Today's main monument to the Great Patriotic War in Naberezhnye Chelny, the Motherland memorial complex at the Studencheskaya stop, was opened on May 9, 1975 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany. It is here that, over the past few decades, ceremonial parades dedicated to this significant date have been held. It is here that the Eternal Flame burns and a list of the names of those who once, more than 74 years ago, fought for their Motherland is engraved on the stone.
Rising from the ashes
What is the meaning of this monument?
The sculptor of the memorial complex was Ildar Khanov, who in his creation turned to the image of the immortal Phoenix bird. According to ancient Greek myths, this bird died by burning itself in fire, and then was reborn from the ashes. So the monument “Motherland” is a mighty Phoenix bird with the face of a woman, under whose wings are her sons. By the way, the prototype of this woman was the Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR Gulsabira Khakimova.
The memorial complex was built in the shortest possible time - in 2 months and 17 days, work was carried out almost around the clock, without weekends or holidays. The complex consists of the Motherland monument with a pedestal and retaining walls, Post No. 1 at the Eternal Flame. The names of fallen soldiers from the city of Naberezhnye Chelny and the Chelny region during the Great Patriotic War are carved on the Wall of Memory. On the horizontal volume of the wall there is a five-pointed star, from the mouth of which tongues of flame burst out. The complex ends with a small slope with an inscription in Russian and Tatar: “Let us remember everyone by name” - “Batyrlar iseme ulemsez.”
Another interesting story is connected with the “fire” theme. Before the city authorities decided to finance the construction of the “Motherland” memorial by decision of the Naberezhnye Chelny city committee of the CPSU, the pioneers of the city pioneer headquarters “Fakel” tried to raise the necessary money by organizing the delivery of waste paper and scrap metal. We collected a lot - 2000 Soviet rubles.
After the cancellation of this operation, called “Obelisk,” the schoolchildren came up with a new initiative: to organize competitions for the right to become a member of the first Guard of Honor at the Eternal Flame. According to various sources, 20-25 people were selected: the best of the best, activists of pioneer squads and Komsomol organizations of city schools. They had special uniforms made for them and were given machine guns - wooden dummies. On May 9, 1975, a student of school No. 16, Lera Karimova (according to other sources, Lena Kudryavtseva), as the first guide, led the children to the Eternal Flame.
In the first years, the watch at Post No. 1 was carried out only on significant dates. On April 30, 1984, on the eve of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory, a detachment from school No. 15 began a permanent shift.
In 2005 and 2013-2015, the memorial was reconstructed: the wall of memory was expanded and supplemented with the names of fallen soldiers and officers in 1941-45, as well as in Chechnya and Afghanistan (67 people). Military equipment installed: M-30-1 howitzer,
armored personnel carrier BTR-70 and infantry fighting vehicle BMP-1. Tribunes for war and labor veterans with an area of 400 square meters were built. m.
Criticism
Since the opening of the monument, it has been repeatedly criticized both by city residents and by senior management, considering that it was not erected in the best traditions of Soviet sculpture, and that the author is not a sculptor, but a student who just graduated from college and came from nowhere. An interdepartmental commission from Moscow, which was present at the opening of the monument in 1975, decided to blow it up and send the author to prison. However, due to the strength of the reinforced concrete structure and the deep 20-meter foundation, attempts to destroy the monument were unsuccessful. The situation changed when articles with photographs of the monument and positive reviews began to appear in many foreign publications, many of which believed that this was the best monument dedicated to the war. It was decided to leave the monument[3].
Reconstruction
Due to the significant deterioration of the memorial complex over its almost 40-year history, in 2013 the administration of Naberezhnye Chelny decided to reconstruct it at the expense of charitable funds from city entrepreneurs, as a result of which by May 9, 2014, additional memorial slabs appeared on the site of the memorial complex. walls with the names of heroes who died after the Great Patriotic War, a large screen, as well as military equipment in the form of two combat vehicles and an artillery cannon[5][6]. The total cost of reconstruction was 11 million rubles[7].
