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After the end of the second world war three Soviet monuments were put on by the victorious red army in the city of Berlin. They should remind of the killed soldiers of the Red Army, in particular to about 20,000 soldiers who had liked with the conquest of the imperial capital. These monuments are not only monuments to the victory, but at the same time also soldier's cemeteries and therefore Soviet war grave sites in Germany.
The centre of the monument is made of a concave arranged pillar row with a central, bigger pillar than base for an eight-metre-high bronze statue. The plastic shows a soldier of the Red Army with shouldered gun – a tip to the end of the war. In the pillars texts which refer to the different weapon types as well as the names of fallen soldiers are found. Two T-34 tanks and two cannons which were in use in the battle around Berlin flank the access to the monument. Right and left from the main way there stand two sarcophagi with the names of fallen officers.
In the back part of the arrangement there lie the graves of Soviet soldiers. Their exact number is not known, the information in addition moves between 2000 and 2500.
A young Hungarian girl emerges from a building housing resistance fighters carrying a rifle. Soviet ISU-152 self-propelled gun visible at the background
The Russians enter from the opposite corner. Rob T started off with a bttn of T34s. With a company of the 1st Bttn, 22nd Tank Brigade, 6th Tank Corp, coming in each turn. The companies had 7 to 8 runners at this time. John F came in later to help Rob. Soviet crews were rated as having 3 action points and the Germans 4 with a couple of +1 tank aces, so quality to the Germans.
The Soviet War Memorial (Tiergarten) is one of several war memorials in Berlin, capital city of Germany, erected by the Soviet Union to commemorate its war dead, particularly the 80,000 soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces who died during the Battle of Berlin in April and May 1945.
This memorial was erected in 1945 and is located in the Großer Tiergarten, a large public park to the west of the city centre, on the north side of the east-west Straße des 17. Juni (17 June Street) in the Tiergarten locality.
Kansas Cosmosphere
No Soviet Moon Program
It is wrong to speak of the Soviet Moon program. There never was one in the sense that there was a U.S. Moon program. Instead, there was Sergei Korolev, the Chief Designer, and his dream of spaceflight. There was Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau, which received funding from the Soviet military. The military had little interest in non-military space missions, such as trips to the Moon. There was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who saw space as a way of enhancing Soviet prestige (and his own) but who did not want to spend money on it.
There were also dozens of other designers in the Soviet aerospace establishment, each eager for a place of the aerospace pie, and each taking orders from a different part of the government. Of these designers, two besides Korolev were especially important to the Soviet Moon program story.
Glushko: Fall Out Over Fuels
Valentin Glushko was the Soviet Union's leading rocket designer. He was also one of the few Soviet rocket experts active in the 1930s who was not shipped off to the labor camps during "The Stalin's Purges." Rumor had it that he had avoided this fate by throwing Korolev to the secret police.
Glushko and Korolev hated each other. They managed to work together until the late 1950s, when Korolev needed a new rocket engine to launch Lanik Moon probes. Glushko had become fascinated by new hypergolic fuels-toxic chemicals that ignite on contact with each other. Korolev was more conservative. He wanted a conventional engine that burned liquid oxygen and kerosene. He turned to another designer and got his engine in nine months, a year before Chushko finished his.
This story repeated itself in 1960-62, when Korolev began work on his giant N-1 rocket. Glushko refused to design engines for the N-1 unless they burned hypergolic fuels. When Korolev turned to an airplane engine designer with little rocket experience, the Korolev-Glushko rift became a bitter feud.
Chelomei: Khrushchev's Favorite
The Glushko-Korolev schism was not the only division slowing the Soviet Moon effort. Vladimir Chelomei, director of the OKB-52 design bureau, had his own lunar ambitions. He also had Nikita Khrushchev's son on his payroll, which gave him clout with the Soviet leader that Korolev could not match.
Chelomei was a rising star in the Soviet aerospace establishment. Soon after Vostok 1, Korolev had fallen from Khrushchev's favor. Perhaps Khrushchev felt that Korolev was too outspoken. Chelomei dazzled the Soviet leader with elaborate (and probably unworkable) plans for interplanetary rocket planes, and soon controlled a segment of the aerospace establishment much larger than Korolev's. But Chelomei lacked Korolev's vision and organizational skills.
