The sculptor Vuchetich embodied the nobility of the Red Army soldiers in stone
70 years ago, on May 8, 1949, in Berlin's Treptower Park, a grand opening of the monument to the soldiers of the Soviet army who died a heroic death during the storming of the capital of the Third Reich took place. Izvestia recalls how it was.
In Europe, there are hundreds of monuments to Russian soldiers-liberators - both of the Napoleonic era and the times of the world wars. The most famous and, perhaps, the most expressive of them stands in Berlin, in Treptower Park. He is recognizable at first glance - a Red Army soldier with a girl in his arms, trampling on a broken swastika - a symbol of defeated fascism. The soldier who endured the main hardships of World War II and conquered the world for Europe. One can speak pompously about his feat, but the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, who saw the war through the eyes of a soldier and an officer, created a casual, humane image of a soldier.
During the Great Patriotic War, monumental art was treated with special attention. After the liberation of Novgorod in January 1944, our soldiers saw fragments of the monument "Millennium of Russia" in the ancient Detinets. Retreating, the Nazis blew it up. The restoration work began without delay - and the multi-figured composition was restored long before the Victory, by November 1944. Because symbols are just as important during war as guns.
The sculptor-monumentalist Evgeny Vuchetich. Photo: RIA Novosti / Vasily Malyshev.
Voroshilov's plan
The most suitable place for a military burial was chosen - the oldest public park in the German capital. There was already a Soviet war memorial in Berlin - in the Great Tiergarten. But Treptower Park became the most magnificent Soviet army memorial located outside our country.
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The idea of creating the memorial belonged to Klim Voroshilov. The "first red officer" knew that thousands of Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin were buried there, and offered to honor the memory of the heroes of the last battles of the great war.
However, initially it was not an ordinary soldier who had to stand on the pedestal, but Joseph Stalin personally. The Generalissimo would tower over Berlin with a globe in his hands - a symbol of a saved world. This is approximately how the future memorial was seen by the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich in 1946, when the military council of the group of Soviet occupation forces in Germany announced a competition for the design of the Berlin monument to the liberation soldiers.
Vuchetich was a soldier himself. Not the rear, the real one. From the last battle he was carried out half-dead. For the rest of his life, due to the consequences of the concussion, his speech changed. All his life after that he imprinted the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War in stone and bronze. Vuchetich was sometimes accused of gigantomania. He really thought big, although he knew a lot about chamber sculpture. The sculptor understood the Great Patriotic War as a confrontation on a universal scale - and over several decades he created a monumental epic of our time. It served the memory of the heroic deed at the front with the same selflessness with which the ancient icon painters served God, and the Renaissance artists - the idea of human greatness.
Vuchetich got down to business after talking with Voroshilov. But the "Stalin-centered" concept of the monument did not inspire him.
- I was dissatisfied. We must look for another solution. And then I remembered Soviet soldiers who, during the storming of Berlin, carried German children out of the zone of fire. He rushed to Berlin, visited the soldiers, met with the heroes, made sketches and hundreds of photographs - and a new solution matured, - the sculptor recalled.
Vuchetich was not an opponent of Stalin. But as a true artist, he was afraid to fall under the yoke of a template. With his heart, Vuchetich understood that the protagonist of the war was still a soldier, one of the millions who died and survived who had gone from Stalingrad and Moscow to Prague and Berlin. Wounded, buried in a foreign land, but undefeated.
As it turned out, Stalin understood this too. But the main authors of the monument were the fighters themselves, the heroes of the last battles.
During street fighting in Stalingrad, 1942. Photo: RIA Novosti / Georgy Zelma.
Chopping the chains
The Soviet fighters had many reasons for revenge. But few of them reached the point of blind revenge - and the punishment for such was severe. The monument was supposed to show: the Soviet soldier did not reach Berlin in order to bring Germany to its knees and enslave the German people. He has a different goal - to destroy Nazism and end the war.
On April 30, 1945, Guard Sergeant Nikolai Masalov, in the midst of a battle on the banks of the Landwehr Canal, heard a child's cry.
