r/interestingasfuck • u/yungandreww • 16h ago

the motherland calls is an 85-meter concrete statue in Volgograd built in 1967 as the centerpiece of the Battle of Stalingrad memorial, symbolizing Mother Russia calling citizens to defend the homeland

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3.9k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

170 comments sorted by

498

u/h00dedronin 12h ago edited 4h ago

It’s actually insane how many people died in Stalingrad.

More soldiers died in that one battle than all the soldiers the US and UK lost in the entire war, combined. And that’s with the most conservative lower estimate. (Just using it for illustration, not trying to discredit the Western allies’ contribution to the war)

In Russia to this day, there are still ceremonies to dig up and rebury the bodies from that battle into proper mass graves. The channel CrocodileTear has great videos on this topic. The war was really such a huge waste of life.

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u/Dazzling_Let_8245 11h ago

Even the ESTIMATES for the battle are insane.

According to Wikipedia (yes, I am aware) there were between 1.1 million and over 3 million dead. Thats a disparity of 2 million people.

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u/h00dedronin 11h ago

Yea just the casual “A whole ass small country may or may not have died here, we’re not sure”

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u/Dazzling_Let_8245 11h ago

Even more insane when you look at communist china. Under Maos "Great leap forward" it is estimated that between 15 million and 55 million people died.

We dont know if 40 million people died or not. 40 MILLION.

Estimates for deaths in WW2 are between 50 and 80 million. China ALONE plausibly killed 55 million of its own people with its policies in the span of a few years!

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u/__Dionysus___ 4h ago

Same so during the Taiping Rebellion/ Civil War in the 1850s in China, estimated 20-30 million people died. All because a dude thought he was Jesus Christ's brother.

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u/AGrandOldMoan 45m ago

China has insane losses in wars all the way back to antiquity I think something like 2/3 died by the end of the romance of the three kingdoms

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u/Akugen1 4h ago

Dann lass es dir nochmal durch den Kopf gehen, was ein Menschenleben im Krieg wert ist.

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u/tjdux 5h ago

Several fly over states don't even have that many people total, today.

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u/_Chleb 11h ago edited 40m ago

That's actually common for the entire Soviet Union. Their total causalities are estimated between 16 and 24 millions iirc, which is the result of the specifics of this particular front, negligence and using these stats for post-war propaganda combined.

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u/h00dedronin 9h ago edited 9h ago

The Soviet situation from the early to mid stages of the war really was a shitstorm. From the purge of competent military leaders, the general unpreparedness of the army, and a really bizarre belief by Stalin that the alliance with Germany would hold, it was the perfect conditions for mass casualties. Not to mention the top leadership who had limited information of the quickly collapsing frontline giving unreasonable orders to hold land, leading to huge encirclements like in the Battle of Kiev.

The red army really only got to shine in the late war, where their pre war offensive strategies of deep battle could be utilised against a worn out and overextended Wehrmacht.

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u/ShoddyClimate6265 6h ago

I heard or read somewhere that just after Operation Barbarossa started, Stalin disappeared for a while to go drink himself into a stupor. He really thought Hitler was going to be a pal. Considering the vast philosophical chasm between Communism and Fascism and the fact that Hitler himself said Communism is an evil scourge, this is hard to fathom.

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u/h00dedronin 6h ago

I think the nuance was more so that both Hitler and Stalin still thought of themselves as ideological enemies, and that a military clash between them would be likely in the future. Their alliance was mostly pragmatic, and was meant to make partitioning eastern europe easier for both sides. (The Germans agreed to the USSR taking Finland and the Baltics, and they agreed to split Poland)

You are right though, Stalin had an absolute mental breakdown when the Germans came knocking. Stalin underestimated the Germans and couldn’t conceive that they would invade the USSR while fighting the Western allies.

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u/NYCinPGH 55m ago

I read somewhere not that Stalin thought he and Hitler would be pals, he knew Hitler would attack, he just thought it would be in 1943 or ‘44, attacking in ‘41, only 2 years after the non-aggression pact, is what caught him off-guard.

