Red Army Memorial

The Soviet War Memorial on Vienna's Schwarzenbergplatz commemorates roughly 17,000 Red Army soldiers killed in the Battle of Vienna in April 1945, near the end of World War II. Erected already in August 1945 to designs by Soviet architect Sergei Yakovlev and sculptor Mikhail Intizarian, it centres on a twelve-metre bronze of a Red Army soldier holding a PPSh submachine gun and banner atop a white marble plinth fronted by a semicircular colonnade. Under the 1955 Austrian State Treaty the Republic of Austria undertook to maintain the monument in perpetuity, which is why even through the Cold War and recent Russian-Ukrainian tensions it has remained officially untouched. Directly in front the Hochstrahlbrunnen fountain shoots up, turning the ensemble into an unexpected illuminated spectacle after dark.