Motherland Monument

The Motherland Monument (Ukrainian: Батьківщина-Мати, romanized: Batkivshchýna-Máty, Russian: Родина-мать) is a monumental statue in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The sculpture is a part of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War.

Description

The stainless steel statue stands 62 m (203 ft) tall upon the museum main building with the overall structure measuring 102 m (335 ft) including its base and weighing 560 tonnes. The sword in the statue's right hand is 16 m (52 ft) long weighing 9 tonnes, with the left hand holding up a 13 by 8 m (43 by 26 ft) shield with the State Emblem of the Soviet Union. Initially the image of the statue was drawn by Vutchetich from Ukrainian painter Nina Danyleiko, after the design was taken over by Borodai from another Ukrainian sculptor Halyna Kalchenko, a daughter of the Prime Minister of Ukraine Nikifor Kalchenko.

The memorial hall of the Museum displays marble plaques with carved names of more than 11,600 soldiers and over 200 workers of the home-front honored during the war with the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Hero of Socialist Labor. On the hill beneath the museum, traditional flower shows are held. The sword of the statue was cut because the tip of the sword was higher than the cross of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

Background

In the 1950s, a plan circulated of building on the spot of the current statue twin monuments of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, nearly 200 m (660 ft) tall each. However, this did not go ahead. Instead, according to legend, in the 1970s, a shipload of Communist Party officials and Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich looked across at the hills by the Lavra and decided the panorama needed a war memorial. Vuchetich had designed the other two most famous giant Soviet war memorials, The Motherland Calls in Volgograd and the Soviet soldier carrying German infant constructed after the war in East Berlin. However, Vuchetich died in 1974, and the design of the memorial was afterwards substantially reworked and completed under the guidance of Vasyl Borodai.

Final plans for the statue...