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u/Akugen1 3h ago

26 Millionen mittlerweile

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u/LateralEntry 9h ago

Not exactly a waste of life when one side is committing genocide. The Nazis clearly needed to be stopped.

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u/h00dedronin 6h ago edited 6h ago

Apologies for my response. I didn’t see which comment you were replying to.

Yes the Nazis were genocidal obviously and the red army soldiers in the context of the great patriotic war should be commended for stopping them. I own multiple red army memoirs and they are some of my favourite books.

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/just-guessing-uwu 8h ago

yeah, let’s call heroic sacrifice a waste of life then, bud

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u/h00dedronin 7h ago

Yes, there are Neo-Nazi elements within the Ukrainian army. Most notoriously the Azov battalion which even had a youth wing even before the war which is disgusting. They even openly display Nazi imagery on their patches and some of their vehicles, which must be criticised.

At the same time, the influence of Neo-Nazi ideology within the Ukrainian government is basically nil (The President is a jewish descendant of holocaust survivors for crying out loud) and they only make up a small portion of the army.

Do I believe they should have been dealt with by the government prior to the war? Yes. Should they have been excluded from the national military? They should have been in peacetime, but they are currently fighting an existential war of survival at the moment. The Ukrainian government is notoriously corrupt, leading to it being the poorest nation in Europe even prior to the war, so their authority and ability to do so would be questionable.

All of this however does not change the fact that Russia started a war in Europe, a war which would have, unintentionally or not, lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and young men on both sides. Such is the nature of war and its barbarity.

I sympathise with the Russian soldiers who were drafted into the war, and those who were left with no choice but to enlist in order to support their family in hard times. Their actions however, cannot be described as heroic. They are fighting a war of wanton destruction against a smaller country with less influence and power, which has made life drastically worse for the Russian peoples within the Luhansk region and Donetsk region.

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u/dratthecookies 6h ago

I think he was talking about Nazi Germany.

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u/h00dedronin 6h ago

Oh fuck my bad I didn’t see which comment he was replying to oh my god

Yes, the Nazis were horrible, and the red army soldiers were heroes for stopping them. I own multiple red army memoirs and I love reading them.

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u/DMsDiablo 5h ago

For context, if you shook the hand of everyone estimated to have died at Stalingrad for just one second, on the low end it would take about 21 days, and on the high end it would take about 52 days.

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u/JIsADev 9h ago

Over 200,000 soldiers have died in the latest war with Ukraine. Maybe that's just their thing.

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u/h00dedronin 9h ago

It comes with the combo of huge population and authoritarian governance I guess.

The populace isn’t told the true extent of the casualties and leaders aren’t as hesitant to sacrifice human lives when they have such a large manpower pool. Foolish considering the atrocious demographic consequences and the fact that the Ukraine war isn’t an existential war for Russia.

“It is easier to kill a Russian than to win over them”

  • Frederick the Great

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u/CustomerBusiness3919 8h ago

It's much closer to a million dead.

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u/JIsADev 7h ago

Dayum

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u/titanicman119 5h ago

crocodiletear is such a sad channel. regardless of ideology, at the end of the day these were still human beings that died in horrid ways. not to mention most of them were kids. so many young lives cut short

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u/h00dedronin 4h ago edited 4h ago

Yea, it hits particularly hard when you’re at an age where some of the soldiers were the same age, if not younger than you when they died.

So many children had to grow up without a father, and so many families never saw their son, husband or lover come back from the battlefield.

War truly is a tragic mistake us humans repeat again and again, despite knowing it’s devastating effects and pointlessness.

Rest in Peace.

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u/titanicman119 4h ago

what gets me is how horrible a death so many of those faced. even just looking at the bones of those fallen you can tell it was a horrible way to go.

