During and immediately after the war, a relatively small number of monuments marking the graves of fallen soldiers or commemorating victory appeared in the Soviet Union. After 1947, when Victory Day became an ordinary work day, the state substantially curtailed the ritual spaces and times allotted for reflecting on both the heroes and the victims of the war. The cult of the war that emerged after Josef Stalin's death changed all this. Local governments, with approval and funding from the state, undertook the construction of hundreds of war cemeteries and monuments. In 1965, Victory Day once again became a public holiday. By the early 1970s, monuments to the Great Fatherland War became ubiquitous features of the Soviet landscape.

Soviet monuments to the war ranged from understated markers to monumental statues situated in enormous memorial “complexes.” In general, they embraced traditional and idealized images of war. Unabashedly representational and resolutely optimistic regarding the justice of the cause, the heroism of the fighters, and the purity of the victory, Soviet memorials attempted to balance and integrate two essential tasks – mourning the country's staggering losses and celebrating the victory that, according to the myth of the people's war, crowned and redeemed the sorrows.