The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a memorial architectural ensemble
located near the Kremlin Wall in the Alexander Garden. It was built in
1967 according to the project of architects Dmitry Burdin, Vladimir
Klimov, Yuri Rabaev and sculptor Nikolai Tomsky. Since 1997, Post No. 1
has been located at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The monument has
been awarded the status of an object of cultural heritage of Russia, as
well as a National memorial of military glory.
Statesmen,
delegations, heads of foreign states and governments, veterans of the
Great Patriotic War and pupils of pre-university educational
institutions of the Ministry of Defense annually lay flowers at the
Grave of the Unknown Soldier on memorable dates and on some public
holidays.
The memorial complex consists of several elements: the graves of a
soldier with Eternal Flame, the alleys of hero cities and the steles of
cities of military glory. The tombstone is made in the form of a square
slab made of red polished blocks of Shokshinsky quartzite. The right
part of the burial is decorated with a bronze composition — a soldier's
helmet and a laurel branch lying on the folds of the battle banner.
In the central part of the memorial there is a niche made of
polished labradorite with a relief inscription: "Your name is unknown,
your feat is immortal." It is believed that its author is the writer
Sergei Mikhalkov, with whom poets and prose writers Konstantin Simonov,
Sergei Narovchatov and Sergei Smirnov worked on the inscription.
Initially, the epitaph was written: "His name is unknown, his feat is
immortal," but at the request of the first secretary of the Moscow City
Committee of the CPSU, Nikolai Egorychev, the pronoun "his" was changed
to "yours." In the center of the niche there is a bronze five-pointed
star, in the middle of which the Eternal Flame burns.
To the left
of the grave is a wall of red quartzite with the inscription: "1941 To
those who fell for the Motherland 1945". On the right side of the
burial, along the Kremlin wall, there is an alley with porphyry blocks.
The platform on which they are installed is raised by three steps above
the level of the paths of the Alexander Garden. Each of the twelve
pedestals with the names of the hero cities also has a stamped image of
the Gold Star medal. The curbstones are arranged in the order in which
cities are awarded the title of hero:
"Leningrad"
"Kiev"
"Minsk"
"Stalingrad"
"Sevastopol"
"Odessa"
"Kerch"
"Novorossiysk"
"Brest Fortress"
"Tula"
"Murmansk"
"Smolensk"
There are capsules with earth inside the blocks. Leningrad land was
taken at the Piskarevskoye cemetery, Kiev land — at the foot of the
obelisk on Victory Square, erected in memory of the participants in the
defense of the city. The capsules of Odessa, Minsk, Kerch, Tula,
Murmansk and Smolensk contain land brought from the places of fierce
fighting. The Stalingrad block, which was named Volgograd until 2004,
contains land from Mamayev Kurgan. From Sevastopol, the land was
delivered from Malakhov Kurgan, from Brest — from the foot of the Brest
fortress.
In 2010, after restoration, the memorial architectural
ensemble "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" was opened in the Alexander
Garden near the Moscow Kremlin. As part of the memorial complex, on the
right side of the Smolensk block, there is a rectangular stele made of
red granite containing the names of all cities of military glory in
Russia. The height of the structure is less than a meter, and it is
about ten meters long. On the left side of the stele, the inscription
"CITIES OF MILITARY GLORY" is made in bronze letters, on the right are
the names of 45 cities divided into columns of four each:
Belgorod, Kursk, Orel, Vladikavkaz
Malgobek, Rzhev, Yelnya, Yelets
Voronezh, Luga, Polyarny, Rostov-on-Don
Tuapse, Velikiye Luki, Veliky
Novgorod, Dmitrov
Vyazma, Kronstadt, Naro-Fominsk, Pskov
Kozelsk,
Arkhangelsk, Volokolamsk, Bryansk
Nalchik, Vyborg, Kalach-on-Don,
Vladivostok
Tikhvin, Tver, Anapa, Kolpino
Stary Oskol, Kovrov,
Lomonosov, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
Taganrog, Maloyaroslavets,
Mozhaisk, Khabarovsk
Staraya Russa, Grozny, Gatchina, Petrozavodsk
Feodosia
The idea of erecting a monument in honor of the soldiers who fought
in the Battle of Moscow arose in 1965 as part of a campaign to
perpetuate the memory of the fallen in the Great Patriotic War. By that
time, the first generation of citizens who did not find the war at a
conscious age had grown up. In 1961, the Victory Bridge was
reconstructed. The first monument in memory of the Great Patriotic War
was placed in Victory Park along Kutuzovsky Prospekt. During the
campaign, the capital was awarded the title of hero city and declared
May 9 a national holiday and a day off. Nikolai Egorychev, the first
secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, is considered one of the
initiators of the installation of the monument to the nameless soldier,
who presented rough sketches of the monument to the party leadership —
Mikhail Suslov and Leonid Brezhnev.
It was decided to erect a
memorial near the walls of the Kremlin in the Alexander Garden. However,
its construction did not begin immediately due to the fact that at the
entrance to the garden there was a former obelisk in honor of the 300th
anniversary of the Romanov House, converted into a monument to
revolutionary figures. The installation of the monument became possible
in 1966 after the obelisk was moved to the site near the Ruins grotto.
