The monument’s two authors
A change of sculpture and a new use for the pedestal
Mother Armenia in Yerevan’s Victory Park is often dated to 1967. That date belongs to the copper figure. Its black tuff pedestal is older. Architect Rafael Israyelian designed it for a different sculpture: Sergey Merkurov’s statue of Joseph Stalin, unveiled here in 1950. What appears from the city to be a single monument is the work of two distinct periods.
The Stalin figure was removed in the early 1960s. In 1967 Ara Harutyunyan’s 22-metre Mother Armenia was installed on the same pedestal. The earlier statue portrayed a historical individual identifiable by name and office. Harutyunyan’s woman personifies Armenia: a country is given human form. The replacement changed whom the monument commemorated while keeping its position on the skyline.
The figure holds a sword, with a shield at her feet. At a distance the horizontal blade cuts across the upright body. Those two axes make the statue recognisable even when the face is too far away to read. The sword is held across the body rather than raised to strike. That gesture supports a reading of the figure as a guardian watching over the city.
Heritage surveys compare the internal arrangement of Israyelian’s pedestal to an Armenian three-aisled basilica. Intersecting stone arches span the interior. Nineteen carved roses frame the principal entrance. What looks like a continuous dark mass from across the city separates, at walking distance, into polished stone, recessed carving and the deep shadow of the doorway.
Closer to the monument, the entrance and its carved arch come into view. Israyelian’s pedestal is itself a building with usable interior rooms. In 1970 a museum devoted to Armenia’s participation in the Second World War opened inside it. The distant view offers a personification of the country. By walking through the pedestal door, a visitor moves from that symbolic figure to a historical exhibition. Both scales belong to the history of the monument.
The exhibition opened in 1970 dealt with Armenia’s participation in the war of 1941–1945. In 1995 the institution became the Mother Armenia Military Museum and its historical scope widened. The pedestal’s construction, the installation of the female figure and the opening of the museum are three separate events. Looking at the entrance, the skyline and the display cases brings a different stage of commemoration into focus each time.