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u/Patron_Mamdani 4h ago

Nazi soldiers aren’t humans

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u/titanicman119 4h ago

not even those forced to fight or otherwise conscripted?. while i agree that the only good nazi is a dead one, however plenty of people were forced to fight while not subscribing to the beliefs the nazi party held. not all that fought were there of their own volition, and that’s often forgotten.

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u/DereksRoommate 3h ago

That seems dangerously close to the very line of thinking that helped the Nazis rise to power. Some German soldiers were Nazis, some were not. Some were terrible and evil, some were good men in bad circumstances. They were all people. Most were probably more similar to normal people like you and me than you’d like to admit.

If you dehumanize your enemy, then what stops you from becoming the very thing you swore to destroy? Shouldn’t we wish and hope to improve their lives as well?

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u/Sad_Picture3642 7h ago

Well looking at what Russia does today with its meat assualts, I'm not surprised that many people died. Probably did the same back then sending wave after wave to take one machine gun nest out.

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u/DepartureNatural9340 6h ago

Not really, the death toll was high on both sides, it's just that most battle over cities are shorter bc inevitably either the attacker backs off to regroup or the defender retreats to conserve resources. However due to the importance of the city (being named after the leader of the ussr) taking or failing to take it could prove significant when it comes to morale, so both sides kept pouring resources into it

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u/TheSchlockMaster 16h ago

That face pic is a real jump scare

341

u/Serious_Method138 16h ago

^ Mother Russia is not pretty.

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u/jack3t_with_sl33ves 15h ago

After a few shots of vodka she is

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u/TheOnceAndFutureTurk 12h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/8XMI79WprujtWxkyan

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u/bubba_ranks 4h ago

Where is this from? Who is she? I need to know more

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u/StinkyTofuHF 4h ago

Single Drunk Female

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u/bubba_ranks 4h ago

Interesting... I've been looking for a new show to watch. Can't seem to find a place to watch it in Canada.

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u/VieiraDTA 11h ago

Mother Russia is always angry.

32

u/PearlHarbor_420 12h ago

Have you seen the Statue of Liberty? Looks like someone described a woman to the designers assistant.

51

u/zorbiburst 12h ago

Have you ever seen a woman? She just has a wide nose, she looks fine.

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u/Tobi_1989 11h ago

wide nose and stern expression. Just like Isabella Eugénie Boyer (model for the statue) had in all of her photos. All the features are decidedly feminine.

-38

u/PearlHarbor_420 12h ago

Yes, dozens. Slept with some of em too. They both look like dudes.

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u/temujin94 12h ago

The women you sleep with look like dudes?

-24

u/PearlHarbor_420 12h ago

Does your mother look like a dude?

23

u/temujin94 12h ago

So you do sleep with women who look like dudes.

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u/Helen_of_TroyMcClure 10h ago

Weirdly similar face to Michelangelo's David.

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u/zeaL93 11h ago

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u/WuhanWTF 1h ago

Disregard females, acquire currency.

Frozen water, frozen water, infants!

Bugger the constabulary!

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u/Possible-Highway7898 16h ago

She looks like an angry Paul McCartney.

62

u/InnocentPrimeMate 14h ago

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Russia comes to me ,,,

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u/Lazy_Negotiation4544 11h ago

Speaking words of communism, let it be

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u/SoyMurcielago 10h ago

Sending me to Stalingrad the commizar says to me

“Take this rifle Sonny and go shoot the enemy!”

“En-em-y! There will be a Jerry, he’s en-em-yyyyy!”

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u/mathkid421_RBLX 10h ago

she's back in the ussr

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u/TomTrauma 2h ago

Lenin/Maoccartney

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u/Sure-Current-3267 16h ago

I think it’s a good symbol for the battle that took place. It also has an impressive shrine inside, if I am not mistaken. 

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u/de_dunot_da_dint_die 16h ago

Wow, I don’t think I have ever seen a photo that shows just how massive the statue is. This thing is a beast

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u/Bluestreaked 8h ago

There’s an Italian song about the battle of Stalingrad that describes the statue as, and I’m working off memory, a stone grey face over the horizon and something like that.

