Monuments & Statues

If it’s Lenin you’re after then you’ve come to the right place. Statues of Lenin still adorn every city and town centre in Belarus and there are plenty to be found in Minsk, although most take a lot of seeking out and are usually hidden in the yards of factories and public buildings.

In addition the city is dotted with memorials to the various tragedies that have been suffered by the Belarusian people throughout history.

Lenin
Ploshad Nezavisimosti (Площадь Независимости)
Lenin has overlooked Independence Square since 1933. The seven metre high monument is by Aleksander Grube who designed the first ever public statue of Lenin in the USSR, which was erected in the Belarusian town of Krasnopole in 1922.

Victory Square
Prospekt Nezavisimosti (Проспект Независимости)
Minsk’s memorial to victory in the Great Patriotic War was officially opened on 3 July 1954 on the 10th anniversary of the liberation of Minsk. The eternal flame was added in 1961. A further memorial was added underneath the square during construction of the metro station in the 1980s. The buildings that surround the square were built by German prisoners of war in the 1950s.

Island of Tears
This small man-made island with a small chapel in the centre is a memorial to Belarusian soldiers who have died in foreign lands. In particular it remembers those who died in Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The best time to visit this memorial is on Saturday morning when a constant flow of wedding parties stop nearby while the bride and groom leave flowers at a statue of a crying angel. Local superstition says that by touching the statue the newlyweds will protect their children from ever having to go to war.

Nemiga Tragedy Monument
Nemiga metro station (Метро «Немига»)
On 30 May 1999 hundreds fled towards the subway at Nemiga metro station to shelter from a sudden thunder storm during an open-air concert. In the resulting stampede 53 people, most of them teenagers, were crushed to death as they slipped on the steps leading to the subway. In the immediate aftermath the walls of the subway were covered with flowers and tributes to the dead that remained for a year before the government created this monument at the entrance.

Minsk Hero City Monument
Prospect Podetiteley (Проспект Победителей)
Selected Soviet cities that made a particularly significant contribution to the Great Patriotic War were awarded Hero City status, Minsk receiving its honour in 1974. In total 12 cities received Hero City status, as well as Brest Fortress on the Polish border. The 45 metre obelisk dominates the area and is located between the Belarus, Yubileyniya and Planeta hotels.

Jewish Memorial
Zaslavskaya (Заславская)
This memorial remembers the 5,000 Jews that were killed in one day near this spot in 1942. Jews formed the majority population in most major Belarusian cities before the war. It is estimated that more than 700,000 were killed in over 150 Jewish ghettos in Belarus during World War II. The memorial is slightly hidden. Take the left hand turn near the Hotel Yubileynaya and Zaslavskaya is the first road on the right. The memorial is on the corner where the roads meet.

Landmark denoting the Beginning of all Roads
Ploshad Oktyapbskaya (Площадь Октябрьская)
On October Square, on the spot where a statue of Stalin used to stand, is a small pyramid that marks the spot from where all distances from Minsk are measured. On the pyramid are the names of many world cities and their distance from that spot.

Victor Tsoy (Виктор Цой) Monument
Internatsionalaya (Интернациональная)
Behind the War Museum, down a flight of steps, lay a monument to Victor Tsoy, lead signer of Kino, a pioneering Russian rock band who found fame in the 1980s for their unique style and anti-establishment lyrics. When Tsoy died in a car crash in 1990 two concrete fence panels that helped enclose a construction site on October Square became a spontaneous tribute wall and were eventually given a permanent home. However on 5 September 2008 they disappeared overnight. Conspiracy theories abound but the location of the panels remains unknown. Another spontaneous tribute, a message in brick reading “Victor Tsoy will live forever in our hearts” has now appeared.

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