Photo: archive, BGNES
Many people know that the “Monument to the Heroes of the Red Army” stands on a central square in the Austrian capital, but probably few are familiar with the facts surrounding the creation and history of the monument, built in memory of those who died in the Battle of Vienna nearly 17,000 Red Army soldiers. For example, that it was the first construction in the Second Austrian Republic.
“It is ideologically and in an interpretive sense a very diverse structure,” writes journalist Erich Klein, a connoisseur of the history of those years, in his publication “The Russians in Vienna”. This monument embodies the victory over and liberation from National Socialism, but on the other hand, it also reflects the fear-ridden memories of the time of the occupation, according to a lengthy article in a magazine, a printed organ of the Vienna Museum.
Even before capturing Vienna, the Red Army planned to build a monument. The place was chosen the “Schwartzenberg” square – a 450-meter square, on which stands the monument of Field Marshal Schwarzenberg, who fought together with the Russian Tsar in a successful battle against Napoleon, which creates a connection with Russian military history. At the bottom of the square, which was renamed “Stalin” from 1946 to 1956, is the baroque building of the Schwarzenberg Palace – a beautiful backdrop to the Russian monument.
In May 1945, the construction works began under the leadership of the military engineer M. Shenfeld, the architect S. G. Yakovlev and the sculptor M. A. Intisarian. While in the trenches, Intisarian modeled the sculptures, but due to lack of clay, he used a bottle, bread and bacon for the statue of the soldier, the historical material says.
The fifteen-ton, 12-meter-high figure was cast in Vienna from bronze stored in the Wehrmacht’s order foundry. At a record pace, in just over three months, the monument was built by Austrian laborers and prisoners of war. As a prestigious object, it was supposed to demonstrate the Soviet organization and ability even before the Allied troops entered the city, to impress both the Allies and the vanquished, the article commented.
Compared to later Soviet monuments, the Viennese “socialist-realist curiosity”, as Erich Klein calls it, is quite modest, according to architectural theorist Jan Tabor, who says the monument is unique “in its subtle intellectual conception”.
The Russian soldier has lowered his weapon and shield, so the victory monument can also be interpreted as a peace monument, but above all it is understood as a liberation monument, associated with the Red Army, which is implied as a liberator and not as a conqueror.
But the exact opposite was recorded in his diary in June 1945 by the diplomat Joseph Schöner: “The population already mockingly calls it the ‘monument of the unknown marauder.’ In 1945 tons of peas arrived on Stalin’s orders – aid for the starving population.But most often people call it the “monument of the Russians”, even though the Red Army was made up of soldiers from all the nations of the Soviet Union.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, separate discussions about removing this “Stalinist monument” appeared in Austria, but they quickly died down. The reason for this is that Austria is obliged to protect and maintain this and other similar monuments by virtue of a paragraph of the State Treaty, which declared its independence in May 1955.
The Austrian side fulfills this obligation, and since the monument is periodically the subject of acts of vandalism, surveillance cameras have been installed to prevent such acts. However, the monument has been covered with black or red paint more than once. After Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the wall of the Schwarzenberg Palace, located immediately behind the monument, was painted in the colors of the Ukrainian flag at the personal initiative of the owner of the palace, Johannes Schwarzenberg, and since it is not part of the monument, but of the palace, it remained intact.
(Specially for BTA by Tsvetana Delibaltova)
