We are together in the fight against fascism – Park Pobeda – Moscow

Posted on 02/05/2025 by Michael

: We are together in the fight against fascism

We are together in the fight against fascism

This particular sculpture, impressive as it is, poses and challenge to me when being asked ‘What is a piece of Socialist Realist art?’ Art can be realist without having any reference to socialism even though it might represent a worker or workers sympathetically. But what takes one piece of work from a mere representation of a person or an event to a different level, to imbue it with a meaning that is over and above what is merely in front of the viewer.

My simple interpretation of that has been the intention of the artist at the time of the work’s creation, the intended audience and what was hoped would be achieved by it’s presentation to the public. But these intentions and hopes are not concrete. They can exist in one period of time but can just disappear if (and unfortunately) or when the social system reverts to what it was pre-Revolution – as happened in the Soviet Union (and all the other post-Socialist societies).

But if, as it did, Revisionism took control soon after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 can those works of art produced after that date until 1991 still be considered works of Socialist Realism? They were still produced for the same audience as were the target in the 1930s and 1940s but for a different purpose, after the mid-50s the aim was to project an image of being in favour of revolutionary change whilst at the same time doing everything practically to avoid such a transformation occurring.

The history (or more accurately to say, its genesis) of this particular monument is quite unique and exceptional, fitting in more with the political agenda of the Russian Government at the time rather than a desire to remind future generations of the sacrifice made by those during the Great Patriotic War or the desire to foment a willingness of self sacrifice amongst a population who are attempting to build Socialism.

On 19th December 2009 a Soviet era monument, the Kutaisi Glory Memorial, which had been unveiled in 1981, was blown up by Georgian fascists under the cloak of ‘nationalism’ and ‘reconstruction’ of the city. The location of the monument was to be the site of the new Parliament building.

The original plan was for the monument to be destroyed on 21st December (coincidentally the anniversary of Stalin’s birth) and a mass demonstration had been planned to oppose this desecration of the memory of all those Soviet citizens (including those from Georgia) who had died in the fight against fascism. The decision the destruction should take place two days earlier than originally planned is considered to have made to circumvent any opposition. Because the task was rushed it was botched with pieces of concrete flying all over the place, some of it killing a woman and her eight year old daughter who lived close by.

But the destruction of this monument also has to be taken in the context of what was happening in the region at the time. This was just after the short war between Russia and Georgia, in 2008, over the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – one started by Georgia under the encouragement of the US. This was all part of a strategy to surround (with hostile NATO states) and eventually dismember the Russian Federation – which had been the intention of the neo-liberals in the west since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

For that reason the demolition of the memorial was more than an attack on the memory of all those who died fighting fascism it was part of the present war against Russia. This created a sense of urgency, an advert for the commission was circulated and by July 2009 there were already six maquettes of the proposed statue to be erected on a site in Park Pobeda (Victory Park) in Moscow. These designs were on display in the Great Patriotic War Museum, awaiting a popular vote.

At the same time the maquettes were on display in Moscow Hilary Clinton was visiting Tbilisi, adding fuel to the conflict and mouthing her meaningless phrases about the US in support of national liberation of those countries ‘occupied’ and vowing never ending US support for ‘the fight for freedom’. Similar declarations, before and subsequently, ultimately led to the situation we have in the Ukraine at the moment and have led to continued efforts by the US to destabilise other countries in eastern Europe – cut short recently by Trump’s rethink on how to allocate resources to maintain the US’s ‘full spectrum dominance’ in the region.

So a somewhat unique genesis of a World War II monument.

The design of the monument follows many, well established tropes for such statues. In general it depicts the events surrounding the Fall of Berlin, the occupation of the fascist liar by Soviet troops, the raising of the Red Flag over the Reichstag and the first ever Victory Day Parade in Red Square in Moscow.

A common theme of the three, separate components of the statue is the dominance of Soviet over Nazi weaponry, imagery and culture. At the very top two Soviet soldiers are in the process of raising the Red Flag, one of the soldiers pointing his weapon at the pile of German weapons that lay discarded on the ground. Amongst this pile of weapons and debris is a toppled German eagle. We’ve won, you’ve lost!

