Monument to prominent Soviet Armenian marshal unveiled in Russian city

A monument to Marshal Hovhannes Baghramyan, a legendary Soviet-Armenian military commander, was unveiled in the Oryol, Russia recently to honor his heroic battle to liberate the city during the Great Patriotic War.

The statue was erected in the city’s Hero’s Park upon the initiative of Yeghia Asatryan, a Moscow-Armenian who wanted to eternalize the great hero for the Oryol residents.

In 1963, the marshal himself lit the eternal fire in the city’s fraternal grave of killed tank drivers. The victims’ names were engraved on a memory stone erected later the same year, but the great commander’s name is still missing.

“The soldiers found their commander … The soldiers buried in the fraternal grave are his soldiers, so history did, after all, put everything in place,” said Vahagn Vermishyan, the city’s chief architect (also an ethnic Armenian).

The project’s initiator, who was born in Yerevan, said he come up with the idea after visiting Oryol and familiarizing himself with the city’s history.