and as russia celebrates victory day and remembers that who gave their lives fighting against the nazis in that world war two satan saw special report motherland calls. she stands fifty two meters tall with a sword eighty five she weighs eight thousand tons and is six meters tall of the most famous symbol of the united states. the guinness book of records named it as the tallest sculpture in the world at the time of construction. rushes symbol of victory the motherland kohls sits on the hill of them i ask her to come in volgograd. the city saw one of the bloodiest battles of the second world war. during the war it was known as the starting grad the first day of the battle in july nine hundred forty two alone and so forth to the families of people killed

more than two million soviet soldiers and residents of stunning grad to die in the course of nearly seven months another million and a half were killed in the german side the remains of hundreds of thousands of shells and bombs can still be found to this day. the says she was ruined that was then when i first thought about how to restore ever think that had been laid to waste. valentino was a construction worker of family moved to the city right after the second world war she witnessed not only the restoration of stalingrad from the ruins but also the competition to create the best monument stalin had ordered the memory of the conflict to be immortalized on the my of. was put in charge. when you consider two projects we also thought about building in wonderment only segarra sixty fourth on mill the soviet union defended the site but it was far from the city center the second project was

a gun that we decided to build here because the entire city could descend from the top. sculptors from all over the country submitted their projects to participate in the contest stalin eventually chose yevgeny for a church known for his works of socialist realisable that symbolized heroism at that time he'd already created the soviet ruling. he was later responsible for a statue abroad that a speech soars into plowshares which can be found outside the united nations. but with my my of the artist was faced with a difficult task he had to come up with a symbol representing a call for victory because stomping ground was a major turning during. the search for his means again. the question of who inspired the work is a very interesting one they were lots of theories some thought it was a waitress fell into me or jim that's new. but in fact give me watch it each was

fast inspired by nike off some of trace the first version of the set she was half the final size twenty five meters there were plans to build a messiah cool under the morning meant for that but then the weight of the statue doubled while the foundation had been made with a mission that planned lote so they decided to add one hundred fifty thousand more tons of earth. for the most part i have could go is a huge cemetery as a result of the construction the mass graves ended up buried under eight meters of earth. village two hundred fifty kilometers from volgograd alexander sunico left his home here in one nine hundred forty one never to come back. one day alexander was given an old man a lift he was still there too and died at the age of twenty. alexander lived but his mother sank deep into. that.

when alexander volunteered for the front he left his mother three sisters and the younger brother behind from the age of nine alexander became the man of the house people used to say that even if alexander was hungry and self he would find food first for the others today only his sister does survives a younger brother died before he could find the final resting place of their deceased brother alexander's nephew alexy continued to search. during the war alexander was a tank man after fighting nearly five hundred kilometers from stalingrad all the way to mumbai if coco he was seriously injured the soldier had a choice either to go to hospital will stop the enemy advance he chose the latter. alexander died from his wounds two days before the end of the battle in street

fighting in a stunning grants room which now serves as a reminder of the hundreds of the even now the remains of hundreds of thousands of some the its soldiers are missing thirty three search teams scour the area to finally lay them to rest somewhere they're going to for the best find was a letter that a soldier wrote to his fiance before his death but he did not have time to send this note it was written in verse we read it to the end outloud. seventy years have passed but bullet casings unexploded mines and shell fragments continued to be honest in one instance the remains of forty soldiers were found in a single day the average life expectancy of a soldier upon arriving in stalingrad was twenty four hours few managed to survive almost all two hundred days like alexander surreal because. according to the law we very those found within the city. those without

a name are laid to rest. in accordance with russian law those found in other regions. from the moment the war ended alexander's relatives searched intensely for his grave. and they failed to find his remains in the place indicated on the death notice and only seventy years later they discover that he had been exuding together with the remains of many of the soldiers. they had been moved to a mass grave situated on the eastern slope of the foot of the mother man calls monument. people working at the memorial helps a few find where the soldier had been buried. a card index system keeps all the information about the soldiers. here's your uncle's card aleksandr. so aleksei you can see that your uncle is not

only engraved forever on the wall of the memorial complex but also in the battle of stalingrad museum archives. it turned out that the final resting place of the young soldier was found here on the hill but he defended to the end. well hello who examined the. thirty four thousand five hundred and five people are buried of the foot of the motherland calls another eleven thousand people are in a small and mass grave elsewhere on the hill. who wanted to immortalize the names of the to see soldiers lists came in from moscow from that information seven thousand two hundred names have been engraved in them i have cut guns whole of military glory however the full story of nine hundred of the foreman has not yet