On the left hand side we have a group of Soviet soldiers who are greeting others, unseen, as they stand beside the burnt out dome of the Reichstag building. Under their feet and before them, discarded on the ground, are Nazi weapons, ruined machinery, barbed wire, destroyed Nazi standards (with the swastika broken) and on top of all this detritus a dove of peace is in the process of alighting.

On the right hand side we have the depiction (the only example I’ve seen in a monumental form) of an episode that took place during the first Victory Parade where Soviet solders entered Red Square with dozens of captured Nazi banners, marched to the Lenin Mausoleum, upon which Comrade Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership were standing to review the parade, and there the troops threw the Nazi standards down into the mud at the door of Lenin’s resting place. In the background of the monument can be seen the Spasskaya Tower and the building that used to be the Lenin Museum but which is now the Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812.

However, there are two aspects which differentiate this monument from those that would have been created even in the Revisionist period of the Soviet Union. And both these are on the right hand side. Amongst the group of soldiers cheering there is one face that is looking out directly at the viewer whilst all the rest are looking to the front. Also, tucked behind the folds of the flag on that side is an incongruous figure on a horse. This figure is long haired and bearded and is totally out of place. A Christ figure? And I couldn’t work out what he has in his hand.

At the rear of the monument are two plaques. One explaining the reason for its existence and the other with the names of those involved in its creation.

Translation of the plaques on the rear of the monument. (Machine translated so apologies for any eccentricities.)

Monument to the Unity of the Peoples of the Soviet Union who fought and won together in the Great Patriotic War.

Symbolising the inviolability of monuments to victorious soldiers

It was opened in 2010 in memory of the Glory Memorial which was barbarously destroyed in the city of Kutaisi on December 19, 2009

Built with folk remedies

Sculptors/Architects; – the names listed. However, I don’t know the exact level of their involvement but assume that Shcherbakov was the principal sculptor.

S A Shcherbakov

A N Kovalchuk

I N Voskresenskiy

B V Perfiliev

V V Seliverstov

A A Ustenko

E H Zhivotinsky

G J Gattenberger

In the centre of the concave, stone wall set back a few metres from the statue the high structure pays homage to the monument that was blown up in Tbilisi. The large letters (in Russian) declare the name of the ensemble – ‘We are together in the fight against fascism’. Lower down and on either side are smaller images of other memorials from other Soviet Republics. I can identify Mother Armenia in Yerevan, the original monument in Kutaisi and the Motherland Calls! in Stalingrad but have problems with the others.

On either side of the installation stand two pillars upon which is place a horizontal, large, golden star.

Closest public transport;

Park Pobeda Metro station

Location;

In Victory Park (Park Pobeda), Moscow

GPS;

55.72845 N

37.50152 E

How to get there:

From the metro station head towards the obelisk and main museum but take a path off to the left which goes beside the church. Keep on this track as it goes past the entrance to the Military Weapons Museum (on your left) and then rises as it skirts around the left of the principal, circular structure. The monument is on the left hand side of the track.

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Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow

Posted on 20/08/2024 by Michael

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 01

More on the USSR

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow

The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute (Russian: Институт Маркса — Энгельса — Ленина), established in Moscow in 1919 as the Marx–Engels Institute (Russian: Институт К. Маркса и Ф. Энгельса), was a Soviet library and archive attached to the Communist Academy. The institute was later attached to the governing Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and served as a research centre and publishing house for officially published works of Marxist thought. From 1956 to 1991, the institute was named the Institute of Marxism–Leninism (Russian: Институт марксизма-ленинизма).

The Marx–Engels Institute gathered unpublished manuscripts by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and other leading Marxist theoreticians as well as collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals related to the socialist and organized labour movements. By 1930, the facility’s holdings included more than 400,000 books and journals and more than 55,000 original and photocopy documents by Marx and Engels alone, making it one of the largest holdings of socialist-related material in the world.

In November 1931 the Marx–Engels Institute was merged with the larger Lenin Institute (established in 1923) to form the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute.

The institute was the coordinating authority for the systematic organization of documents released in the multi-volume editions of the Collected Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and numerous other official publications.

The institute included an academic staff which engaged in research on historical and topical themes. The institute included sections devoted to the history of the First and Second Internationals, the history of Germany, the history of France, the history of Great Britain, the history of the United States, the history of the countries of Southern Europe and the history of international relations. Also included were sections working in philosophy, economics, political science and the history of socialism in Slavic countries.

