23 May 2010
 
In Treptower Park
 
 
The idiots from ADT Security called me up at what I thought was 0330- I was in twilight sleep, dreaming about Russians.
 
I should have been worrying about the fact that I had not yet packed for the trip to Arizona and I will filled with dread about that as the apologetic operator told me there was an outage on our JWICS circuit. I thanked him for the information, noted it was raining and he circuit always goes down when it is wet and realized it was actually 0430 and about time to get my butt in gear and get ready to go.
 
Not enough turn-around time. I need to put Berlin in a box and think about it some other time.
 
But those Russians. My associate and I left the Stasi Museum that day last week under gunmetal skies and headed for Treptower Park. I waned to see the sprawling monument to the Soviet dead of he Battle for Berln. The numbers are a little sketchy. They say that nearly a hundred thousand died in the fight, mostly German, of course, and mostly civilian.
 
There are no monuments to them. That was not possible under the new order that was born in May of 1945. But the twenty thousand Soviets got their recognition, and the Military graveyard in Treptower, not to be confused with the first monument thrown up Tiergarten in the shadow of the ruins of the Reichstag. A couple of our cab drivers did not know the difference. The Tiergarten edifice wound up in West Berlin, a location clearly unacceptable as a demonstration of Soviet power.
 
There is another memorial (Schönholzer Heide), in Berlin's Pankow district, but this one, known as the Cenotaph, became the central monument to the War for the whole of the DDR.
 
Interesting thing to grow up with. There were only a sprinkling of people as we approached the gate from the park to the west.
 
Yakov Belopolsky was chosen design the park to commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet  soldiers. It is a heroic piece of work, the epitome of Soviet Socialist Realism in landscape architecture. It opened on May 8, 1949.
 

(Plan of the Soviet War Memorial. Photo Socotra)
 
The long axis of the memorial is approached through trees, and the first thing to see is a statue of a grieving woman, mother, or Russia herself. Flowers were strewn at her feet.

It is a soft approach to the bombast that follows.

Before the monument is a central area lined on both sides by 16 stone sarcophagi, one for each of the 16 Soviet Republics (in 1940-1956 then up to the reorganization of the Karelo-Finnish SSR into the Karelian ASSR there were 16 "union republics") with relief carvings of military scenes and quotations from Joseph Stalin, on one side in Russian, on the other side the same text in German. The area is the final resting place for some 5000 soldiers of the Red Army.
 
At the opposite end of the central area from the statue is a portal consisting of a pair of stylized Soviet flags built of red granite. These are flanked by two statues of kneeling soldiers.
 
Beyond the flag monuments is a further sculpture, along the axis formed by the soldier monument, the main area, and the flags, is another figure, of the Motherland weeping at the loss of her sons.
 

The panorama is sobering, and the scale enormous.

 
The red granite of the stylized Soviet flags, flanked by kneeling troopers, was taken from the destroyed Reichskanzlei. It was to commemorate the Fuhrer’s final victory in stone, but the victors found a better use for it.

 
Flowers continue to come, from Russia, of course, but also from German groups. There was one bouquet from the German Veterans of Vietnam, and I had to wonder which side.

The scale is as vast as the conflict that came to an end at the Reichstag.

 
Sixteen marble panels flank the graves, one for each of the 16 Soviet Republics as they existed during the war. Naturally, the reorganization of the Karelo-Finnish SSR  into the Karelian ASSR could not be retrofitted into the design, any more than the breakup of he entire Union could. The relief carvings of military scenes show the progress of the war against the Hitlerites, with strong Proletariat transofmring into the swift sword of the State, defending the Motherland.
 
At the end of each of the white marble panels is a helpful quote from Uncle Joe. The monuments are identical on each side, with the inscriptions in Russian on the east and in German on the west, so there can be no mistake about the meaning.

The focus of the grand plaza is the statue of a Red Army trooper holding a German child, with a sword impaling a broken swastika. It is the only swastika I saw on the trip, even in all the flood of graffiti. It soars thirty-six feet above the pedestal.
 
The story is that the rexcue of he orphaned child is a true one, and I am sure there must have been come acts of kindness in the carnage, but this is selective recollection at best.
 

 
Looking back toward the red granite flags, across the graves of thousands, I thought it might be time to just go, and deal with the city that is apparently comfortable with the recollections of the victors. Although the Soviets were expelled twenty years ago, the state of the Soviet soldier was refurbished in 2004, and every indication is that he will stay, just like his comrades on the plaza before him.

 
Walking away, I asked my associate what on earth a German was supposed to take away from it?

 
She shrugged. “Maybe you shouldn’t start things you cannot finish?”
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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