In the autumn of the same year, a mass grave was discovered on the
41st kilometer of the Moscow-Leningrad highway near Zelenograd during
construction work. The remains of a soldier found in it in
well-preserved uniforms without insignia were proposed to be buried near
the Kremlin Wall to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the defeat of
German troops near Moscow.
On December 3, 1966, the soldier's
ashes arrived in the capital on a gun carriage. Together with the
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev,
Marshals of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky,
who commanded the Western Front and the 16th Army during the defense of
Moscow, met him at the gates of the Alexander Garden. In their presence,
the coffin with the remains was solemnly buried.
In the Soviet
press, this event was described as follows:
On December 2, 1966,
at 2:30 p.m., the remains of one of the soldiers resting in a mass grave
were placed in a coffin covered with an orange and black ribbon. The
young soldiers standing guard of honor were relieved every two hours all
evening, all night and the next morning. On December 3, at 11:45 a.m.,
the coffin was placed on an open car that moved along the Leningradskoye
highway to Moscow. A rally was held on Manezhnaya Square, and the coffin
with the remains of an Unknown soldier was lowered into the grave under
an artillery salvo
The order to install the monument at the burial site was received by
architects Yuri Rabaev, Dmitry Burdin, Vladimir Klimov and sculptor
Nikolai Tomsky. The project of the monument was prepared by them within
a few months.
The grand opening of the memorial complex "Grave of
the Unknown Soldier" took place on May 8, 1967. Nikolai Egorychev led
the ceremony. The eternal Flame was lit by Leonid Brezhnev, who took the
torch on Manezhnaya Square from Hero of the Soviet Union Alexei
Maresyev. The torch, delivered by armored personnel carrier to Moscow,
was lit from the fire on the Champ de Mars in Leningrad.
The
guard of honor was joined by: Deputy chairman of the Moscow City Council
L. V. Bakhmetkov (as a warrior who fought here 25 years ago), doctor N.
A. Solomatova (who does not know where the grave of her front-line
husband is), and pioneers of the schools of Zelenograd (a new city that
grew up where the blood of an Unknown Soldier was shed).
The ensemble of the memorial complex has been updated several times.
Initially, the central part of the square slab of the tombstone was
decorated with a single bronze soldier's helmet. By the 30th anniversary
of the Victory Day celebration, the monument was completely restored and
supplemented with various elements, at that time a bronze composition
appeared on the right side of the tombstone — a lying battle banner, a
soldier's helmet and a laurel branch authored by Nikolai Tomsky. The
monuments on the alley of hero cities near the Kremlin Wall include
blocks with the names of Minsk, Novorossiysk and Kerch. In 1985, blocks
of Murmansk and Smolensk were added to the alley.
The Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier Post No. 1 was moved from Lenin's Mausoleum to the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier on December 12, 1997, in accordance with the
decree of the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin "On the establishment of
a permanent guard of Honor in Moscow at the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier". The guard is carried out by military personnel of
the Presidential Regiment, who replace each other every hour.
According to the decree of President Dmitry Medvedev dated November 17,
2009, the monument was awarded the status of a National memorial of
military glory. In the same year, the Presidential Administration
announced the beginning of its large-scale reconstruction, the purpose
of which was to preserve the original appearance of the complex. Then it
was announced the intention to install a new stele with the names of
cities of military glory. Two stationary shelters have been installed at
the guard of honor and the fir trees that grew behind the memorial
complex near the Kremlin Wall have been removed.
On December 27,
2009, Mosgaz moved the flame of the Eternal Flame to Victory Park during
the restoration work. The transfer ceremony was attended by war
veterans, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, Presidential Affairs
Manager Vladimir Kozhin, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, members of the
government of the capital and deputies of the City Duma.
The
guard of honor was not displayed at the memorial complex during the
reconstruction works — from December 16, 2009 to February 19, 2010.
Also, the wreath-laying and flower-laying ceremonies at the memorial
were stopped for this period.
The return of the fire to the
Alexander Garden took place on February 23, 2010 in the presence of
Dmitry Medvedev. The reconstruction of the memorial complex was
completed by Victory Day of the same year: on May 8, the National
Memorial of Military Glory was inaugurated by the presidents of Russia,
Belarus and Ukraine, and the stele in honor of the cities of military
glory was unveiled by Colonel General of Aviation Mikhail Odintsovo and
Hero of Russia Vyacheslav Sivko.
On October 24, 2014, the State Duma declared December 3 the Day of
the Unknown Soldier — the day of burial of the ashes of the unknown
soldier in the Alexander Garden.
On May 8, 2017, the 50th
anniversary of the lighting of the Eternal Flame was celebrated at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - a ceremony was played, which was attended
by military veterans, representatives of public organizations and search
movements, People's Artist of the USSR Vasily Lanov, cosmonauts Sergei
Krikalev and Elena Serova, as well as military personnel in the uniform
of the 1941 model. The fire was transferred to a temporary burner — an
exact replica of the star on the Grave of the Unknown Soldier — by the
torch from which the Eternal Flame was lit in 1967, after which the
flame was returned to its place.
Currently, Mosgaz specialists
conduct annual inspections of the Eternal Flame. During preventive
maintenance, they lift the bronze star of the monument and transfer the
flame to a temporary burner using a special torch so that the fire does
not fade.
The wives of those mobilized for the war with Ukraine,
starting from December 9, 2023, held flower laying and single pickets
every Saturday in protest against indefinite mobilization.