The main research orientation of the facility was towards history rather than other social sciences. By 1930, of the 109 employed by the Marx–Engels Institute, fully 87 were historians.

During its first decade, the institute published an array of books by the likes of Georgi Plekhanov, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, David Ricardo and Adam Smith. The publication of the anticipated multi-volume works of Marx and Engels was started at this time (1927/28) in the form of two editions: An untranslated, complete edition (the first Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), which was to comprise 42 volumes (12 of which were published until 1935 – then this project was discontinued), and a first Russian edition in 28 volumes (Sochineniya1), the 33 bound books of which were completely published by 1947.

The institute also published two regular academic journals, Arkhiv Karla Marksa i Friderikha Engel’sa (Archive of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) and Letopis’ marksizma (Marxist Chronicle).

The Lenin Institute began as an independent archival project, established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1923 to gather manuscripts with a view to publication of a scholarly edition of Vladimir Lenin’s collected works. This work was accomplished through the publication of a thick periodical called Leninskii sbornik (Lenin Miscellany), some 25 numbers of which were published between 1924 and 1933. The institute eventually became under the jurisdiction of the Central Committee as a department.

The mission of the Lenin Institute was expanded in 1924 by the 13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party to include the ‘study and dissemination of Leninism among the broad masses within and outside the party’, namely an enlarged purview which rendered obsolete the previously existing Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the History of the Communist Party. In 1928, Istpart was dissolved and its functions fully absorbed by the Lenin Institute.

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 1931

The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute was subsequently renamed multiple times. In 1952, the facility’s formal attachment to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was formally noted with the expanded moniker Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт Маркса—Энгельса—Ленина при ЦК КПСС). The name of deceased Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was added in 1953, with the institute formally becoming the Marx–Engels–Lenin–Stalin Institute of the CC CPSU.

This remained in place until the onset of de-Stalinization following the Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. At this point, the name changed to Institute of Marxism–Leninism of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт марксизма-ленинизма при ЦК КПСС). During this period, beginning in the 1950s, the institute was involved in the realization of major projects such as the publication of a second Russian edition of the collected works of Marx and Engels (Sochineniya2 with 39 basic and 11 supplementary volumes) and the comprehensive fifth edition of Lenin’s Collected Works (55 volumes). From the 1970s onwards, it also participated with foreign partners in the publication of the English-language Marx/Engels Collected Works (50 volumes) and the second Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe.

The name Institute of Marxism–Leninism remained unaltered for nearly 35 years, when turmoil in the Soviet Union brought about a name change to Institute of the Theory and History of Socialism of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт теории и истории социализма ЦК КПСС). The institute formally ceased to exist in November 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union, with the institute’s library and archive transferred to a new entity called the Russian Independent Institute for Social and National Problems.

The Central Party Archive of the institute was placed under the control of the Russian Ministry of Culture and eventually emerged as the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI).

Text above from Wikipedia.

When the building was first opened the main entrance was facing Tverskaya Square, where there is now a statue of VI Lenin. At some time later, I assume when the building was expanded, the main entrance was moved to the new part of the building facing Ulitsa Bol’shaya Dmitrovka. At that time the bas relief images of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin were commissioned to decorate the new façade of the building.

But they are not just simple bas reliefs of the great Marxist theoreticians. As part of the image aspects of their work was also included.

The three images are made of a bronze bas-relief and are on the first floor (UK designation) – above the main door and the glass frontages on either side of the entrance. There’s symmetry here as the space taken by the sculpture is exactly the same size as the space below. Each sector is bounded by a white border which contrasts with the beige of the building itself and which gives the three individuals their own space. From left to right they are;

Karl Marx

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 02

The image of Marx is based on various photographs that were taken in his later years, with long hair and a bushy beard. This is in the centre of the rectangle. In the bottom left hand corner is a small Greek Doric column. On top of the column there are a number of books but only one has a title, and that is Marx’s seminal work ‘Capital’. There appears to be a mask being crushed under the weight of Marx’s image and this seems to be making a reference to one of Marx’s ideas that the work of philosophers is not just to interpret the world (which it had been in the past) – but to change it.

In the bottom right hand corner there’s the image of a blacksmith. He’s wearing the blacksmith’s leather apron, stands behind a large anvil and is holding the the shaft of his hammer – the head of which is resting on the anvil – in his left hand and his right arm is raised in the air from which flutters the workers’ Red Flag.