been revealed the only information they have is a surname and initials a special team at the memorial complex investigates the soldiers origins even today there are people who off to seeing their family name on the wall trying to find at least some details about their deceased relatives. the only god stands watch over the whole of military glory only those meeting specific requirements can make it into this regiment soldiers must be told of slavic appearance and fully versed in old drill techniques. the architectural scale of them are a project match the scope of the battle of stalingrad a fitting memorial was needed for the lost lives in one nine hundred forty two the commander of the sixty second dummy the silly to recall was the architect advisor he was immortalized by. the sculpted human to fight to the death. it takes two hundred steps from the foot of the mayans could gun to reach its top one for each

day of the battle standing. in the square of sorrow stands a sculpture of a grieving mother. these walls have built from the ruins of stomping ground depicting soldier it's as well as the slogan not a single step back. it took several lives to find the image for the central monument. the motherland calls as a different meaning this is not the statue of liberty of course which implies freedom for the american people that are statue is full of energy moral and military spirit the motherland kohls is unique there is no such other statue in the world that's the way that. it's possible the sculptor's final design was inspired by the figures on paris's up the tree of all the figure of nike that he saw on display in the movie. this statue of a woman with a sword in hand and to feel a spirit was approved as

a symbol of the motherland at the highest level. knew firsthand the horrors of. he served as a machine gun before being wounded and returned to moscow in one hundred forty three. for that will go on the you also have a tremor in his hand to imagine that he was a sculptor with the. board. only when he was sculpting was he calm and could work fast and professionally. he was always doing something sculpting working with clay just so he could feel the way he did before the injury to anya i don't but my father told me that he'd always been modeling something but with you that's why he always had a potty much is why as with him. he was always busy and after the bye little bit no matter if he was ill or feel. whether it was night or day it was sculpting or maybe just needed to do it to feel alive but it's on the minds as they are. the grand

memorial to the heroes of the battle of stalingrad opened on october the fifteenth nine hundred sixty seven. all the party leaders of the soviet union together with the only brush never arrived soon after the opening ceremony of the monument you chanted started work on a new one hundred meter tall the motherland statue to be delivered to keep. the skull to pass away before the project was realized. culture is that so much about the taxpayers' money and it is a charade even a lot of people at area returning to the russian presidency for the third time slot a mere putin has pledged to unify the country and continue me forms to expand the economy. the mission of free accreditation

free zones for judges free. range and free. free. to tide free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media and on to r t dot com you. get are sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture. that's.

during the construction of the motherland. and its upper parts were connected by an elevator fortunately it broke down this meant. would have to walk up and down two hundred steps to inspect its money. only the personnel looking after the monument.

a year after the unveiling of the statue the issue of who is going to maintain this huge construction arose for the first time in the soviet union a team of mountain climbers was employed to look after the monument. it's a good one. on the trail. the red ropes descents. to safety risking their lives. check the condition of the motherland calls monument which deteriorated following the collapse of the soviet union nowadays specialists keep an eye on the joints regularly so that the limbs remain firm periodic especially coating is applied to the statue but the solution does not come cheap mountain climbers examine small mocks covering the statue in most cases they're just making a record there are more than a thousand of them here. of particular concern.

this place has very. secure this is a serious defect the concrete broke away from the outer surface because water got into the cracks. seeing as there was clay inside the crack began to grow squeezed against a chunk of concrete this needs fixing immediately otherwise the process of destruction will continue. only the most professional climbers are allowed to work on the monument. it's particularly important that they have extensive experience in mountaineering in uneven terrain. the whole of volgograd can be seen from the top of the motherland calls. working on the

motherland cause it's like a hobby to me. this work is not for money. i spent my whole lifetime here. i mean for work to many times as there's a lot to do here i'm a native of volgograd and i'm proud of having such a monument in our city. we try to keep it in good condition to preserve it for future generations. if it is a war veteran one of the few builders of the monument to a still alive when construction began there was not even any grass. in its place where about twelve hundred fifty deadly metal fragments per square metre the motherland coals was built upon soaked with the blood of the soldiers. what was done there in this place there were. the workers could change their clothes and here we had our office and over there were.

those who cast the molds for the statue lived in the. cost of the four. inside the statue erected for internal politicians. numerous trucks brought in concrete from. what could be a bomb that the trucks with concrete were arriving day and night this was the first concrete monument in the world there were no such other sculptures made of reinforced concrete anywhere else all our sculptures are made of concrete such monuments hadn't existed before we were the first to build them. when constructing such a huge monument the designers and builders could not foresee old possible issues. this road isn't reliable here. being a builder i am greatly concerned about it we have to deal with this issue urgently

i want the statue to stay as it is now. supported only by. this symbol of victory stamps just like a chess piece it was dr of technical sciences nikitin who made the necessary calculations there were even plans for special needs which would make it possible to easily raise the statue if. the designers first calculated the exact center of gravity before setting up cables inside the statue but another issue with in the one nine hundred seventy s. during a strong wind the steel sword began to swing. it was replaced with a titanium version weighing fourteen tons. engineer. comes to the statue once a week he checks all the cables inside to make sure they aren't overstretched and without any metal has rusted the rim more than one hundred cables here each twenty

