Memorial of the Eternal Flame and the plates with the names of Heroes
Around the Eternal Flame there are plates made of Baikal marble on which you can see the names of countries not only in Europe, but also in Asia – from France to Korea out of where the land was brought here stained with the blood of Siberian soldiers. Behind the memorial there is an annexe to the building of the government of Irkutsk region, where you can read the names of 134 Heroes of the Soviet Union participants in the Great Patriotic War associated with the capital of Eastern Siberia, as well as plates with lines from the Irkutsk poet and writer M.D. Sergeyev, telling about the contribution of the region to the victory.
214 thousand natives of the Irkutsk region went to war and every third did not return home (79 thousand), five pilots from Irkutsk made an air ram, three daredevils covered an enemy machine gun with their bodies. 22 large enterprises, about 10 trusts and raw material bases were evacuated to the Irkutsk region. There were 29 hospitals on the territory of Irkutsk, where more than 102 thousand soldiers were treated, less than a thousand of which were unable to survive from their wounds. The Irkutsk people sent 160 wagons of parcels and warm clothes to the front (a train more than 2 km long), raised funds for the construction of 6 tank columns, and contributed more than 1.2 billion rubles to help the front.
Post number 1 at the Memorial
The building of the Irkutsk Region government rises above the memorial complex. From here it’s controlled the fifth biggest region of Russia (area of 774,846 km2) with a population of less than 2.5 million people. The building itself was completed in 1959 by the architect K.I. Guryev, but its construction lasted for 20 long years, because its creation was only a reason for the destruction of the symbol of prosperity of Irkutsk at the end of the 19th century – the Kazan Cathedral.
Irkutsk Oblast Administration
This temple was the fourth largest religious building in Russia. It accommodated five thousand parishioners, and its height reached 61 meters. The construction of the temple took a long time (1875—1894) and cost to Irkutsk people almost a million golden rubles. The best architects of the region took part in the creation of the building project as V.A. Kudelsky and H.V. Rosen.
Kazan Cathedral
In August 1932, the cathedral was thoughtlessly blown up together with living people inside, who tried to defend the symbol of the wealth of their city. After the residents of Irkutsk refused to participate in the clearing of the debris, and a train with collective farmers was sent from Ukraine, who began to dismantle the church bumping into corpses. There were so many bricks that, despite the fact that it was used for the construction of the first five-story building in Irkutsk, the State Bank building and the access roads of the Glazkovsky bridge. The level of the surrounding area arose by almost a meter, when the broken material was flattened. That’s why the townspeople for a long time called this place as “Red Square”. On the site of the cathedral, nothing was ever built, because the walls of the governorate administration are more than 4 meters from the nearest walls of the destroyed church.
The destruction of the cathedral
From here we will walk along the veterans’ alley, because this whole park was created in its modern form in a memory of the 50th anniversary of the Great Victory in 1995. But this does not mean that before that it was empty. Since 1824, the Spassky Garden was laid out here, which was and still in use as a favourite place for festive fireworks.
Here we will see a monument to one of the three twice Heroes of the Soviet Union associated with the city of Irkutsk. Bust to the famous general A.P. Beloborodov in Irkutsk appeared back in 1954 on Labour Square and was moved here to the 50th anniversary of the Great Victory. It was his 78th Infantry Division that met the Nazis near Istra in the battle for Moscow in the winter of 1941 and stopped Hitler‘s Army first time ever and saved the freedom of Russia in an unequal battle. He received his first “Gold Star” for the liberation of Vitebsk on June 26, 1944, and the second for the fact that his soldiers were the first to break into the territory of the impregnable fortress of Koenigsberg on April 9, 1945. A.P. Beloborodov was buried in Moscow at the “Snegiri” cemetery, next to the soldiers of his division who died in the fall of 1941 during the defence of Moscow, but part of his ashe is under the memorial plate at the Irkutsk memorial of the Eternal Flame.
Twice Heroes of the Soviet Union general A.P. Beloborodov
The third twice Hero of the Soviet Union does not yet have a monument in Irkutsk, because this is the last living member of the first cosmonaut corps of the USSR – B.V. Volynov, who made the first docking ever between ships in open space on January 15, 1969. Two more Irkutsk residents visited the Earth’s orbit: A.A. Ivanishin and D.Y. Kondratyev. Considering the presence in Irkutsk of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics and the Institute of System Dynamics and Control Theory of the SB RAS, as well as plants for the production of space equipment, we can easily call the capital of Eastern Siberia “the city of cosmonauts.”
Cosmonaut B.V. Volynov
Irkutsk is a truly amazing place on the map of the globe. Let’s climb onto a small bridge, which rises 7 meters above the level of the roadway, which, by the way, equal to the height of the walls of the old Irkutsk wooden fortress, and look at the panorama that opens before us. At this point, the brown waters of Irkut River merge with the purest stream of the Angara. In a good weather, and especially in winter, you can see stones at the bottom of the river, despite the 6-meter depth. And the speed of the current is so fast that even in 40-degree frosts the river does not freeze. Although, until January 1952, the river was seized by ice, starting from this place, which caused frequent and serious winter floods. As a result of these cataclysms, the water went deep into the city sometimes up to 400 m, leaving behind an ice captivity. Today the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station has regulated the flow of Baikal waters and the Angara has stopped freezing and flooding.
Consequences of the winter flood
We are not only at the confluence of two great Siberian rivers, we are at an ancient crossroads on the path of human migration across the globe. This movement began about 2 million years ago in eastern Africa. On its way, humanity made stops, and the first such crossroads was the territory in the valley of the Indus River, where mankind, about 90 thousand years ago decided to divide its ways and move towards Europe, Australia and North Asia. The second such fateful place was next to the future Irkutsk. 50 thousand years ago, at this place, people split up again, making the final decision to move towards North America, the Far East (Manchuria, Korea, Japan) and the Urals. Since then, the place of Irkutsk has been inhabited for decades of thousands of years and has never been abandoned by people for a long time. Over the years, new rivers and mountains have appeared here, hundreds of nations have changed. And if there are