Mother Armenia

Mother Armenia is a statue in Victory Park of an Armenian mother overlooking the Capital City of Yerevan.

History

During Stalin's reign on the Soviet Union, Grigor Harutyunyan, the first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party's Central Committee and members of the government were carefully seeing to the construction of a monument for Stalin which was completed on November 29, 1950 and unveiled to the people. The statue was considered a masterpiece sculpted by Sergey Merkurov. Realizing that occupying a pedestal can be a short-term honor, Israelyan designed the pedestal to resemble an Armenian church - at least on the inside. In contrast to the right-angled shapes of the outside, inside was light and pleasing to the eye and resembled Echmiadzin's seventh-century Hripsime Church.

In fact, Israelyan's prediction came true as the Soviet leader's time came to an end quickly afterwards and his monument was taken down. The monument was replaced in 1967 by the Mother Armenia statue which was designed by Ara Harutyunyan.

Symbolization

"Mother Armenia" statue stands to symbolize peace through strength. Its strategic location of being on a hill overlooking Yerevan makes it look like she is the guardian of the Armenian capital. Each May 9, thousands pass by the statue of Mother Armenia to commemorate Armenia's war dead. In the huge territory of the monument (3,000 square meters), inside the 50-meter pedestal there is Mother Armenia Museum of the Ministry of Defense. The relics exhibited tell about heroism of Armenians in WWII and Nagorno-Karabakh War of the 1980-90s. There are personal belongings, weapons and documents of the heroes and walls are decorated with their portraits. There is a historical map, on which forces worked for the liberation of Shushi among other historical artifacts.