Vake Park – 01

Vake Park, Tomb of the Unknown Warrior and the Mother of the Place, Tbilisi

The War Memorial in Vake Park, on the edge of Tbilisi centre, has gone through a process of evolution (and then regressed) over the years. However, it’s not easy to find definitive information of when and who.

The park, which might have existed before the Great Patriotic War, became Victory Park in 1946 and a war memorial installed. This would seem to have been a relatively simple affair, possible just a simple ground level marble slab covering the ‘Unknown Warrior’ in front of which was an eternal flame.

Although I’m not certain of the exact chronology it seems matters remained simple until the beginning of the 1980s. Between 1981 and 1985 there was a major construction project that; involved the building of the cascade and fountains in the hill behind the flame; the installation of the 18-meter bronze statue of the Mother of the Place at the very top of the monument; the installation of the eight (of what have now been called the) Georgian Warrior Heroes, guarding the tomb; then the installation of the statue above the tomb and the resitting of the eternal flame, this time with the flame emerging from a red marble star rather than just being an open flame.

All this happened in stages as is illustrated in a photograph from the period.

Tomb of Unknown Warrior and Eternal Flame before 1981

The sculptor of the Mother of the Place and the eight Warriors were created as a package and are the work of Gogi Ochiauri. To me the ‘warriors’ seemed out of place in this park and, although many years later, someone else agreed as in 2009 they were moved and now are installed in a small garden just below the fortress in the town of Gori (the town of Stalin’s birth and the location of the Stalin Museum).

Vake Park – 03

As far as I understand the architects of the reconstruction were; V. Aleksi-Meskhishvili, O. Litanishvili, K. Nakhutsrishvili.

Zurab Tsereteli is also listed as being involved. He was a sculptor and artist who specialised in mosaics – he was responsible for, among others, the Russian-Georgian Friendship Monument at Gudauri, off the ‘military road’ from Tbilisi to the Russian border – so it’s likely he was responsible for the decoration of the fountains and cascade, the line of Georgian red and white flags at the rear of the lower pond and the numbers 1941 and 1945 – the years between which it took to defeat the Nazi hoard.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Georgian: უცნობი ჯარისკაცის საფლავი) commemorates the hundreds of thousands of Georgian soldiers who served and died in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. It’s possible the creator of this monumental sculpture was Nikola Nikolov. The monument was opened officially by Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR Eduard Shevardnadze, as part of the diamond jubilee of the republic in 1981.

Vake Park – 02

The monument used to be guarded by a ceremonial guard from the National Guard of Georgia, changing every hour in a formal ceremony, as is/was the case in many such locations throughout the Soviet Union. However, this has ceased since elements in Georgia started to court the ‘West’.

Whether the ‘eternal’ flame is ever lit now I can’t say. It’s possible it might be in operation when Georgian veterans of war and residents of the capital gather at the tomb to commemorate holidays such as Victory Day (9th May). As for the fountains those lower down might be functioning but I have my doubts of those above the level of the tomb.

This area has been neglected for years. The area around the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is still kept tidy(ish) but the waterfalls that were created by water cascading from just below the statue of the Mother of the Place high up the hill are now little more than ruins. The steps on either side of the cascades are now no longer easy to negotiate by soil brought down by the rains as there is no longer any regular maintenance.

Location;

76 Ilia Chavchavadze Avenue

GPS;

41°42′30″N

44°45′5″E

Moscow Metro – Park Pobedy – Lines 3 and 8a

Park Pobedy (Russian: Парк Победы, lit. ’Victory Park’) is a station of the Moscow Metro in the city’s Dorogomilovo District. It is on two lines: the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line and the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line. At 84 metres (276 ft) underground, according to the official figures, it is the deepest metro station in Moscow and one of the deepest in the world.

Construction began in 1986. The initial plans envisaged connections from the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line to the future Mitino–Butovskaya and the Solntsevo–Mytischinskaya Chordal lines. The former was accommodated in the station’s design, with two additional tracks included parallel to those of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line (the latter would have used a third set of track perpendicular to these). However, the 1990s financial crises ended the Chordal projects; the station opened in 2003 as a terminus of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line, and in 2008 the Strogino–Mitino extension of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line was begun from Park Pobedy. The second set of tracks saw their first use on 31 January 2014 as part of the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line’s partial service to Delovoy Tsentr.

This is the only Moscow metro station where all passengers board and alight trains in different locations. A further complication was that only the southern, or inbound, platform had an entrance vestibule, so passengers arriving at the northern, or outbound, platform had to change platforms to leave the station. This, however, changed in March 2017, when the southern platform was connected directly to the entrance by a new escalator tunnel.

At 84 metres (276 ft) underground, Park Pobedy is the deepest station in Moscow and the fifth-deepest in the world by mean depth, after Chongqing Rail Transit’s Hongyancun station, Kyiv Metro’s Arsenalna, Chongqing Rail Transit’s Hongtudi station and Saint Petersburg Metro’s Admiralteyskaya, and is the third deepest station by maximum depth, 97 metres (318 ft). It also contains the longest escalators in Europe, each one is 126 metres (413 ft) long and has 740 steps. The escalator ride to the surface takes approximately three minutes.

