JOHN CHUCKAN COMMENT: ON THE NATURE OF WAR MONUMENTS – EVEN IF TOU ARE AS ANTI-WAR AS I AM, YOU CAN BE MOVED BY SOME OF THEM – RUSSIA’S “THE MOTHERLAND CALLS” CAN BRING TEARS – IT MOVINGLY RECALLS THE MOST TERRIBLE EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY – BRITAIN’S BRAND NEW ARMED SERVICES MEMORIAL IS STERILE AND OPPRESSIVE – THE CREATORS REVEAL THE EMPTINESS OF THEIR PURPOSE

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOHN PILGER IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

The Most Lethal Virus is Not Covid-19. It is War

Even though I am very anti-war, I can admire a great war monument.

There are a number of them in the world, but the one that almost gives me chills is the gigantic “The Motherland Calls” in Volgograd (renamed from Stalingrad).

Its gigantic size is justified in that it represents the bloodiest battle ever fought in the most destructive event in all of human history, Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

The USSR lost roughly a hundred times the entire American losses on all fronts in WWII. Maybe, that’s why America is so cavalier about war – it never really experienced it.

The intensity of feeling of “The Motherland Calls” is enough to bring tears.

I actually find the British Armed Services Memorial exceedingly sterile. It possesses a kind of oppressive ugliness.

There is definitely a surreal quality to the sculpture groups, unpleasantly so. Nothing inspiring about any of it.

Well done in terms of technical quality, but with a sickening sense of dreary nightmare figures set in a rigid stone framework that very much reminds me of Italian and German totalitarian architecture.

Its creators have unwittingly revealed its emptiness of purpose and soul.