The Russians lost 30 million people in WWII, most of them in the struggle against the Germans. (Several million perished at the hands of their own leader, Stalin, who filled the gulags with ethnic groups he suspected of being faint of heart against the Germans.) The war was the most catastrophic event in Russian history. When it came time to build monuments to that war, the one at Stalingrad became the most important.
The monument is melodramatic in the oversized way that only the Russians seem to be able to pull off. At the Hall of Valor, a giant torch-bearing forearm and hand, covered in gilt, rises from a rock floor at the base of a spiral ramp that takes visitors up past walls carved with the names of those who fell at Stalingrad.
The masterpiece of the monument is Rodina - "Motherland" in Russian - a freestanding 8,000-ton steel and concrete statue that rears 257 feet high. It is more than 100 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty itself, and almost as high as the Statue of Liberty and its base combined. The grim-faced Rodina, her scarf billowing behind her, brandishes a 95-foot-long sword at the enemies of the motherland while her other arm extends in invitation to her sons ands daughters to follow her and defend Russia.
The monuments, an ensemble, perch on a low hill that looks down on the long-since-rebuilt city, once again called Volgograd. In this vast country there were other epic battles that took place, including the dramatic hurling back of the Wehrmacht from the gates of Moscow on December 8, 1941, and the great tank and artillery duel at Kursk on July 4, 1943. But in the hearts of most Russians, it was the insanely brave stand at Stalingrad that epitomized the lengths to which Rodina's children were willing to go to defend her.
http://www.theculturedtraveler.com/Archives/MAY2003/Volgograd.htm
