Trips and Tales #31

01 Apr 2011

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On the beaten track. Moscow must-sees.

I’m still trying to pick up the pace a little (that’s what’ll be written on my gravestone…). After Gorky, let’s continue with another “must-see” park, relevant to those of us who like to “reflect” in stately, open spaces.

(In and around) Victory Park (part 1)

In order to clear up (or alternatively: cause) some potential confusion: “Moscow Victory Park” is not the same as “Victory Park, Moscow”. The former is located in southern St.Petersburg, whilst the latter is situated off Kutuzovskiy Prospekt in Moscow, west of the centre, on and around Poklonnaya Gora, the city’s highest hill.

The name Poklonnaya Gora translates as “bow-down hill”: standing at 170 metres, this is the place at which travelers heading east should pause and pay homage to the awe-inspiring capital spread out before them. Should you undertake to do this, you’ll be in famous company, historically speaking: Napoleon himself waited on Poklonnaya Gora in the vain expectation that the keys to Moscow would be – should be – delivered up to him, naturally.

The park itself is spread over 2424 hectares and includes a 135-hectare memorial complex dedicated to the memory, loss and victory of the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1945. If that span of dates sounds strangely familiar to you, it’s because it delineates the time frame of World War II’s Eastern Front, the period of Russia’s involvement in the conflict.

Again, in order to create/stave off confusion: the “Great Patriotic War” is not the same as the “Patriotic War”. This latter took place in 1812, and was the struggle against the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. However, the Park’s theme – the honour of loss and victory – does start off from that earlier struggle, with memories of it made tangible here since the early 1960s; the log-built house in which General Kutuzov held the Fili conference being granted National Monument status, is a case in point. Since the 60s, the park has developed as an open-air museum and memorial grounds, with the Great Patriotic War section opened in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nazi defeat.

Interestingly, Hitler didn’t learn from Napoleon’s catastrophic blunder and in turn took on one of Russia’s greatest military allies: the Russian winter. Cue horror stories of the unprepared, freezing horrifically to death in bleak, barren hell, and blackened toes emptied out of boots like pebbles… Perhaps those who do not learn from the mistakes of history really are doomed to repeat them? Yet again, I digress.

As an inadvertent sub-text, Victory Park is also the “last fling” of – and monument to – the dynamic, triumphalist art of the Soviet era, its stony-cold, symbolic depictions of a Utopian communist ideal rubbed in the everyday faces of those at street level, living out its starker realities daily. Monuments to futures past. For better or worse, they don’t make ’em like they used to…

On May 9th, Russia’s “Victory Day”, the theme is one of celebration: a holiday with Victory Park at the centre of events – a distinct contrast to the dour mood of “remembrance” here in the UK. Not that I’m saying either way is right or wrong, though perhaps they provide some insight into the distinct national psyches of the two countries? The notion of celebration is all the more remarkable in Russia, considering that by the end of the war the country had lost over 26 million people – more than half the total global casualties in World War II, in a single nation. Read that figure again. It’s astounding: unprecedented since medieval times.

More Victory Park next time.