Above the blacksmith (on the upper right hand side) a chimney rises to the sky, belching out smoke. This represents the industrialisation which Marx said created the proletariat, the wage slaves of capitalism.

Towards the top of the left hand side there is a group of four armed men, marching forward in unison. They look as if they are in a line going up a hill, their weapons pointing towards their adversary. By their hats they look as if they are from different epochs and different countries. This represents that the unified workers, over time and space, can only achieve their liberation through armed struggle – something which Marx started to stress following the defeat of the workers during the Paris Commune of 1871.

Across the top, cutting through the smoke coming from the factory chimney, is a banner with the words (in Cyrillic) ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’ – the very last words of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848).

Frederick Engels

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 03

The image of Engels is as can be seen, in Moscow, in the statue outside the main entrance to Kropotkinskaya Metro station.

In the bottom left hand corner we only see the two hands of a worker pulling asunder a chain. This is reference to ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains’, the second to last sentence in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which Engels co-wrote with his comrade Karl Marx. The backdrop to this image appears to be part of a machine and above this image there appears to be a collection of factory chimneys belching out smoke, reinforcing the idea it is industrial workers who will liberate humanity from oppression and exploitation.

The right hand side of the panel is dominated by a collection of images of workers making a revolution, specifically the Paris Commune – as was referenced in the panel of Marx. A lot is happening here in a small space.

First we have the full length image of a young woman, standing tall and upright, the hem of her long dress like a banner as she marches forward, her long hair also flowing behind her. In her right hand she holds a long sword which appears to be attached to a triangular banner with the words (in Latin letters) ‘Vive la Commune’ – ‘Long Live the Commune’. She holds the other end of the banner taut in her left hand. This female image originates much more from the (bourgeois) French Revolution of the 18th century rather than the Workers’ Commune of 1871, but it is the Spirit of Revolution that is being invoked here.

Above the banner we see little more than the heads of two male figures. The first is a member of the Parisian National Guard (we know that by his hat) and he is carrying a long rifle, with bayonet fixed, as he marches forward. Behind him is another man who is looking backwards as he encourages others to join the fight with his outstretched hand motioning them to follow the attacking forces. This is a common trope of Socialist Realist imagery. This is seen in many of the lapidars in Albania, for example, and also in Moscow itself on the monument to Lenin and the October Revolution opposite the Okysbrskaya Metro station.

The final part of this small tableau is a cannon. Only a part of the wheel and the barrel is seen, and the cannon has just been fired as it’s smoke merges with the smoke from the factory chimneys on the other side of the panel.

Why this emphasis on the 1871 Paris Commune in the imagery of the first two panels, those of Marx and Engels? The answer to that question is in what we see in the third panel, that of VI Lenin.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 04

The images surrounding Lenin’s in this panel revolve around the events of the October Revolution of 1917 – and here is where we get the connection to the Paris Commune. If there was a ‘textbook’ for the Russian Revolution then it was Lenin’s pamphlet ‘The State and Revolution’, first published in August 1917. In preparation for this seminal work on a proletarian revolution Lenin studied all he could about the Paris Commune, its successes and its failures. Whilst in no way detracting from the huge cost the Parisian workers paid in their defeat (an estimated 40,000 were killed in the final week of the revolution) for daring to challenge capitalism’s right to rule it’s true to say that without the Paris Commune there wouldn’t have been the October Revolution – or at least one in Russia that was successful.

So what do we have here? We know we are seeing events from 1917 as that number cuts diagonally across the corner on the top left hand side. At the bottom, below the date, we have three, armed workers, marching forward in step. The first is a sailor (making reference to the role that the navy and especially those sailors from the cruiser Aurora – whose forward gun fired the signal for the start of the assault on the Winter Palace). Beside him is a woman revolutionary, with a rifle slung across her shoulder, expressing the idea that women – as in the Paris Commune – were prepared to take up arms for the cause of the workers. Finally, the third figure is that of a peasant in the uniform of a soldier in the Tsarist Army. His inclusion emphasises that the revolution was one of unified workers and peasants.