The two platforms, the work of architects Nataliya Shurygina and Nikolay Shumakov, are of identical design but have opposite colour schemes. The pylons of the outbound platform are faced with red marble on the transverse faces and pale grey marble on the longitudinal faces. The inbound platform is the exact reverse. The station is adorned with two large mosaics by Zurab Tsereteli depicting the 1812 French Invasion of Russia (at the end of the inbound platform) and World War II (on the outbound platform).

The station has a unique structural design. Instead of traditional cast iron tunnel lining Park Pobedy lining included steel blocks filled with concrete. It significantly reduced amount of structural metal and consequentially overall cost of construction.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Park Pobedy – 02

Park Pobedy

Date of opening;

6th May 2003

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architects of the underground part

N. Shurygina and N. Shumakov

Park Pobedy was opened on May 6, Day of George the Victorious, patron saint of the Russian host. It is the 165th station of the Moscow Metro – first of the new, already the sixth or seventh, generation of stations. It includes a great number of design, engineering, and technical innovations along with architectural novelty and freshness. It was constructed with modern tunnel machinery.

As a result, an enormous complex of two stations and two underground pavilions was constructed..

The stations are parallel and lie at the same level, 64 m deep. Trains of Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line arrive to station 1 but depart from station 2. The station halls are elegant, refined, and simple. Compact, upper opening pylons are separated by wider passageways. There is a wide cornice, hiding lamps, over the pylons along the whole station. There are additional ceiling square lamps on the lower part of the cornice, which reflect (when switched on) in the smooth surface of the floor. The level of polishing of decorative stones is higher than elsewhere in the Moscow Metro.

The pylons and walls of station 2 are faced with light marble, ranging from white to bluish-grey. The walls of the passageways and plinths are with unique marble breccia, from yellow-orange to red with very good-looking combination of fragments of different shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. The ceiling is covered with the same smoothly polished plates of red and light-grey granite. Station 1 is the mirror image of station 2. White is replaced by yellow-orange and vice versa. The ceilings are chessboards of black gabbro and light-grey marble. The stations are thematic – the second one is

devoted to the Patriotic War of 1812 and the first one is to the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. The themes are manifested with great striking panels. The panel of station 2 is in the eastern end, while the panel of station 1 is in the western end. They are the unique works in the Moscow Metro. They are unique in technique (colour enamel on metal) and style. The author of both panels is Z. Tsereteli.

The theme of the western panel is Victory in 1945. It shows the monument of a liberator-soldier

in the Treptov Park on the background of the Kremlin. A triumphant throng is around. Order of Victory is above and the ribbon of Guard is below. Very interesting is the effect inherent only in

the technique of enamel. White colour appears very bright. So, the first thing that one see looking

at the panel is white eyes and teeth in slightly opened mouths. The theme of the eastern panel is Victory in 1812. It shows top officers of the Russian army, which was victorious over Napoleon – M. Kutuzov surrounded by major associates. It is neither the meeting in Fili (no Bagration) nor the meeting after occupation of Paris (no Emperor). It could be the meeting before the Borodino Battle but the generals trample on thrown French standards. It seems the painter has pictured a summoning of the saint army of Christ in the heavens. There are massive benches of marble with large marble balls on the arms located on a small pedestal along the walls.

The stations are connected by bridges through the wall between them. The passageways are also faced with very good looking marble breccia of pastel colours, ranging from cream-coloured to soft pink. The stations are connected with the ground by the longest escalators in Moscow (126 m, 740 steps), which end in the two-level underground hall.

Vestibule of Park Pobedy

This vestibule is an original underground architectural ensemble consisted of three halls. There are

wide doors decorated with a granite panel with metal letters ‘Park Pobedy’ on the side at the corner of the L-type underpass crossing Kutuzovsky Prospect and Ulitsa Barklaya. Behind the doors, there is a wide passageway of white marble, which is cut by the long axis with square columns. The passageway leads to the ticket hall – a rectangular low hall. Behind the turnstiles, a staircase goes down turning twice at right angles and three short escalators end. The staircase leads to the greater escalator hall whose ceiling is supported by columns faced with orange marble breccia. Their cup-shaped metallic caps hide lamps. The vestibule is illuminated with five very large and deep coffers made in the suspension ceiling. The walls are faced with orange marble with an edging of white marble above.

The text above comes from Moscow Metro 1935-2005.

Park Pobedy – 03

The station at Park Pobedy really falls out of my idea of recording the Socialist Realist art on the Moscow (and Leningrad) metro. However, even some of those stations most recently added to the network have interesting designs, even so many years after the end of Socialism in the USSR (which I consider to be the mid-1950s) the tradition of making the public space something that is attractive to the users still persists.

Many of the earlier stations have references to either the Civil War (1918-1921) – following the October Revolution – or the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 and Park Pobedy follows a military theme as it is the station that serves the park that surrounds Moscow’s Museum to the Great Patriotic War.

As is suggested in the Wikipedia write up above this station is not the easiest to navigate for a first timer. I must have been going down the wrong escalators as I couldn’t find the mosaic that depicts events from the Great Patriotic War. There are a few pictures of the mosaic about the war against the Napoleonic imperialists – hopefully images from the other mosaic will be added in the not too distant future.

The images that are united by the orange and black Saint George ribbon (which was used on a par with the Hammer and Sickle in installations commemorating Victory Day (9^th May) in 2024) line the tunnel sides of the entrance from the street at Victory Park (Park Pobedy) itself. Not sure if these are permanent or were installed for the 9^th May Victory Day celebrations.