The Motherland Calls

A monumental statue on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, Russia, depicting a woman raising a sword and summoning people to defend the motherland. It commemorates the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Battle of Stalingrad: A major Second World War battle fought in and around Stalingrad from 1942 to 1943, ending in Soviet victory. The monument commemorates this battle and its enormous human cost.
Yevgeny Vuchetich: A Soviet sculptor known for monumental public works, including The Motherland Calls. He designed the statue and shaped its forceful, sweeping composition.
Soviet war memorials: Public monuments created in the Soviet Union to commemorate wartime sacrifice and victory. The statue belongs to a memorial tradition that made collective sacrifice monumental.
Motherland: A personified homeland represented as a maternal figure in patriotic imagery. The female figure embodies the homeland calling its people to defend it.
Mamayev Kurgan: A hill in Volgograd that became a strategic battlefield during the Battle of Stalingrad and now holds a memorial complex. The statue crowns the hill where Soviet and German forces fought intensely.
Nikolai Nikitin: A Soviet structural engineer known for designing major towers and monumental structures. He engineered the statue’s stability despite its great height and relatively thin shell.
Battle of Stalingrad memorial complex: A memorial ensemble on Mamayev Kurgan commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. The statue forms the complex’s central and most prominent monument.
Patriotic art: Art that expresses attachment to a homeland and encourages collective loyalty or service. The statue turns patriotic appeal into a monumental public image.
Volgograd: A city in southwestern Russia on the Volga River, known as Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961. The monument stands in the city whose wartime name became inseparable from the battle.
Concrete: A construction material made by binding aggregate with cement and water. The statue’s reinforced concrete body makes its monumental scale possible.

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