I remember hearing this a while ago maybe on a history channel documentary. That there is a wall in every medium size Russian town or city which has the names of the soldiers who fell in the war from that city. And since over 20 million Russians fell in the war the walls are larger than the Vietnam wall in the US. Could it be true?
You mean WW2, right?
He means that many cities in Russia had more soldiers killed in WWII than all of America had killed in the Vietnam War.
I think it’s a safe bet he meant World War 2 Memorial in every major Russian city. I don’t know for sure if it is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The death toll from World War 2 in Russia was horrific.
Many towns and villages in England have a World War 1 memorial. It’s sobering to see a long list of names of those who fell, and then think that they came from one small town.
Whereas the Soviet death toll in Vietnam was… less horrific.
[Quote=Wikipedia]
Other nations’ casualties
Soviet Union
~16.
[/quote]
Here in the UK pretty much every town has a War Memorial commemorating the dead of the two World Wars. They sometimes have addenda for Korea, the Falklands, and other conflicts.
Actually, there’s a special term - Thankful Villages - for places which lost no one serving.
Whether there are war memorials also has a social/political aspect related to the war, as well as obviously whether the town in question existed yet during that war. For example in my area in northern NJ towns that were around during the American Civil War generally have memorials to it, but some towns were only incorporated later. Obviously in newer states out west it’s much less common. Also interestingly noticeably more towns in this area have a WWI memorial than have a WWII memorial. And the WWII one was usually put in only recently if there is one. Our Civil War memorial was IIRC put up in the 1880’s, which is when they generally became common AFAIK, the WWI memorial was put up in the 1920’s, the WWII memorial only a few years ago, much longer after WWII.
Based on the overall ratio of Soviet deaths in WWII to US in Vietnam (at least ~150 times counting Soviet military deaths, the 20mil includes civilians, there is no one exact figure) then sure, cities far down the list might have 50k+ victims. Every ‘medium size town’ might be more of a stretch.
The US had 7 times as many deaths in WWI as it had in Vietnam. The USSR had 20 times as many military deaths in WWI as the US did, and countless more civilian deaths. Their walls could be huge.
This doesn’t seem to match the numbers I’m seeing in Wiki. What numbers do you have for these?
I just mentioned WWI in the vein of political/social background of monuments. The US lost almost 4 times as many men WWII than WWI, but WWI memorials are more common. A presumable reason is that WWII was followed not long after by Cold/minor wars and there was less on illusion to begin with that it was the ‘final war’.
But on the ratio’s yours would be in the ballpark if you meant US losses in WWII. US deaths in WWII were ca. 400,000 v. Vietnam 50+k and Soviet military deaths in WWII are sometimes estimated around 8 mil (20 mil estimate includes civilians).
Sorry I meant WWII
Not just villages. Some workplaces also have that for their men who died. Here is the memorial at Waterloo station for those who died in 1914-1918, these were men who worked for the Company.
Actually the addenda seem to start for WW2. The addenda somehow make it seem more depressing. The legend will say something like “Who died in the War of 1914-1918” and there will be a list, and then a second stone added to the side saying “and the War of 1939-1945”.
Of course perhaps the most poignant names memorial is Thiepval.
Let’s clear up one point. The twenty million casualties figure includes all of the Soviet people who were killed during the war; many of them were civilians. The figure for military casualties is around nine million.
There are 57,939 servicemen listed on the Vietnam memorial wall. Nine million casualties would be the equivalent of 155 walls. Russia obviously has more than 155 towns and cities. So the answer to the OP’s question is no.
There was also a political aspect to the prevalence of these memorials in Russia.
Stalin wanted to continue the patriotic fervor & self-sacrifice of the WWII years, and putting up a lot of memorials helped with that. And gave good feelings to the relatives of those listed on them.
Also, it was about that time that the America economy began to vastly outdistance the USSR, especially in ‘creature comforts’ for the average citizen. But emphasizing how much they had lost to defeat the Nazis, and that they were still recovering from that, worked for a while as an excuse for Soviet economic deprivation. So building lots of memorials distracted Russians from empty grocery stores.
While there was certainly genuine grief for those listed on them, these memorials also served another purpose for those in power at the time.
There is a similar one at Liverpool Street station and a much cheaper-looking one at King’s Cross station.
The OP specified medium sized town/city. You can modify the definition of “medium town/city” until you reach a point that the OP’s question is true. What size would that be?
Russia has only two cities with a population in excess of 2 million; Moscow and St. Petersburg. Russia’s third city, Novisibirsk, has a population of about 1.5 million, and its war memorial has a little over 30,000 names. That would suggest there are not likely to be many Russian cities who lost 50,000 or more servicemen in the war.
I don’t know whether memorials in Moscow or St Petersburg list the names of all soldiers from those cities, or - since both cities were themselves battlegrounds - focus on commemorating soldiers who died in or near those cities.
104,107. That’s the population of Novy Urengoy, the 155th largest city in Russia.
Apparently the Russian language does not distinguish between cities and towns. They’re both called goroda, of which there are 1,111 in Russia. The Russian government has a separate administrative system for goroda with a population of 100,000 or more. If you accept this as a definition of a city, then Russia has 164 cities.
Of course, the actual casualties wouldn’t have been neatly divided up like this. Moscow surely had more of its citizens killed than Novy Urengoy did. And many casualties would have been from rural areas. And of course many Soviet casualties would have been from areas that are now outside of Russia.
Aus was already full of WWI war memorials: WWII memorials were mostly just tacked on.
In contrast, any big war memerial in Russia is likely to be a WWII memorial: they didn’t have the base of WWI memorials to build on.
New Zealand’s war memorials mapped.. There’s a lot of them.
Two of my great-grand uncles are commemorated on this one.