painted it for the Tsentralny Pavilion, but it was moved to the Equestrian Manege Pavilion in the 1960s’.

There is another farming-themed panel by unknown painter on the wall there. It is a map of the USSR machine and tractor stations (MTSs) with landscapes, fields and combine harvesters in the corners.

Machine and tractor station

The map was later replaced with a more modern electronic one where lights were going on.

The electronic parts of the map were lost, so they just left the outline of the USSR on the panel.

The initial plan was to put the giant painting by Alexander Gerasimov, called ‘Stalin Pronounces the Union-Wide Agricultural Exhibition Open at the 2nd Congress of Kolkhoz Workers and Exceptional Employees’, up there. The painting is currently being restored.

That painting is important for our history. The Union-Wide Agricultural Exhibition was established after the Congress, in 1939, and new pavilions were built. But the audience has never seen the painting because it was removed right after Stalin’s death, before the pavilion opened. People believed it was lost. But in 2014, it was discovered in the basement, wrapped around a roller. Now it is undergoing a restoration’

Tretyakov Gallery – Pavilion 1 – VDNH – the official leaflet for the exhibition (in Russian)

Tretyakov Gallery. The art of the XX-XXI centuries – English translation.

Location;

In the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh)

GPS;

55.82895 N

37.63349 E

How to get there;

The easiest way to get to the park is via the Metro, to the VDNKh station on Line 6. The Central Pavilion is the highest structure in the park and is the first (permanent) building you see once you walk through the main arch.

Cost;

500 roubles

More on the USSR

The interior of the Central Pavilion

‘Glory to the standard bearer of peace’

Moscow Metro – Paveletskaya – Line 5

Posted on 24/01/2024 by Michael

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – by A Savin

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Paveletskaya – Line 5

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 03

Paveletskaya (Павеле́цкая) is a station on the Koltsevaya line and Zamotskvoretskaya line of the Moscow Metro. Opened on 1 January 1950 as part of the first segment of the fourth stage, the station is a pylon-trivault built in the style of the late 1940/early 1950s Stalinist architecture to a design by architects Nikolai Kolli and I. Kasetl. The station’s theme comes from the Paveletsky railway terminal from which trains depart towards the Volga Region. Thus agricultural influences are clearly seen, these include the square white koyelga marble columns decorated with red marble strips, flanked by marble columns with modern Ionic capitals. Bright bronze chandeliers provide lighting. The walls repeat the two tone marble, white on top, red on bottom, and the floor is laid with grey and white granite.

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 04

The station’s vestibule is built into the corner of the Garden Ring and Zemlyannoy Val, and occupies the ground floor of the building there. Inside above the escalator is a circular mosaic panel by Pavel Korin Red Square which depicts the Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral, framed by a bas-relief with typical soviet banners and floral arrangements with names of Volga cities on the sides. The vestibule has another artwork by Iosif Rabinovich, which is a mosaic on the dome of the vestibule on the theme of the permanent end to drought in the Volga.

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 01

As the station was made to be a transfer point to Paveletskaya station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line, the vestibule was built as an entrance to both stations, however as the radial station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line was undergoing reconstruction the vestibule doubled as a transfer point. A direct corridor was opened only on 30 July 1955, which saw the addition of large staircases surrounded by marble balustrades in the centre of the platform. The other major change was that initially in the end of the station was a large medallion with image of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, but during the 1961 de-Stalinization drive this was removed and instead replaced by the present artwork by Pavel Korin showing the Coat of Arms of the Soviet Union being held by a worker man and peasant woman amid floral backgrounds.