Monument in Honor of the Soldiers of the Soviet Army

The Liberation Memorial (also known as the Memorial to the Soldiers of the Soviet Army) on Schwarzenbergplatz in the 3rd district commemorates the approximately 18,000 women and men of the Red Army who fell in battle during the liberation of Vienna from the rule of the NS regime from mid-March to mid-April 1945. The Liberation Memorial stands on that part of the square which was named Stalinplatz from April 1946 until July 1956. It was erected at the request of the Red Army as a Hero Memorial for the unknown Russian soldier and was officially unveiled on August 19, 1945. The 20-meter-high base, on which a 12-meter-high statue of a Red Guard soldier with a flag in hand rises, stands in the background of an 8-meter-high balustrade, at the ends of which two groups of fighters were installed. At the unveiling, after the Soviet top officers Gusew and Krainjukow, spoke the State Chancellor of the provisional Austrian government Karl Renner (SPÖ), State Secretary Leopold Figl (ÖVP), State Secretary Ernst Fischer (KPÖ), and the Vienna Mayor Theodor Körner, who took the memorial under the care of the city administration. The opening of the memorial involved the general staff and soldiers of all four Allied armies, a parade of American, British, French, and Soviet soldiers concluded the opening. The memorial bears a series of short and long inscriptions in the Russian language, which were first fully transcribed and translated into German by Michael Eichmair in 2023. The report can be found in the digital repository of the University of Vienna, Phaidra.