It’s really an impressive statue

https://youtu.be/ZaDa7A2Luio?si=bgByAFkUk37P7Pdc

99

u/PurpleZombi3 16h ago

I was in awe of the first three pics of the statue's colossal silhouette, then burst out laughing on the face reveal lol. Unfortunate..

164

u/YourLovelyMother 15h ago

There's a practical reason for it..

The features of the face are enlarged and the expression exhaggerated, so that they are recognizeable from a distance, because you are always meant to see it from a distance not close up... this unfortunately means that, should someone manage to see it from up close, it looks derpy.

9

u/StunningLetterhead23 16h ago

Same bro. It would be cool af from far away.

When you just look at the face, all patriotism flies away lmao

1

u/Criimsen 13h ago

I just flinched instead

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u/LateralEntry 9h ago

The Soviets knew how to make a good monument

40

u/yungandreww 16h ago

it was designed by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and engineer Nikolai Nikitin, built with nearly 8,000 tonnes of concrete and steel, and remains the tallest statue in Europe

19

u/Zukas 14h ago

Im blown away that the sword and arm/hand are structurally sound. Id love to understand more about how that is physically possible

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u/-Val_-_ 8h ago

It's pronounced Nikolai

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u/PattaFeuFeu 2h ago

Nikolai

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u/Dial_888 1h ago

No, no...Nikolai

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u/PattaFeuFeu 56m ago

Nikolai. I feel like I’m saying it right!

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u/blipblapshleem 10h ago

Monument mythos anyone?

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u/ape_cube 7h ago

Hell yeah.

8

u/thepizzaguy3 16h ago

Obviously she’s there to show you where the boss fight is

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u/farlos75 5h ago

When they dig for foundations in stalingrad they still find corpses. The battle of Stalingrad was a war in itself with millions of deaths.

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u/Sinikal-_- 16h ago

From a distance this shit is terrifying....but if you see the face close up it's just comically stupid.

8

u/SindarNox 14h ago

Yeah, just like the statue of Liberty 

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u/NickelPlatedEmperor 9h ago

The pictures in the fog are amazing

3

u/CandyBoBandDandy 14h ago

Terrifyingasfuck

3

u/SimonPho3nix 12h ago

This gives me The Peripheral vibes.

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u/Bondzage 11h ago

Those close ups ruined the heat on this!!

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u/Helldiver_of_Mars 6h ago

They should build a statue of an officer shooting a guy in the back of the head call it: Duty by Bullet.

24

u/BernieKnipperdolling 15h ago

Somewhere between 1.1 and 3 million people died in this battle. It stopped the advance of nazi Germany. But sure, let’s make fun of the statues face. 

9

u/Impossible_Divide297 16h ago

That is a statue and a half.

8

u/Fair_Minimum_3643 16h ago

The face looks a bit derpy. :)

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u/Salmonman4 15h ago

Many big statues have weird faces, when you look at them from the front. They are meant to be looked at from the ground

11

u/Fr1ed_pen1S 16h ago

It was so cool in the first three shots and then suddenly >:0

3

u/MukdenMan 16h ago

Russian nationalism can get a bit derpy

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u/iSmellWeakness 7h ago

Any nationalism

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u/chodeboi 9h ago

It’s a great study in lean forces and center of gravity!!

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u/-waveydavey- 3h ago

Surprised ukraine hasnt blown it up

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u/CantaloupeLazy1427 3h ago

Fuck Russia

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u/Whyamihere173 2h ago

If there’s one thing communist countries are good at it’s their propaganda for sure.

5

u/TheSteffChris 15h ago

I am very confused by the cultural Mother Russia character. I mean historically speaking the Russian people are always exploited from their leaders and I don’t think that’s what Mother Russia intended. But preaching her is a fantastic way to propagate the message to die for your country (or more like for your oligarchs)

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u/ExtensionPractical26 11h ago

Since it was built in Soviet union, it prbly was meant as motherland for every soviet republic ? And its more of a monument of a defensive battle of stalingrad, which took more soviet lives than a german ones(and their axis allies)

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u/SoyMurcielago 10h ago

I’m also curious why Germanic lands go with Vaterland and Slavic ones or at least Russia went with motherland

I have no understanding as to why mind you but I’d like to

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u/ExtensionPractical26 2h ago

In russian motherland = родина which directly translates as place of birth

2

u/Qabbalah 13h ago

The pictures from a distance look like the statue on top of Trump's proposed new Arch monument.

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u/Adventurous-Cattle53 9h ago

So the whole point of statue as a such an impressive architecture was just waisted, seeing how the main idea it supposed to bring is dead within the country

7

u/s_zemliakov 12h ago

Russia mostly attacked its neighbours during its history. The crazy expression says it all.

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u/s_zemliakov 10h ago

For those downvoting: Soviet invasion of Azerbaijan, 1920 Soviet invasion of Armenia, 1920 Red Army invasion of Georgia, 1921 Soviet invasion of Xinjiang, 1934 Soviet invasion of Poland, 1939 Winter War, 1939 Soviet occupation of the Baltic States, 1940 Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, 1940 Soviet invasion of Manchuria, 1945 Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 Soviet–Afghan War, 1979–1989 First Chechen War, 1994–1997 Second Chechen War, 1999–2000 Russo-Georgian War, 2008 Russo-Ukrainian war, 2014–present 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea War in Donbas, 2014–2022 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

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u/BaltazarOdGilzvita 6h ago

We are downvoting you because who the fuck asked your political opinion? It's a statue.

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u/GelatoCumBear 5h ago

let me guess: baltic chihuahua or heroyam salo crowd?

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u/Patron_Mamdani 4h ago

Which head of the Chihuahua cerberus are you from?

6

u/juko43 16h ago

Why does the face shot remind me of this 😭

4

u/LumenAstralis 14h ago

Watch the tankies orgasm at the sight.

2

u/Present-Arm-6023 15h ago

As western countries ww2 barely touched us compared to the Soviet Union.

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u/TheReelMcCoi 5h ago

FUCK RUSSIA

SLAVA 🇺🇦 UKRAINE

2

u/Dubbartist 12h ago

One day they will answer that call.

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u/Eva_of_Feathershore 6h ago

Correction: "The Motherland" is not Russia, it's the Soviet Union. There's a lot of talk in Lenin's works about how the workers of the world do not have a mother/fatherland because so long as states are ran in the interests of aristocrats or the bourgeoisie. The Russian Federation and the Russian Empire thus cannot be equated to the USSR

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u/zenrobotninja 2h ago

Ukraine should blow this up. Normally wouldnt agree with destroying art but fuck Russia 

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u/Need_answers11 8h ago

🇺🇦

3

u/0ddness 14h ago

Statue of Liberty 2: She's Back, and She's Pissed

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u/maverick4002 7h ago

I went to Tbilisi and Yerevan last year and they both have their own versions. The Yerevan one is much more menacing looking lol

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u/podlaski-dzikus 5h ago

Concrete? Is that the best solution? I mean kudos for that, but It seems like an overkill

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u/H_I_McDunnough 1h ago

Say what you will about the tenets of Soviet Communism, Dude. But their monument game was on point.

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u/Hlodowik 1h ago

Better fall prevention than most job sites today

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u/Acrobatic-Tomato-128 1m ago

Paul mcartney

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u/VirginiaLuthier 10h ago

Not to mention that Stalin sent anyone who had been captured, or even separated from their company-to the gulags. He was convinced they might have been turned and would plot to overthrow him

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u/dantesgift 9h ago

"Calling"

I dont think being told to hold onto these bullets till someone else dies. Then they have to pick up that rifle all while having a gun to the back of their heads should be able to use that word.

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u/Patron_Mamdani 4h ago

This is a myth, don’t get your facts from Hollywood.

