Stand to the Death Sculpture

The figure of a soldier growing out of a block of earth stands in the centre of a round pool on the Square of Those Who Stood to the Death, the first large terrace on the climb up Mamayev Kurgan. The sculpture, about sixteen metres tall, was made in concrete from a model by Yevgeny Vuchetich; the face is usually read as a composite image, although at various times it has also been linked to Vasily Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army. The soldier is stripped to the waist, with a submachine gun in his right hand and a grenade in his left, and the lower part of the figure is not separated from the rock — a device that reads as a defender fused with the land. Carved on the pedestal are the inscriptions "Stand to the Death" and "Not a Step Back". Behind the sculpture rise ruined walls with reliefs and phrases from front-line dispatches cut into them, and higher still the figure of The Motherland Calls is visible, so that the whole axis of the memorial is set out in a single line. The pool around it is filled with water in the warm season; in winter it stands dry.

On the map