"Mother of the People"

We went today to the National Military History Museum Complex. The main museum, honoring the Great Patriotic War (WWII), is located in the base of this monument: "Mother of the People". She is HUGE. There were many things about the museum that were fascinating to me...
I was surprised that so many of the documents related to the war history were written in Ukrainian. I guess I am not really aware of the timeline of Ukraine's russification. It seems that is something that must have begun en force sometime after the War. As a russian speaker here, I am able to communicate well; but I find myself intuiting the Ukrainian pattern more often as more of life is happening in Ukrainian. Today was an instance of that.

The one thing that surprised me more than any other was the female participants represented in the museum. It wasn't like in America, where many women went to work to keep factories running and such. It also wasn't an arrangement where women were the pretty nurses bringing comfort to the fighting men, although I'm sure some of this is true as well. I was really surprised today by the number of women soldiers, pilots, and officers represented at the museum. War really changes a people, of this I am convinced. In Ukraine, it seems, war had a profound effect on femininity.

In the picture below, you see a large iron facade/sculpture. Notice the 2 women in this piece... standing up is a babushka (grandmother), with a machine gun in her arms. Kneeling down is a younger woman with something cradled in her arms, and your mind expects it to be a child... but it is a mortar.

I don't really have any conclusions about all this... I am still thinking about it. It is a fascinating history we have here in Ukraine... I realize that we may very likely never be able to understand what it means to have this particular history.