Day 13: Park Povedy

This was our last day in Moscow, so I decided to finish it off with a visit to Park Povedy (Victory Park) and the Great Patriotic War Museum (what the Russians call World War II – as opposed to the plain Patriotic War which was their fight against Napoleon in 1812).  It is another example of the grandiose style of Soviet architecture.  After getting out of the metro, you’re still about a kilometer away from the victory spire and museum with a broad walkway lined with fountains on the right and columns dedicated to the various field marshals that served in the war.

The scale of the park is absolutely impressive, and considering the extremely high casualties and devastation the Soviet Union suffered during the war it is perfectly suiting.  The Soviets lost some 26,000,000 people in the war, fairly evenly divided between military and civilian casualties, which amounts to about 14% of their prewar population.  This doesn’t include an additional 15,000,000 soldiers wounded during the war.  In contrast, the United States suffered 416,837 deaths and 683,846 wounded – not to minimize our losses, as every death is a tragedy and total US dead is a thousand times the size of my high school graduating class, but the impact on the Soviet culture and society was far greater than with us.  For us, the war never physically touched our homes (save a Japanese balloon bomb that killed one or two) – we sent our troops overseas, fought against the Nazis and Japanese Empire, then came home and moved on with life.  The horror of war was always “over there” and the war never got to the point where it was a question of national survival.

That’s one of the things that fascinates me about the Russian people – here you have a country that lost an average of some 8000 soldiers per day (roughly twice the US dead in eight years of fighting in Iraq), locked in a war of annihilation with the Nazis and their fascist allies.  After the Germans occupied a village, they would go through with their einsatzgruppen to execute or enslave whoever they deemed to be the communists, the millions of captured Russian soldiers were sent into forced labor and starved to death, and so on and so forth.  For the duration of the war, the Soviets were fighting roughly 3/4 of the German Army (D-Day would not have gone off as well if the Germans had an extra 3 million soldiers to send to the Western Front).  To have faced annihilation with the enemy at the gates of Moscow and to have Leningrad besieged for three years, and to turn things around and win is something the Russians consider a national triumph (I’m supposing, as I’m not a Russian citizen and I don’t know enough Russian to talk about something this complex with the people I met).  That’s why May 9 is a national holiday celebrated across Russia as “Victory Day” and why they built such an impressive monument. 

The fountains of Park Povedy.	A triumphal arch celebrating the Russian victory in the original Patriotic War against Napoleon.

The victory spire, modeled after a World War II bayonet, has the slain Fascist beast at the foot and the names of the various cities they fought over leading to Berlin in 1945 at the top.	Column for the 1st Belorussian Front (Army Group), commanded by Zhukov at the end of the war.  Each of the fronts and fleets have their own column.

The park continues for another kilometer behind the museum with some relaxing walking paths, some food venders, and so on.  There is also a Greek Orthodox Church (located out front), a Jewish synagogue (behind the museum), and – I’ve heard, though haven’t seen – a mosque to represent the three major faiths of the peoples of the Soviet Union who fought in the war. 

The Orthodox church at Park Povedy.	An eternal flame burns in memory of the dead.

There is also an equipment park located on the south side of the park, containing mostly World War II era equipment though there are some more modern aircraft and some helicopters displayed at the end.  It was… OK.  Most of the German vehicles displayed are destroyed hulks (so if you’re looking for captured German tanks, your best bet is Kubinka where they have an entire exhibition hall of them), and one of the unique parts of the display is they have a trench network with parapets, observation posts, and shelters. 

NOTE: All of these pictures were taken during my previous trip to Moscow. I chose to show those pictures because the weather was better last year and the outside of the park hasn’t changed.