I squee for former Soviet architecture!! Who knew?

I have a soft spot for 60's awesomeness so when I ran across a group of mindfuckingly awesome vintage architectural photos on Grain Edit (via Robert Burghardt's FZZ Fanzine) I thought "hey these sure are zippy!" And then I read that they are WWII memorials in the former Soviet Union I was like "aww shit."  Guess I can't sail my way through THIS blog post like all my other musings on unicorn dreams and rainbow gummi bears.  I don't know how we're going to balance my normal hilariously irreverent style while being respectful of the Holocaust but let's see what happens.

These memorials, only a handful of thousands, were erected to honor the former Yugoslav Partisans - a group of communists who fought against the their fascist leaders aligned with the Axis powers during WWII.  They were the only resistance movement to free their country without the help of outside forces.  They sound pretty badass.  This is the first I've heard of them because I went to a public school in the South and our history classes ended at the Reconstruction.  We pretty much still live like we're in the Reconstruction.  I've got my eye on you damn Carpetbaggers!!

The Makljen Memorial.  It's a giant rock cloud that I would live in if it wasn't, you know, a Holocaust memorial haunted by ghosts.  

Or destroyed.  It makes Madame Sunday's heart hurt.

Here. More info here.

The Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest death camp in Croatia killing at least 500,000 people.  This memorial dedicated to the people who died there was unveiled in 1966. 

here

here

As Robert Burghardt nicely articulates:

In their abstract vocabulary they allow for an appropriation of meaning that bypasses official narrations, especially today, after their context has become invisible. They open the scene for numerous associations; they could be ambassadors from far-away stars, or from a different, unrealised present. The openness which originates in the abstract language of the monuments is a visual manifestation of the emancipation from the Stalinist dominance of socialist realism in the eastern bloc, in which future is represented only in a happy-overreaching form of the present. The monuments invoke a utopian moment, stick to aniconism, and translate the promise of the future into a universal gesture.

The 'broken wing' memorial at the Sumarice Memorial Park to honor the victims of the massacre at Kragujevac, Serbia. 

here. More pics here.

The people are particularly poignant in this one.  

These three clenched fists are at the Bubanj Memorial Park dedicated in 1963 to the 10,000 people shot in Nis and Southern Serbia during the war.  All of the monuments featured are considered to be in the style of Socialist Realism (not to be confused with Social Realism which turns out I squee over too.  Thank you Wikipedia.), a modern art movement developed in the former Soviet states to promote communism and modernism through art.  Hence big concrete fists.

last two from here

The park today showing graffiti on the momuments and more vandalism on a wall of relief sculptures.  The previous relief sections include a giant machine gun and and line of people awaiting execution.  This relief shows the victims.

The Makendonium monument in Krusevo.  Or, as someone pointed out at Grain Edit, perhaps a giant bumble ball...??!!

from rb.fzz's photostream

At night showing the stained glass window.

The memorial at Petrova Gora began work in the 70's but was finally completed in 1981.

Now it is also abandoned.  The contrast of futurist desolation, the lonely movement of the building and the green overgrowth really rocks my world.  As Burghardt explains, these sites "..still proclaim a future, which already has become past." Probably the reason that, although sad, the images of them falling into ruin is quite appealing to me as it visually captures the intent but ultimate failure of these memorials.  So preservation people let's get on this.  But not before I go there and take a lot of pictures with my new Omega J899900000 Camera of Amazing Awesomeness.    

Battle of Kozara Memorial.

here

The Grave of the Undefeated at Prilep finished in 1962.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!  I WANT TO GO TO THERE!!!!!!  This is a monument commemorating the Battle of Sutjeska by artist Krsto Hegedusic done in the 1970's.  This spot just made it onto my top five list of places to visit of all time.  I'm pretty sure if you walk in between those crystal mountains your life changes forever.  They're like big concrete oracles or something and will tell you your future.  Or give you special powers.  

Here it is today.  It looks a little like something you'd stumble across one day while hiking here in the Tennessee valley.  If I was the type of person who actually hiked.  Which I'm not.  So there might be something like this a mile from my house and I'd probably never know.  Note to self: find some hippie friends and buy hiking boots. 

More pointy fabulosity.  Although all of these memorials are heavy "monumental" sculptures I find them hardly static at all.  More like stone outcroppings that move slowly over millennia but appear frozen to us.

These last two are both part of the Sutjesko complex all of which are now abandoned.

The memorial monument at Mount Kosmaj in 1961.  Of course now it is also abandoned.

Gawd this is awesome.  The tension that happens at the center of those three bursts(?) drives me insane.  I'm no functional adult architect or engineer but I think it takes a pretty talented person to create a 'moment' (*eyeroll* myself) in negative space like that.  I don't know - maybe it's like #367 of A Pattern Language but I totally didn't read that far.

I think something really special happens there like exploding rainbows or something but I'm not sure.  I'm going to guess it's the place of first contact for when aliens visit earth just like Stephen Hawking said.  Or maybe there's a singularity or black hole of some kind that allows for time travel.  I'm gonna go with time travel because I've read the Outlander series and those structures are totally humming to me right now.  (high five if you know what that is)


The only way I would want to be in the center of that thing any more is if Jamie Frasier was standing in the center of it holding Edward Cullen in one hand and a Krispy Kreme Double Down sandwich in the other.  I would run so hard my arms and legs would fall the fuck off.  Then my Boxing Helena'd stumpy torso would inch up those steps like a worm, my path lubricated from the saliva pouring from my drooling open mouth.


The ensuing orgy of debauchery would probably be the best (and most accurate) ambassador for the visiting aliens.  


Welcome to Earth.


*all images from FZZ Fanzine unless otherwise specified.  More photos at rb.fzz's flickr.