meters long they pull together all of the internal parts of the statue. this one wasn't needed there for example you can see the ropes that pull together the right forearm and the elbow of the arm which holds the sword. you could call them the muscles of the arm. there are special sensors on the cables which monitor the tension they send this information to a micro processing unit installed further up. in the heart of the monument here all the monitoring machinery is installed previously to examine the construction and communicate with the employees this device is used to help one could talk to any person no matter where they were in the sauder in the leg but only one person had to dial the number ask the person situated inside saudi how was he doing what was the situation like. currently there's no such thing. today all this cumbersome

equipment has been replaced with an ordinary laptop. and this kind of micro processing device. one of the main tasks of the statue supervisors is to watch for any deviations and when necessary take the correct action. that isn't the one nine hundred eighty s. we've been observing the foundation stabilisation we conduct g.-o. d. sick. and. then the blood of the top the way the head is bent is approaching the critical point. we're watching the situation closely constant monitoring and new calculations are acquired. this is my favorite part of the head. this is where the monitoring ends. and the panorama of the city begins.

the institute of physical education is situated close by models for the statue was selected from here in the nineteen fifties and came to you again studio in this factory to pose the working day of a model here for hours. at the. shops . that was fifty years ago a very long time. try to place. realize what kind of project she was participating in she was simply curious. as i remember reading a rule in there. it was supposed to be a sword to left. there after.

going you and there was some kind of a big fund there to make the fabric flutter. wasn't invited to the opening ceremony she recognized the familiar features later when she saw the monument for herself yet at the other i was looking at her and wanted to see. it seemed to me that the position. tried. to mine. i wanted to believe i look like her. is the woman who became the face of the motherland or is it just a result of the sculptor's imagination. trying to answer this question he spent six years writing a manuscript about his famous father but he died without having published his. grandson is now the keeper of the manuscript.

which appears from the manuscript. from a very beautiful woman the woman was a classic example of the legend. of course in the motherland cool's you can see similarities with the famous nike of some of the trace. the original is kept in the loop for the record so what my grandfather saw her and she might have served as a fine example of a great statue for him but of course this female figure is a generalization if you look at the statue and his wife vera you know well to me they look a lot of it is new costs money because. it's clear that there are similarities when a picture of the sculptors wife is placed side by side of the statue. chatted to was a man of few words he expressed what he wanted to say with his hands that's why specialists and relatives are not surprised that the work devoted to the most significant

period in his life was modeled on his wife. which is your scope of church which said he had so many ideas that he would need a dozen life at all events to realize them each tile on the butt and i know that's really the case that he dreamed of new projects because he wanted people to remember him as an artist when body to heroism because of those people. history has shown that the artist succeeded in as endeavor every year nearly two million people come to the foot of the monument symbolizing russia's triumph in the second world war. the people of the united states and their friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder is

regime has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons and let there be no doubt about we know for a fact that there are weapons there. this were just being carried out into the direction of dr david kay respected scientist and former u.n. inspector was leading the weapons search in iraq we are determined to take this apart we have a tremendous a group of dedicated american men and women involved in this with the best assets of the intelligence community can provide. data cheney is not going to be done with this for quite some time david kay wants more time and he says it could take another six to nine months to make a definitive finding ministration is asking congress for hundreds of millions more six hundred million dollars to fund a continuing search have not yet found shiny pointy things that i would call a weapon before we can draw from conclusions we need to let the iraq survey group complete its work. we were all wrong probably in my judgment.

and that is most disturbing. sometimes the true patriots takes the unpopular caress that helps the country and wooden stakes and even if they come this way at least from tonight patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels and i think these are scoundrels they have no argument now they have no defense for what they did the country is in a terrible international security situation but i think it's perilous so they're attacking the patriotism of others.

there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what hopes journalism on those. we want to present. some feel.

the top stories in all see dmitri medvedev has launched a special commission to investigate the disappearance of a brand new russian soyuz superjet one hundred in indonesia the aircraft was a shot short sales demonstration flight with pics of passengers on board with the radio contact one grade of contact was lost on wednesday morning. a spectacular display of fireworks is enjoyed in moscow victory day marking russia's defeat of nazi germany in the great ponchos it war. was included a bronco great and red square to all of the writer andres atwood at thirty six seven years of. ukraine's x. prime minister unit has been moved from a prison to hospital for treatment has been on hunger strike for nineteen days claiming some put at g.'s why they were. coming out some say of lead to preach and i have to change because of russia's opposition is growing up the new presidents were ranting is the topic for the.