Birds8 White cranes

1. 8

2. Moskow Otradnoe Park “Cranes of our memory” (Anton Belitsky)

3. Moskow Otradnoe Park “Cranes of our memory” (Anton Belitsky)

4. Steve Simon - Sadako Sasaki The painting was inspired by the following quote attributed to Sadako Sasaki:"I shall write peace on your wings and you shall fly all over the world.“

5. The Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov, when visiting Japan, was impressed by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and its monument to Sadako Sasaki, a girl who contracted leukemia as a result of the radioactive contamination of the city. Following Japanese traditions, she constructed one thousand paper cranes, hoping (in vain) that this might save her life. The memory of paper cranes folded by this girl—a girl who to this day serves as one symbol of the innocent victims of war—haunted Gamzatov for months and inspired him to write a poem starting with the now famous lines: "I sometimes feel that the soldiers Who have not returned from the bloody fields Never lay down to earth But turned into white cranes...“ "Cranes" became a symbol of the fallen soldiers of World War II. So much so that a range of World War II memorials in the former Soviet Union feature the image of flying cranes and, in several instances, even verses of the song

6. The metaphor of the dead soldiers, whose souls turned into cranes, was picked up by many sculptures across the country. And a few years later, in the places of the battles of 1941-1945, steles and monuments began to be erected, the central image of which was flying cranes. Monuments to cranes were erected in more than 30 cities around the world, symbolizing the eternal memory of those who no longer exist: in Krasnoyarsk, Kislovodsk, Dagestan, Crimea, Moscow, Leningrad, Samara, Chelyabinsk regions, in Ukrainian Luhansk, Belarusian Polotsk, Uzbek Chirchik, North Ossetia, Slovenia, Los Angeles and many other cities and countries. Krasny Mak (Republic of Crimea) “The grieving Mother” by I.P. Koshkin and O.D. Minkov

7. Krasny Mak (Republic of Crimea) “The grieving Mother” by I.P. Koshkin and O.D. Minkov

8. Chirchik – Cranes by Sergo Sutyagin

9. Chirchik – Cranes by Sergo Sutyagin

11. “Cranes” in Demidov (Smolensk region) opened in September 1987 Monument 'White Cranes' in Makhachkala

12. Lugansk, in the park dedicated to the Heroes of the Great Patriotic War, the monument “Cranes” (also called “Monument to the Unknown Soldier”), 2000 Sculptor EF Chumak “The idea put into the bronze creation was taken from the song of the same name by the wonderful actor and talented singer Mark Bernes”

13. Lugansk, the monument “Cranes” (also called “Monument to the Unknown Soldier”), 2000 Sculptor EF Chumak

14. Slovenia, at the Zale memorial cemetery in the center of Ljubljana, ”Monument to the Sons of Russia” 

15. Kemerovo Cranes by sculptor V. F. Nesterov

16. Kemerovo Cranes by sculptor V. F. Nesterov

17. Kislovodsk Monument 'Cranes’ by the famous sculptors, the Roberman brothers

18. Kislovodsk Monument 'Cranes’ by the famous sculptors, the Roberman brothers

19. Krasnoyarsk, the stele Cranes 2005

20. Krasnoyarsk, Monument 'Cranes of my memory' 2017 by D. Shavlygin

21. Sankt Petersburg - Brest park - Monument 'White Cranes’

22. Sankt Petersburg - Brest park - Monument 'White Cranes’

23. Sankt Petersburg - Brest park - Monument 'White Cranes’

24. The monument to the fallen compatriots “Cranes “in Vidnoye (Moscow region) by A. Rozhnikov

25. Kursk region, Kurchatov Sculptor VM Bartenev

26. Kotelniki (Moscow region) Memorial 'Cranes’

27. “Cranes to my memory” Krasnoyarsk Territory The stele “White cranes” in Astrakhan

28. Memorial to the Volodichkin family - Alekseevka Kinel Samara Work of sculptors, father and son, Golovin A.S., Golovin A.A A monument to the Great Soldier's Mother which accompanied all her nine sons to the front, one by one. And then funerals began to come…

29. Monument Cranes in the town of Verkhnyaya Pyshma (Sverdlovsk region) created by Anna Ludanenkova

30. Monument to the Gazdanov brothers from the village of Dzuarikau, a monument to mother who lost seven sons in WW2

31. Monument to the victims of radiation accidents and disasters Yaroslavl city

32. Monument to the victims of radiation accidents and disasters Yaroslavl city The author of the project is E. Paskhina

33. Monument “White cranes” in the village of Gunib

34. Zaozernaya (Omsk) monument "Cranes of our memory“ Sculptor Andrey Borodavkin

35. Plummer Park in West Hollywood, Los Angeles County, California Pyt-Yakh (Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug) “white crane” by Semyon Faranosov

36. Republic of Tatarstan, Chistopol monument "The flying cranes" was erected in 1994

37. The memorial complex Cranes on Sokolovaya Gora in Saratov

38. Sokolovaya Gora in Saratov

39. The memorial complex “Never returned” Rostov region- Sculptor A. Kharkov

40. The memorial complex “Never returned” Rostov region- Sculptor A. Kharkov

41. Repino, Sankt Petersburg – Cranes by Honored Artist of Russia Leonid Mogilevsky

42. St. Petersburg Nevsky Memorial 'Cranes‘ By Honored Artist of Russia Leonid Mogilevsky

44. St. Petersburg Nevsky Memorial 'Cranes‘ By Honored Artist of Russia Leonid Mogilevsky

45. The  Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier 

46. Rzhev Memorial

47. The Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier  Andrei Korobtsov and Konstantin Fomin were the respective sculptor and architect for the project, both being chosen following an international competition

50. The  Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier  The monument features a bronze 25-metre statue of a soldier in the Red Army  standing on a 10-metre mound.