“Under the bridge, I saw a three-year-old girl sitting next to her murdered mother. The baby had blond hair, slightly curled at the forehead. She kept pulling at her mother's belt and calling out: "Mutter, mutter!" There is no time to think about it. I am a girl in an armful - and back. And how she will shout! I am on the move, and so, and so I persuade: shut up, they say, otherwise you will open me. Here, indeed, the Nazis began to shoot. Thanks to ours - they helped us out, opened fire from all barrels,”Masalov said. He survived, received the Order of Glory III degree for his exploits in the Berlin battles. Marshal Vasily Chuikov wrote about his heroism in his memoirs. The sergeant met Vuchetich, he even made sketches from him.
But Masalov was not alone. A similar feat was accomplished by Trifon Andreyevich Lukyanovich from Minsk. His wife and daughters were killed by German bombs. Father, mother and sister were executed by the invaders for contact with the partisans. Lukyanovich fought in Stalingrad, was wounded more than once, he was declared unfit for military service, but the sergeant by hook or by crook returned to the front. At the end of April 1945, he took part in the battles in the western part of Berlin - on Eisenstrasse, near Treptower Park. During the battle, I heard the cry of a child and rushed across the road towards the destroyed house.
The writer and military correspondent of Pravda Boris Polevoy, a witness to the feat, recalled: “Then we saw him with a child in his arms. He sat under the protection of the rubble of the wall, pondering how he should continue to be. Then he lay down and, holding the child, moved back. But now it was hard for him to move on his bellies. The burden prevented crawling on the elbows. Now and then he lay down on the asphalt and calmed down, but, having rested, moved on. Now he was close, and it was clear that he was covered in sweat, his hair, wet, crawled into his eyes, and he could not even throw them off, because both hands were busy."
And then a bullet from a German sniper stopped his path. The girl clung to her sweat-soaked tunic. Lukyanovich managed to hand her over to the reliable hands of his comrades. The girl survived and remembered her savior for the rest of her life. And Trifon Andreevich died a few days later. The bullet interrupted the artery, the wound was fatal.
A woman with a bouquet in front of a statue of a Soviet soldier at the war memorial in Treptower Park, Berlin.
Polevoy published an essay about the hero in Pravda. There is a memorial plaque in Berlin in memory of the senior sergeant of the Red Army, who at the cost of his life "saved a German child from SS bullets."
And there were many such feats in the battles for Berlin! In the words of Tvardovsky, "there is always a guy like that in every company, and in every platoon." Wherever there were battles, each of them defended the Motherland. And - humanity, which they tried to eradicate in the "millennial Reich".
Vuchetich knew both Masalov and Lukyanovich. He created a generalized image of a soldier saving a child. A soldier who defended both his country and the future of Germany.
In our time, when in the West, and sometimes in our country, legends about the "atrocities of the Soviet occupiers" in Germany are being replicated, it is triple important to remember these exploits. It is a shame that we are giving up our positions to falsifiers - and the voice of historical truth in such a politicized context sounds quieter. Filmmakers could remind about the heroism, about the philanthropy of those who fought for Berlin. Only you will need not only talent and tact, but also a subtle understanding of that time, that generation. So that the tunics did not look like a fashion show, but there was pain in the eyes and the glory of that war. To get a full-fledged artistic embodiment of the feat.
70 years ago, Vuchetich and his permanent co-author, the Moscow architect Yakov Belopolsky, succeeded in this. Together they worked on the monument to General Mikhail Efremov in Vyazma, and on the famous Stalingrad monuments. Working with such a wayward artistic nature as Vuchetich was not easy, but their duet of sculptor and architect turned out to be one of the most fruitful in our art.
Monument Rear - front”, Magnitogorsk. Photo: TASS / Donat Sorokin.
And after the death of Vuchetich, together with the sculptor Lev Golovnitsky, he created in Magnitogorsk a gigantic monument "Rear - Front". The Ural worker hands over a huge sword to the warrior - the sword of Victory. Then this sword will be picked up by the Motherland, which led the warriors in Stalingrad, and in Berlin a soldier-liberator will wearily lower it. This is how the heroic triptych of the Great Patriotic War, united by the image of the sword of Victory, turned out. This monument was opened in 1979, it also has an anniversary - 40 years. It was then that Vuchetich's plan was realized to the end.
We need such a monument …
In the work on the soldier from Treptower Park, Vuchetich found his own style - at the intersection of trench realism and high symbolism. But at first, he assumed that this monument would be erected somewhere on the outskirts of the park, and the grandiose figure of the Generalissimo would appear in the center of the composition.
About 30 projects were presented at the competition. Vuchetich proposed two compositions: the leader of the peoples with a globe, which symbolized the "saved world", and a soldier with a girl, who was perceived as a backup, additional option.
