Persuasion...
Dec. 6th, 2004 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpJust a little over 63 years ago, on December 5, 1941, a tenacious resistance by Soviet forces (aided by "General Winter") managed to finally convince the Germans that their advance on Moscow wasn't progressing very well, and so that particular operation was formally called off. The Nazis never got closer than 23 kilometers to the city.
The Soviets erected a simple memorial to commemmorate having kept the Hun from Moscow, which today can be found at the 23rd kilometer of the Moscow--Leningrad highway. The memorial is in the form of three larger-than-life tank traps and a commemorative inscription. You can see it on the right-hand side of the road as you come into the city from Sheremetyevo airport.
I first visited the memorial during my first trip to Russia, and somewhere I have a Polaroid that shows this memorial standing at the side of the highway, surrounded by forest. It was, if memory serves, a quiet, contemplative setting that seemed appropriate to mark the sacrifice of so many soldiers and a significant milestone in the struggle that the Soviets called the "Great Patriotic War."
A lot has changed over the intervening years:
As you can imagine, IKEA caught a lot of crap over wanting to build their megastore in this particular spot, but the store got built (one of five that will be constructed by 2006, if I recall), to the disgust of many Muscovites. Personally, I think a better job could have been done of preserving the memorial, as right now it seems an awkward presence crowded into the middle of the hurly-burly of contemporary life in Khimki (a Moscow suburb).
But urban planning in Moscow is not the point of this post. The point is to mark the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Soviet counteroffensive, representing the turning of a significant corner in World War II.
Cheers...
The Soviets erected a simple memorial to commemmorate having kept the Hun from Moscow, which today can be found at the 23rd kilometer of the Moscow--Leningrad highway. The memorial is in the form of three larger-than-life tank traps and a commemorative inscription. You can see it on the right-hand side of the road as you come into the city from Sheremetyevo airport.
I first visited the memorial during my first trip to Russia, and somewhere I have a Polaroid that shows this memorial standing at the side of the highway, surrounded by forest. It was, if memory serves, a quiet, contemplative setting that seemed appropriate to mark the sacrifice of so many soldiers and a significant milestone in the struggle that the Soviets called the "Great Patriotic War."
A lot has changed over the intervening years:
As you can imagine, IKEA caught a lot of crap over wanting to build their megastore in this particular spot, but the store got built (one of five that will be constructed by 2006, if I recall), to the disgust of many Muscovites. Personally, I think a better job could have been done of preserving the memorial, as right now it seems an awkward presence crowded into the middle of the hurly-burly of contemporary life in Khimki (a Moscow suburb).
But urban planning in Moscow is not the point of this post. The point is to mark the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Soviet counteroffensive, representing the turning of a significant corner in World War II.
Cheers...
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Date: 2004-12-07 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-07 06:55 am (UTC)