This paper discusses female allegorical statues, that is, Motherland and the Lamenting Mother, as Soviet monuments and memorials about the German-Soviet War of the Second World War. In general, we do not meet female citizens in public monuments because modern nations purge women from public spaces to private areas, that is, family spaces. Instead of individual women, they use images of allegorical women, for example, the Archaic goddess Nike/Victoria as a symbol of an imagined community and Marianne in the French Republic.

In Soviet war monumental/memorial space, we meet such a symbolic gender structure: Red Army soldiers and allegorical females. In this case, we consider the Archaic goddess featured in Motherland and the Lamenting Mother statue. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the process of restructuring war memorial spaces, newborn nations have removed male statues, for example, Lenin, revolutionists, politicians, generals, academicians, artists, and Red Army soldiers, which commemorate great Soviet hegemony. In contrast, female allegory stays in public spaces even today because female unindividual statues are an empty medium that can introject any concept.

It was found from the result of fieldwork in the former Soviet Union that Motherland, which has occupied a position as national symbol in the Russian Federation, has lost power to unite nation and people. In fact, the Motherland statue had not been built in Estonia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, or Central Asia. Regarding Latvia, Moldova, Belarus, and Georgia, we meet small-size variants. On the other hand, Lamenting Mother statues, who mourn for the war dead, have been raised in the whole country, even today. Local communities find space to share the pain of loss of relations and friends, homes, property, and life, in memorials in the shape of the Lamenting Mother, who is similar to the Holy Mother.

We are here concerned with the implications of social and cultural context of these two female allegories. In the first chapter, we focus on the period of Khrushchev. Stalin had oppressed all war memory and, after his death, people began to narrate personal experiences about war and build memorials for the dead in burial places. We cannot find a clear distinction in early female allegory statues. The 20th anniversary of the Victory, that is, the year 1965, brought a fundamental change in war memorial-commemoration spaces. In those days, Nike-type statues were raised as national symbols to unite the nation and people, such as The Motherland Calls at the top of Mamai Hill to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad. In the second and third chapters, we illustrate distribution, location, size, shape of Motherland and Lamenting Mother statues in detail. Next, in the fourth chapter, we classify Lamenting Mother statues according to type of icons of the Holy Mother: Eleusa, Pieta, Our Lady of Sorrows, and Orans. We consider that the cult of the “Lamenting Mother” is based on the faith of the Holy Mother. Next, we surmise that early Christianity had united the faith of the Holy Mother with the cult of local great mothers in the course of Christian religion in Europe. Similarly, Islam assimilated local great mothers in Central Asia. It is possible that Soviet people, including Muslims, had a basis for accepting the Soviet secularized Holy Mother. And, finally, we examine threat factors inherent in the Lamenting Mother-type statue.