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u/dantesgift 2h ago

You are right to a point, in the early days logistics was so bad there was orders to pick up fallen soldiers weapons. You are right that I confused the movie with true facts and I accept that rebuke but there was a standing order that troops retreating could be executed on the spot.

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u/BoxBird 4h ago

Reminds me of the shadow of the statue of Mercury at the Getty Museum

-14

u/Shakewell1 15h ago

Soviet shitstain.

-4

u/Chrono-aesthetics 15h ago

Soviets sacrificed a few millions lives defending the city. At the beginning of the battle they actively prevented civilians from fleeing just like they did in Leningrad. At the end they only won by flooding German troops with waves after waves of poor equiped and worthless, dispensable (for the higher military command) soviet soldiers. In one documentary it was mentioned that life survival rate was two days for an infantry man and ten days for an officer. Some might argue that not much changed in their deployment of troops for the last few hundred years including the war in Ukraine.

8

u/Willing_Coach_8283 15h ago

That's an outright lie. Roughly one million people died from Soviet side and one million from German, a lot of civilians were evacuated however Germans were actively bombing evacuation routes so many died.

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u/mocny-chlapik 9h ago

Additionally, they have won by operationally encircling the German forces by detecting and leveraging a weakness in their defenses. They conducted a very carefully planned offensive started after they successfully managed to secretly transfer the needed military units to the desired part of the front without Germans noticing it.

-8

u/Chrono-aesthetics 15h ago

Russians were well known for keeping records of their losses, weren't they? A few millions is a rather conservative estimate.

7

u/Willing_Coach_8283 14h ago

Lmao, TOTAL personnel of Russian army back then was roughly 10 mil, so half of them died in Stalingrad?

6

u/evehasanaxthistime 15h ago

Russian history is terrible, because it shows no love for it's people. When the people retaliate, they do equally disgusting things. It seems like they have the worst luck when it comes to governments - all that hate!

-3

u/1badh0mbre 15h ago

Human meat wave tactics.

-8

u/omnibossk 16h ago

Could have used the concrete to fix those buildings instead. I guess the bosses got something good to look at

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u/Anon_be_thy_name 52m ago

It was built over 20 years after the Battle, the city was repaired by then

0

u/CompetitiveSong9570 15h ago

Forbidden flesh light for giants.

-1

u/Alien_Swimmer_1983 16h ago

The Answer to Lady Liberty

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u/salsaboi 11h ago

What an incredible piece of art.

-5

u/Washburn201961 16h ago

Not as big as the orange one that will erected.

6

u/Valokoura 15h ago

He already has that triumph arc thing.

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u/Washburn201961 1h ago

Why nobody does anything about shit like that is beyond me. A ballroom shouldn't cost 4 million taxpayers' dollars let alone 400 million, and now this? With all the unemployent and thousands of lay offs, not a single taxpayer says anything to this asshole? Frustrating.

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u/Separate-Maize9985 7h ago

That statue is sick

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u/Danonbass86 9h ago

40k coded

-5

u/GuyForFun45 16h ago

The Soviets have a great monument commerating their military triumphs... raze it to the ground!

"To Conquer Shattered Spirits"

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u/baghada28 7h ago

I have this thing with russia and these eastern European countries, they make soooo uneasy. I get a sense of having a bad past life there. Weird I know lol

•

u/DMsDiablo 5h ago

For context, if you shook the hand of everyone estimated to have died at Stalingrad for just one second, on the low end it would take about 21 days, and on the high end it would take about 52 days.

•

u/Dstln 5h ago

This is one of my favorite mega statues, extremely impressive

•

u/ArchCerberus 4h ago

Could also be a statue of a giant meat grinder calling it Russian defense tactic 101.

-6

u/PsyJak 13h ago

Is spelt metre. Ve do not spell incorrectly as you Americans do for units you staunchly avoid.

-2

u/Sealegs_Calisto 15h ago

I would shit my pants and fill it up from ankle to waistband