Berlin: the Soviet Union and Germany; Russia and Ukraine; War and Peace
A detail of a mosaic at the Soviet War memorial, Treptower Park, Berlin, February 2023. © James Rodgers.
This post is a longer version of an article I wrote for The New European, published April 19 2023. You can read the article here.
‘GLORY’, THE GILDED TILES that spell out the word in Russian have been placed so that the morning light makes them shine even on a drab day.
The mosaic is part of the Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park, in the east of Berlin. It remembers the Red Army who ‘saved the civilization of Europe from fascist destroyers’. The architecture is the height of Soviet military style. The visitor arrives between statues of two burly soldiers. They kneel, heads bowed in tribute to fallen comrades. Stalin’s words of praise for his troops are set in stone along the edges of the site: in Russian on one side; German the other.
A view of the Soviet war memorial, Treptower Park, Berlin, February 2023. © James Rodgers
Nothing had really prepared me for the way that history weighs so heavily on Berlin. I had only been once before, a few years ago, passing through by train on my way to Russia. On that trip, I visited Volgograd, site of the Battle of Stalingrad, the turning point in World War II and the starting point of the Red Army’s victorious march on what had been Hitler’s capital. The monuments here belong to the same era, and tell the same story of Soviet glory, as those on the banks of the Volga.
I found Berlin welcoming. Still, there are signs of the horrors of the last century—Holocaust, war, and wall—across the city. The first day, I visited landmarks I had so long imagined: the Brandenburg Gate; the remains of the concrete panels that had once been part of the barrier, together with brickwork, watchtowers, and barbed wire, that divided the city, and the continent. I wondered what it must have been like for Berliners to live for years with daily reminders—in the form of ruins—of the consequences of the evils of the 1930s and 1940s.
Yet on my recent trip, signs of protest against a new war also demanded attention and provoked reflection. Across Unter den Linden from the Russian embassy—it lies just a short distance from where Yevgeny Khaldei’s unforgettable images of the raising of the red flag over the ruined Reichstag were taken in 1945—hoardings bear the slogan ‘Brave Enough to be Ukraine’. A Ukrainian soldier’s face stares defiantly across the road at the embassy of his enemy.
A hoarding across the road from the embassy of the Russian Federation, Berlin, February 2023. © James Rodgers
Closer still to the embassy’s fortified entrance, even on a quiet Sunday morning, a small protest proudly flew Ukrainian flags. Along with flags elsewhere in the city, and graffiti in Ukrainian colours sprayed on a redundant section of the wall, they were a reminder that the apparently permanent peace we enjoyed in many parts of Europe during the second half of the last century was illusory.
Protesters flying Ukrainian flags outside the embassy of the Russian Federation, Berlin, February 2023. © James Rodgers
The day after my return to London, I attended a memorial service at the Ukrainian cathedral. It was the anniversary of large-scale invasion launched on February 24, 2022. Four hundred and sixty-one paper angels had been suspended above the heads of the congregation. Each represented a child killed in Ukraine in the previous 12 months.
Paper angels in the Ukrainian Catholic cathedral, London, February 24 2023 © James Rodgers
Berlin had been my last stop on a trip that took me from Paris to Mannheim, in western Germany, then on to Berlin, to Leipzig, and back to Berlin. In Mannheim, I visited the baroque palace, almost every room of which was damaged by allied bombing during World War II. My grandfather was in the Royal Air Force during that war: the air force whose bombs had blasted the baroque architecture. Now, at least, I, his grandson, was visiting as a citizen of a friendly country.
I lived in Russia for many years as a journalist in the 1990s and early 2000s. Perhaps I may one day be able to return there on those terms, too. It is hard to imagine when that might be, given the Kremlin has taken to locking up journalists as spies.
For now, Russia is back shaping European history—only this time, rather than saving civilization, it has become a spectre haunting a continent that had dreamt the ghosts of war were gone.
The gilded letters in Treptower Park may shine whatever the weather, but, for the generations living today, Russia’s historical reputation is tarnished—however magnificent the mosaics praising Moscow’s military glory of the last century.
A detail of the Soviet war memorial, Treptower Park, Berlin, February 2023. © James Rodgers