Above then, and below the year 1917, are two pamphlets with their subject written in Cyrillic. The top one is the Decree on Peace and the lower the Decree on Land. These were the very first decrees of the new Soviet power – and they were both part of the commitment the Bolsheviks made to the Russian population in the build up to the Revolution. The war (what later became known as the First Word War) had taken a heavy toll on the Russian people and they were sick of fighting for the moribund and corrupt Tsarist autocracy. The war ended as quickly as it took to transmit the decree to the frontlines.

In a predominantly peasant country the issue of land ownership was paramount and this was another promise that the Bolsheviks had made to the people. Taking all land under State control meant that the Party could later develop the system of State and Collective Farms and improve the lot of the peasants but it also created the conditions for the country to industrialise.

Both these decrees came into force the day after the Revolution, that is the 8th November (26th October Old Style), and can be read in ‘First decrees of Soviet Power’.

Above the decrees is an image of the sculpture – of a horse drawn chariot of the angel of Victory, with references to the Roman Empire – on top of the triumphal arch of the General Staff building of the Winter Palace complex. (This sculpture commemorates the defeat of the Napoleonic imperialist invaders of 1812 and is the work of Stepan Pimenov and Vasily Demuth-Malinovsky.) In 1917 the Winter Palace was the location of the Provisional Government and it was this building – amongst others in Petrograd – that was stormed when the signal was sent out from the nearby Cruiser Aurora.

Running across virtually the whole of the top of the panel are the words (in Cyrillic) ‘All power to the Soviets!’ This was another of the principal slogans of the Bolsheviks at the time of the Revolution, taking power from the bourgeoisie and placing it in the hands of organised workers and peasants.

The images on the right hand side move matters into the future. There’s a peasant working the land and a worker wielding a pick – and above them is a number of smoke belching factory chimneys, representing the later collectivisation and industrialisation of the country.

In the bottom right hand corner are three books on the spine of which is the name of Lenin, in Russian, English and French, here demonstrating the universality of Lenin’s ideas and theories.

To date I have no information on the artist or the date these images were created. I would estimate the 1970s (but that’s only a guess) and represent late Socialist Realist as although nominally a Socialist society reversals in the construction of Socialism begun in the mid 1950s continued apace.

Location;

Ulitsa Bol’shaya Dmitrovka, 15, Moscow

GPS;

55.762851º N

37.613168º E

More on the USSR

The Great Patriotic War Museum and War Memorial – Gori

Posted on 15/08/2024 by Michael

Gori Great Patriotic War Museum – 01

The Great Patriotic War Museum and War memorial – Gori

The Museum

This is quite a small museum and considering the huge numbers of people – especially during the tourist season – who go to Gori for the Stalin Museum (only a couple of hundred metres up the road) doesn’t get many visitors at all.

For many of those who do go there it might appear somewhat underwhelming as it doesn’t contain a lot of artefacts. However, I think that’s the ‘problem’ of the visitor not the museum – but also a ‘problem’ of which I myself am guilty.

War museums in the west – or certainly in the UK – are devoted to the instruments of war, the weapons that have been used through the ages as technology makes the task of killing someone ‘easier’ and more sophisticated. Yes, there will be exhibitions, normally ‘special’ ones that complement/supplement the permanent display, that place a greater emphasis on those who were fighting or were caught up in the conflict but the norm is to display what does the killing.

I think I’ve come to understand – and it took the visit to a number of museums in various part of what was the Soviet Union – that Soviet museums of the Great Patriotic War were primarily dedicated to those who fought and died. The museums were more like memorials to the dead than celebrations of what was used to kill them.

Although the museum in Gori is small this is even more evident in a couple of the larger museums I have visited recently – the first being the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow and the second the Museum to the Battle of Stalingrad in Stalingrad/Volgograd. Both those museums have military equipment on show but the vast majority of the items on display are much more personal, items that the soldiers and civilians carried as well as many photographs of those who fought and died.

At the heart of both those museums is a virtual shrine to those who gave their lives for the Soviet Motherland to which visiting groups of school children, military personnel – as well as many other Russian visitors – treat as a sort of pilgrimage to pay homage and thanks to those who died in the fight against Nazism. Even though the Soviet Union collapsed many years ago the Russian people still understand that the Great Patriotic War was an ‘existential’ (a word that has probably become overused in recent times) struggle for the country. Defeat wouldn’t have just meant losing the war, it would have resulted in the end of the Russian people as a nation.