This story can be found in many retellings. Puffing on his pipe, Stalin approaches the statue and asks the sculptor: "Aren't you tired of this one with a mustache?" And then he looks closely at the model of the "Soldier-Liberator" and suddenly says: "This is the kind of monument we need!"
This is, perhaps, from the category of "days of past jokes." The credibility of this dialogue is questionable. One thing is indisputable: Stalin did not want his bronze statue to rise above the memorial cemetery, and realized that a soldier "with a girl saved in his arms" is an image for all times that will evoke sympathy and pride.
A sculpture created in 1954 for the USSR central pavilion in the VDNKh park. Photo: Global Look Press / Georgiy Rozov.
The Generalissimo made only one major editorial change to the original "soldier's" draft. At Vuchetich's soldier, as expected, was armed with a machine gun. Stalin proposed replacing this detail with a sword. That is, he proposed to supplement the realistic monument with epic symbols. It was not accepted to argue with the leader, and it was impossible. But Stalin seemed to have guessed the intentions of the sculptor himself. He was attracted by the images of Russian knights. The huge sword is a simple but capacious symbol that evokes associations with the distant past, with the very essence of history.
To be remembered
The monument was built by the whole world - together with the Germans, under the leadership of military engineers of the Red Army. But there was not enough granite, marble. Pieces of precious building material were found among the ruins of Berlin. Things got into a dispute when they discovered a secret warehouse of granite intended for the monument to the victory over Russia, which Hitler had dreamed of. Stone was brought to this warehouse from all over Europe.
In 1949, there was no sign of agreement among the recent allies on the Big Three. Germany became the scene of the Cold War. On May 8, on the eve of Victory Day, festive fireworks sounded in Berlin. On that day, the memorial was opened in Treptower Park. It was a real triumph not only for Soviet soldiers, but also for all German anti-fascists. It is not only a matter of a clear triumph over inhuman ideology, not only of the political presence of the Soviet Union in Germany. It's also about aesthetics. Many admitted that this monument is one of the most beautiful in Berlin. Its silhouette rises dramatically against the backdrop of the Berlin sky, and the park landscape enhances the impression of the ensemble.
The military commandant of Berlin, General Alexander Kotikov, made a speech that was reprinted by almost all the communist newspapers of the world: “This monument in the center of Europe, in Berlin, will constantly remind the peoples of the world when, how and at what cost Victory was won, the salvation of our Fatherland, salvation lives of present and future generations of mankind”. Kotikov was directly related to the monument: his daughter Svetlana, a future actress, posed for the sculptor in the form of a German girl.
Vuchetich created a mourning, but at the same time life-affirming symphony of stone and bronze. On the way to the "Soldier" we see lowered granite banners, sculptures of kneeling soldiers and a grieving mother. Russian weeping birches grow next to the statues. In the center of this ensemble is a burial mound, on the mound there is a pantheon, and a monument to a soldier grows out of it. Inscriptions in Russian and in German: "Eternal glory to the soldiers of the Soviet army who gave their lives in the struggle for the liberation of mankind."
Meeting of Soviet and American soldiers in Vienna, May 9, 1945. Photo: TASS / Olga Lande.
The decoration of the Hall of Memory, opened above the mound, set the tone for many museums of the Great Patriotic War - up to the complex on Poklonnaya Hill. The mosaic - the procession of the mourners, the Order of Victory on the plafond, the book of memory in a golden casket, which stores the names of all those who died in the battle for Berlin - have been kept sacred for 70 years. The Germans do not erase the quotes of Stalin, of which there are many in Treptow Park. On the walls of the Hall of Memory is inscribed: “Nowadays everyone recognizes that the Soviet people, by their selfless struggle, saved the civilization of Europe from the fascist pogromists. This is the great merit of the Soviet people to the history of mankind."
The model of the legendary sculpture now stands in the city of Serpukhov, its smaller copies - in Verey, Tver and Sovetsk. The appearance of the Liberator Soldier can be seen on medals and coins, on posters and postage stamps. It is recognizable, it still evokes emotions.
This monument remains a symbol of Victory. He - like a sentry of the conquered world - reminds us of the victims and heroes of the war, which in our country affected every family. Treptow Park gives us hope that the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War belongs not only to our country.
Author: Arseny Zamostyanov, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the "Historian" magazine