Schlagwort: Military

In the shadow of Perestroika

Kommentar hinterlassen

The hall is dark and has to be lighted with a torch. Now Lenin appears on the back wall in a resolute forward march. Behind him are symbolic buildings and infrastructure of the Soviet Union as well as a waving red flag with a Roman XXVII. Apparently, the mural was created on the occasion of the 27th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which took place in Moscow from 25th February to 6th March 1986. There, the General Secretary of the Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev, introduced the political reforms of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) with which he wanted to modernise the Soviet Union. This process failed and only five years after the announcement of the plans, the USSR disintegrated. Weiterlesen →

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Lenin relief brought back to light

Kommentar hinterlassen

Old photos of the Soviet barracks in Möhlau show a relief with a side portrait of Lenin. For years it was thought to have been lost when the Soviet army left, because the remaining stele was blank. But after a quarter of a century of weathering, the top layer of the stele began to peel away and surprisingly, the red colour of the former monument and the outlines of Lenin’s head appeared, although diffuse and blurred. We immediately set out in the hope of restoring the original relief.

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At the abandoned military hospital

Kommentar hinterlassen

1Wandplakat

Hidden beyond a green curtain of trees and wild growing shrubberies, we can still find the abandoned complex of the former military hospital in Jüterbog. After the Soviets left it in 1993 after using it for 48 years, the buildings were emptied by German authorities and abandoned. Nowadays and after so many years of decay, the main building looks like a location for a horror movie: long corridors with peeled walls, collapsed ceilings, broken windows and two completely rotten operation rooms with a chair and a bed. Weiterlesen →