The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.
Victory Day is a holiday that commemorates the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in 1945. It was first inaugurated in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945. The Soviet government announced the victory early on 9 May after the signing ceremony in Berlin. Although the official inauguration occurred in 1945, the holiday became a non-labor day only in 1965.
Ivan Stepanovich Konev was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, responsible for taking much of Axis-occupied Eastern Europe.
The 6th Army was a field army of the German Army during World War II. It is widely known for its defeat by and subsequent surrender to the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad on 2 February 1943. It committed war crimes at Babi Yar while under the command of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau during Operation Barbarossa.
Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union. He is regarded as one of the finest Soviet generals of World War II.
Elbe Day, April 25, 1945, is the day Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River, near Torgau in Germany, marking an important step toward the end of World War II in Europe. This contact between the Soviets, advancing from the east, and the Americans, advancing from the west, meant that the two powers had effectively cut Germany in two.
The ribbon of Saint George is a Russian military symbol consisting of a black and orange bicolour pattern, with three black and two orange stripes.
The Soviet Banner of Victory was the banner raised by the Red Army soldiers on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 1 May 1945, the day after Adolf Hitler committed suicide. It was raised by three Soviet soldiers: Ukrainian Alexei Berest, Russian Mikhail Yegorov, and Georgian Meliton Kantaria.
The Soviet War Memorial is a war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 7,000 of the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. It opened four years after the end of World War II in Europe, on 8 May 1949. The Memorial served as the central war memorial of East Germany.
The Soviet War Memorial is one of several war memorials in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, erected by the Soviet Union to commemorate its war dead, particularly the 80,000 soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces who died during the Battle of Berlin in April and May 1945.
The Bronze Soldier is the informal name of a controversial Soviet World War II war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia, built at the site of several war graves, which were relocated to the nearby Tallinn Military Cemetery in 2007. It was originally named "Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn", was later titled to its current official name "Monument to the Fallen in the Second World War", and is sometimes called Alyosha, or Tõnismäe monument after its old location. The memorial was unveiled on 22 September 1947, three years after the Red Army reached Tallinn on 22 September 1944 during World War II.
During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland, as well as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland and eastern Romania. Apart from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and post-war division of Germany, the USSR also occupied and annexed Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia in 1945.
Bilateral relations exist and existed between Austria and Russia and their predecessor states. Since October 1955, the Republic of Austria maintains the constitutionally-mandated status of neutrality; the country is a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OEEC). Austria joined the EU in 1995. Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a partner of ASEAN, a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the G20, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as the leading member state of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Both countries are members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The Monument to the Soviet Army is a partially dismantled monument located in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. There is a large park around the statue and the surrounding areas. It is a popular place where many young people gather. The monument is located on Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard, near Orlov Most and the Sofia University. It portrays a soldier from the Soviet Army as a freedom fighter, surrounded by a Bulgarian woman, holding her baby, and a Bulgarian man. There are other, secondary sculptural composition parts of the memorial complex around the main monument, like the group of soldiers which have been used many times as a canvas by political artists. The monument was built in 1954 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the liberation by the Soviet Army, which is the general Russian interpretation of the complex military history of Bulgaria during World War II. The monument was partially removed in December 2023.
The Soviet War Memorial in Schönholzer Heide in Pankow, Berlin was erected between May 1947 and November 1949, and covers an area of 30,000 square metres. The memorial contains the largest Soviet cemetery in Berlin, which is also the largest Russian cemetery in Europe outside of Russia.
On 1 May 1945, hundreds of people killed themselves in the town of Demmin, in the Province of Pomerania, Germany. Although death toll estimates vary, it is acknowledged to be the largest mass suicide ever recorded in Germany. The suicide was part of a mass suicide wave amongst the population of Nazi Germany.
Imagery promoting the Soviet Union has been a prominent aspect of the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Both Russia and Russian separatist forces in Ukraine have used Soviet symbols as a means of expressing their antipathy to Ukraine and to Ukrainian decommunization policies. For Russia, in particular, these displays are also part of a broader campaign to de-legitimize Ukrainian statehood and justify annexations of the country's territory, as was the case with Crimea in March 2014 and with southeastern Ukraine in September 2022.
The Soviet Red Army Monument, Harbin is a national monument of China to the fallen Soviet Red Army soldiers who took part in the 1945 Soviet invasion of Manchuria during World War II which liberated Northeast China (Manchuria) from Japanese occupation.