And the museum in Gori mirrors that but on a much smaller scale. When it comes to exhibits there more in the way of photographs, of scenes from the various battle fronts but also of Georgians (and, I must assume, those from Gori and the surrounding area) who died in the war. Although there was no fighting on the territory of Georgia as such around 350,000 Georgians lost their lives on other fronts and in other battles against the Nazis. In this museum some of those are remembered with their photographs displayed in the corner of the museum.

Gori Great Patriotic War Museum – 02

There are, however, other items of interest for a visitor. These include;

a full length statue of Joseph Vassarionovich Djughashvili (Joseph Stalin) standing at the bottom on the single room which is the museum. Not the best of likenesses but one to add to those searching for his statues in Gori, complementing those in a near-by park and the railway station. (Both those a more accurate likeness, I think.);
a number of interesting banners from different regiments and battalions, some with images of VI Lenin and/or JV Stalin. Some are not in the best of condition but not surprising considering the ferocity of the battles;

Gori Great Patriotic War Museum – 03

a collection of Nazi insignia, in display cases on the floor – emulating the fate of the Nazi banners thrown at the feet of Stalin, and in front of the Lenin Mausoleum, in Red Square on the first Victory Day in 1945;
a small statue depicting homage to the Red Flag.

The War Memorial

Great Patriotic War Memorial – Gori

Gori’s War Memorial, to the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, is located in Hero’s Square – which is the small garden in front of the main entrance to the museum.

The memorial begins just to the right of the museum entrance. Here there’s a plaque, in Georgian, with an inscription which quotes part of the poem by the Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze – ‘Let the Banners Wave on High’ (დროშები ჩქარა):

‘დიდება ხალხისთვის წამებულ რაინდებს,

ვინც თავი გასწირა, ვინც სისხლი დაღვარა.

მათ ხსოვნას სამშობლო სანთლებად აინთებს’

‘Glory to those with souls devoid of fear,
Who for the people’s cause did bravely die…
Their names shine bright like torches in the night…’

Then there is ceramic mural which takes the form of an ‘L’ shape, with a small part on the wall of the museum and then the longer side being on a wall that runs the length of the square. On here you see depicted both figures in the land army as well as those from the naval armed forces. As stated above no battles actually took place on Georgian soil but many Georgians did fight and die on the various fronts and those from Gori are memorialised inside the museum.

Georgian Socialist Realist art, especially when it comes to murals and bas reliefs, is very distinctive. The same can be said of the statuary of the period. In both those art forms the rounds are exaggerated as are the straight edges of the human form. This can be seen here in Gori but is also demonstrated on the Mother of Georgia – Kartlis Deda statue in Tbilisi; the wall panels next to the Bodorna Hydroelectric plant (along the ‘military road’ which goes up to the Russian border at Kazbegi); and the mural on the side of the telephone exchange in Tskaltubo.

The specific Georgia style gives the figures an almost comic aspect. This is enhanced by the fact that the murals, at least the majority I’ve seen, are made up of smaller sections (whether ceramic or stone) and the spaces between the blocks give the impression that the figures are string puppets where there are gaps between the joints.

The first group of three, on the museum wall, are sailors and the ’rounding’ of the figures makes them out to be burly, muscle bound bruisers and the exaggerated cheeks bones make them out to be the picture of health.

This style also appears to make the figures less serious in their demeanour. In the first group along the long wall, nearest the museum, we have a group of sailors marching in formation. Some of them are looking at the viewer and seem happy that they are going off to war.

In the centre of the long wall (now partially obscured by an Christian cross, part of the monument to the Russo-Georgian War of 2008) is a group of three soldiers, giving a clenched fist salute – the sign of victory.

The Soviet symbol of the the Hammer and Sickle appears underneath the dates 1941-1945 (the duration of the war) and stars surround the figures of the left side of the wall.

Everything changes on the right of the dates where we see a celebration of peace, a child being protected from its fall by open, outstretched hands with images of doves flying around behind.

A few metres in front of the central part of the long bas-relief is a small stone circle that, at one time, would have housed the Eternal Flame. When this ceased to be in use I don’t know but seems to represent a denial of the sacrifice of Georgians in the struggle against Nazism in the 1940s – because it was the Soviet Union for which they fought. This is also reflected in the manner in which the War Memorial in Vake Park, in Tbilisi, has been allowed to go to rack and ruin.