mound of Glory

The Mound of Glory is located on the site of fierce battles, during which a 105,000-strong group of Nazi troops was defeated in the summer of 1944. This event went down in history as the “Minsk Cauldron”. Within five weeks, the Red Army inflicted a heavy defeat on the largest military formation of the Third Reich, Army Group Center, and completely liberated Belarus. The military operation, codenamed “Bagration,” was carried out by troops of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic fronts, the Dnieper military flotilla, the 1st Army of the Polish Army, as well as partisan formations operating in enemy-occupied territory . The length of the combat front was 1,100 kilometers.

One of the largest military offensives in human history began on June 23, 1944 and ended on August 29. 2.4 million people took part in it. Operation Bagration was a triumph of Soviet military theory thanks to a well-coordinated offensive movement on all fronts and an operation to disinform the enemy about the location of the general attack.

The decision to erect the Mound of Glory memorial was made in 1966. Today, the Mound of Glory is a branch of the Khatyn State Memorial Complex. At least 4,000 people visit it monthly. Not only our compatriots, but also many foreign delegations come to honor the feat of the liberators of Belarus.

Large-scale reconstruction of the Mound of Glory began in 2003. The Federation of Trade Unions took upon itself the main organization and control over the progress of restoration work. The renewed Mound of Glory opened on July 1, 2004. The surrounding area was landscaped, administrative buildings and utility networks were repaired, and a new irrigation system was installed. The upper decorative ring was also restored, a museum of military equipment was organized, and a park named after the 60th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War was founded.

The memorial complex acquired its modern appearance in May 2015. For the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, the grass covering on the slopes of Kurgan was completely replaced. We carried out a major overhaul and reconstruction of worn-out staircase steps. Bas-relief images of Soviet soldiers and partisans were restored. Also, a new lighting system was installed on the Mound of Glory: its base is framed by a kind of necklace of LED energy-saving lamps. The bayonets crowning the monument are also illuminated, which emphasizes their majesty and height.

In June 2004, on the initiative and with the support of the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus, an open-air museum of military equipment was created on the territory of the Mound of Glory memorial complex. Among its exhibits are heavy Soviet tanks: the most powerful and having the most armor among all production vehicles of the Great Patriotic War and quite rare today - the IS-2, nicknamed “Pike” because of the characteristic shape of the frontal part of the IS-3 hull. The site also housed the ISU-152 self-propelled artillery mount, the post-war T-10, artillery pieces of different years of production (ZIS-2 anti-tank guns of the 1941 model, ZIS-3 of 1942, the D-44 divisional gun of 1944), the T-34 tank , and the legendary Il-2 fighter.