Mother Armenia, Yerevan

Mother Armenia & Military Museum, Yerevan - darkometer rating : 4 - A giant socialist-era statue overlooking Yerevan and symbolizing Armenia at large; inside the statue's gigantic plinth is a military museum with a focus on the Nagorno-Karabakh war of the 1990s, but it also still has an older WWII section. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: The size of the whole pedestal, and in part of the statue itself, can be understood better if you know and remember that it was originally a Stalin statue that towered over the city. It was inaugurated in 1950 and apart from doing its usual intimidation job ... Stalin was almost never depicted as a truly caring father figure but rather as one to fear. the monument's official purpose was to celebrate the Soviet Armenians' participation in the victorious Great Patriotic War, better known as WWII outside the sphere of the former Soviet Union . The pedestal's architect, Rafayel Israyelian, who also designed the Sardarapat memorial, had the foresight of predicting that Stalin's glory may not last forever, and took care that the pedestal's design was, as it were, transferable. The interior was constructed to be reminiscent of a typical Armenian church, and it does indeed emanate a certain quasi-religious aura, which is more or less independent of the museum contents housed in its rooms. I've repeatedly encountered the claim that the interior is supposedly modelled on that of Hripsime church in Echmiadzin – cf. Sardarapat – but having been to both, I cannot confirm that there is any overtly striking similarity. The big Stalin statue on top was toppled in 1962 – in the process of the Khrushchev-era of de-Stalinization.