Chelomei was quick to exploit the Glushko-Korolev split. He adopted for his own manned lunar plans the Glushko hypergolic rocket engines Korolev had rejected.
Korolev's Health
Korolev's time in Stalin's slave-labor camps had broken his health. He had at least one heart attack between 1963 and 1965, yet refused orders that he rest. He worked 18-hour days on his missiles, Vostok and Soyuz spacecraft, N-1 rocket, and lunar projects. Korolev's dream of spaceflight was a powerful force but the flesh could withstand only so much. In late 1965, he told his wife:
"I am in a constant state of utter exhaustion and stress, but I can under no circumstances show that things are getting to me. I am holding myself together with all the strength at my command."
He could show weakness least of all to the men who depended on his rockets and spacecraft for their lives - the cosmonauts who would live his dream of flying to the Moon.
Soviet Lunar Chronology: 1960-1966
March 1960: Sergei Korolev, Chief Designer of the OKB-1 design bureau, proposes building a giant new rocket. Called the N-1, it would be capable of launching up to 50 tons into Earth orbit (nearly ten times as much as the R-7 rocket). Korolev tells Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that N-1 would launch space weapons, orbital laboratories, manned Mars and Venus flyby spacecraft, and manned craft that would fly around the Moon without landing (circumlunar spacecraft).
June 1960: The Soviet government authorizes Korolev to conduct detailed engineering studies of his proposed N-1 rocket, but withholds support for development and manufacturing.
April 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space on-board Korolev's Vostok 1 spacecraft. Korolev attempts to capitalize on this feat by lobbying Khrushchev for more support for his N-1 rocket and other projects, but the Soviet leader is unmoved.
May 1961: U.S. President John F. Kennedy calls for an American astronaut on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.
February 1962: The final meeting on N-1 rocket engines between Korolev and Valentin Glushko, the Soviet Union's leading rocket engine designer, degenerates into a shouting match. The Korolev-Glushko rift splits the Council of Chief Designers.
March 1962: Korolev proposes a complex circumlunar plan that relies on assembly in Earth orbit of modules launched on separate R-7 rockets.
July 1962: The Soviet government formally approves the N-1 project. The Soviet military favors building up the Soviet missile arsenal, however, so provides only limited funding for the new space rocket.
August 1962: The Vostok 3-Vostok 4 dual flight sees manned spacecraft launched in rapid succession and brought close together in space-capabilities essential for Korolev's circumlunar plan.
May 1963: Korolev proposes a new manned circumlunar plan in which a manned Soyuz (Union) spacecraft, an unmanned orbital propulsion module, and unmanned refueling tankers rendezvous and dock in Earth orbit. After the tankers transfer their fuel, the propulsion module ignites to push the Soyuz around the Moon.
July 1963: Korolev tells the USSR Council of Chief Designers that "accomplishment of an expedition of humans to the surface of the Moon should be considered the primary goal [of our space effort)." He then unveils a lunar landing plan in which two N-1 rockets and one R-7 launch modules that rendezvous and dock in Earth orbit to form a Moon ship.
March 1964: Khrushchev orders a three-man Vostok mission by the end of 1964 to overshadow NASA's Gemini Program. Korolev attempts to bargain for support for his Soyuz, N-1 and lunar projects.
March 1964: Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau completes detailed design of a beefed-up N-1 rocket capable of launching 75 tons into Earth orbit. Khrushchev shows little interest and does little to ensure adequate funding.
More unmanned Soviet spacecraft from the same book, along with a shot of their early "Mission Control" and what appears to be a telemetry antenna.
Former Soviet Aircraft Carrier Minsk, the 2nd ship of the Kiev Class, is now the centerpiece of the Minsk World, an entertainment/theme park located in Shenzhen, China.
The Minsk World is about 30 minutes by car from the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
The Official Website (in Chinese only) of the Minsk World is at:
For more information about the Minsk World, please see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_World
For more information about Minsk, please see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Minsk
For more information about the Kiev Class, please see: