Yelsk. Monument to the "Victims of the 20th century".

In the center of the city of Yelsk stands a unique memorial, which is a white-stone sculptural composition of a grieving mother holding a helmet of a deceased soldier with a bullet hole on a pedestal of dark brown stone.

The figure of a woman symbolizes the deepest tragedy of all mothers during the wars of the 20th century. Behind the sculpture group stands a panel wall made of pink stone, on which two sections of memorial plaques are placed: one with the names of villages destroyed and not restored after the Great Patriotic War, and the second with the dates 1941-1945.

The right side of the wall pays tribute to modern tragedies: on the boards with a sign of radiation danger, the villages of the Yelsky district evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster are listed, and the outermost plate is marked with the date of 1986. A light stone alley leads to the monument.

The memorial originated as a development of the idea of perpetuating the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War, initiated by the Belarusian sculptor Oleg Alexandrovich Stakhovich. Initially, in 1986, the monument was erected in the village of Nekrashevka, Yelsk district, which became a resettlement zone due to radiation contamination after the Chernobyl accident.

In the early 2000s, an initiative arose to create a common memorial to the victims of the 20th century wars in Yelsk, which led to the relocation and expansion of the existing monument, taking into account the Chernobyl events. The project was made possible by the sponsorship of local residents, businesses and organizations.

The memorial was named "Victims of the 20th Century" and was inaugurated on May 9, 2007.