An excerpt characterizing the Motherland (Naberezhnye Chelny)
The old count went home; Natasha and Petya promised to come right away. The hunt went on, as it was still early. In the middle of the day, the hounds were released into a ravine overgrown with young, dense forest. Nikolai, standing in the stubble, saw all his hunters. Opposite from Nikolai there were green fields and there stood his hunter, alone in a hole behind a prominent hazel bush. They had just brought in the hounds when Nikolai heard the rare rutting of a dog he knew, Volthorne; other dogs joined him, then falling silent, then starting to chase again. A minute later, a voice was heard from the island calling for a fox, and the whole flock, falling down, drove along the screwdriver, towards the greenery, away from Nikolai. He saw horse-dwellers in red hats galloping along the edges of an overgrown ravine, he even saw dogs, and every second he expected a fox to appear on the other side, in the greenery. The hunter standing in the hole moved and released the dogs, and Nikolai saw a red, low, strange fox, which, fluffing its pipe, hurriedly rushed through the greenery. The dogs began to sing to her. As they approached, the fox began to wag in circles between them, making these circles more and more often and circling its fluffy pipe (tail) around itself; and then someone’s white dog flew in, followed by a black one, and everything got mixed up, and the dogs became a star, with their butts apart, slightly hesitating. Two hunters galloped up to the dogs: one in a red hat, the other, a stranger, in a green caftan. "What it is? thought Nikolai. Where did this hunter come from? This is not my uncle’s.” The hunters fought off the fox and stood on foot for a long time, without rushing. Near them on chumburs stood horses with their saddles and dogs lay. The hunters waved their hands and did something with the fox. From there the sound of a horn was heard - the agreed signal of a fight. “It’s the Ilaginsky hunter who is rebelling with our Ivan,” said the eager Nikolai. Nikolai sent the groom to call his sister and Petya to him and walked at a walk to the place where the riders were collecting the hounds. Several hunters galloped to the scene of the fight. Nikolai got off his horse and stopped next to the hounds with Natasha and Petya riding up, waiting for information about how the matter would end. A fighting hunter with a fox in torokas rode out from behind the edge of the forest and approached the young master. He took off his hat from afar and tried to speak respectfully; but he was pale, out of breath, and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black, but he probably didn’t know it. -What did you have there? – Nikolai asked. - Of course, he will poison from under our hounds! And my mousey bitch caught it. Go and sue! Enough for the fox! I'll give him a ride as a fox. Here she is, in Toroki. Do you want this?...” said the hunter, pointing to the dagger and probably imagining that he was still talking to his enemy. Nikolai, without talking to the hunter, asked his sister and Petya to wait for him and went to the place where this hostile Ilaginskaya hunt was. The victorious hunter rode into the crowd of hunters and there, surrounded by sympathetic curious people, told his exploit. The fact was that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs were in a quarrel and trial, was hunting in places that, according to custom, belonged to the Rostovs, and now, as if on purpose, he ordered to drive up to the island where the Rostovs were hunting, and allowed him to poison his hunter from under other people’s hounds. Nikolai never saw Ilagin, but as always, in his judgments and feelings, not knowing the middle, according to rumors about the violence and willfulness of this landowner, he hated him with all his soul and considered him his worst enemy. He now rode towards him, embittered and agitated, tightly clutching the arapnik in his hand, in full readiness for the most decisive and dangerous actions against his enemy. As soon as he left the ledge of the forest, he saw a fat gentleman in a beaver cap on a beautiful black horse, accompanied by two stirrups, moving towards him. Instead of an enemy, Nikolai found in Ilagin a personable, courteous gentleman, who especially wanted to get to know the young count. Having approached Rostov, Ilagin lifted his beaver cap and said that he was very sorry for what happened; that he orders to punish the hunter who allowed himself to be poisoned by other people's dogs, asks the count to be acquainted and offers him his places for hunting. Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something terrible, rode not far behind him in excitement. Seeing that the enemies were bowing in a friendly manner, she drove up to them. Ilagin raised his beaver cap even higher in front of Natasha and, smiling pleasantly, said that the Countess represented Diana both by her passion for hunting and by her beauty, about which he had heard a lot. Ilagin, in order to make amends for the guilt of his hunter, urgently asked Rostov to go to his eel, which was a mile away, which he kept for himself and in which, according to him, there were hares. Nikolai agreed, and the hunt, having doubled in size, moved on. It was necessary to walk to the Ilaginsky eel through fields. The hunters straightened out. The gentlemen rode together. Uncle, Rostov, Ilagin secretly glanced at other people's dogs, trying so that others would not notice, and anxiously looked for rivals for their dogs among these dogs. Rostov was especially struck by her beauty by a small pure-dog, narrow, but with steel muscles, a thin muzzle and bulging black eyes, a red-spotted bitch in Ilagin’s pack. He had heard about the agility of the Ilagin dogs, and in this beautiful bitch he saw his Milka’s rival. In the middle of a sedate conversation about this year's harvest, which Ilagin started, Nikolai pointed out to him his red-spotted bitch. - This bitch is good! – he said in a casual tone. - Rezva? - This? Yes, this is a good dog, it catches,” Ilagin said in an indifferent voice about his red-spotted Erza, for which a year ago he gave his neighbor three families of servants. “So you, Count, don’t boast about threshing?” – he continued the conversation he had started. And considering it polite to repay the young count in kind, Ilagin examined his dogs and chose Milka, who caught his eye with her width. - This black-spotted one is good - okay! - he said. “Yes, nothing, he’s jumping,” answered Nikolai. “If only a seasoned hare ran into the field, I would show you what kind of dog this is!” he thought, and turning to the stirrup man said that he would give a ruble to anyone who suspected, that is, found a lying hare. “I don’t understand,” Ilagin continued, “how other hunters are envious of the beast and the dogs.” I'll tell you about myself, Count. It makes me happy, you know, to take a ride; Now you’ll get together with such a company... what’s better (he again took off his beaver cap in front of Natasha); and this is to count the skins, how many I brought - I don’t care! - Well, yes. - Or so that I would be offended that someone else’s dog catches it, and not mine - I just want to admire the baiting, right, Count? Then I judge...
Notes
- [moi.nabchelny.ru/index.php?option=com_joomgallery&func=detail&id=353&Itemid=8 Photo gallery “My Chelny”: Memorial complex “Motherland”]. www.moi.nabchelny.ru. Retrieved January 6, 2014. [www.webcitation.org/6FizqxS3j Archived from the original on April 8, 2013].
- Lyudmila Pakhomova.
[elabuga.com/hall/_hanov_fenomen.html The phenomenon of Ildar Khanov]. www.elabuga.com (August 16, 2011). Retrieved January 6, 2014. [www.webcitation.org/6FizriSGZ Archived from the original on April 8, 2013]. - ↑ 1 2 3 4 Olga Arminen.
[www.chelnyltd.ru/obshchestvo/chelovechishche Humanity]. Chelny LTD (May 10, 2011). Retrieved January 6, 2014. [www.webcitation.org/6FizuKCmH Archived from the original on April 8, 2013]. - Elmira Yakovleva.
[v-chelny.ru/news/luchshie-pamyatniki-i-skulpturi-goroda/ The best monuments and sculptures of the city]. Evening Chelny (June 23, 2004). Retrieved January 6, 2014. [www.webcitation.org/6FizsZIN3 Archived from the original on April 8, 2013]. - [www.chelny-izvest.ru/city/23507.html Reconstruction of the Motherland complex in Chelny will continue until February.]. Chelny News (October 28, 2013). Retrieved January 6, 2014.
- [chelny-biz.ru/rubrics/12/248.html “Motherland” is calling!]. www.chelny-biz.ru (September 16, 2013). Retrieved January 6, 2014.
- [v-chelny.ru/online/5-millionov-za-rodinu-mat/ 5 million for “Motherland”]. Evening Chelny (September 18, 2013). Retrieved January 6, 2014.
