The Day of the Unknown Soldier is a relatively new memorable date in Russian history, celebrated annually on December 3. This memorable day is designed to perpetuate the memory, military prowess and immortal feat of Soviet and Russian soldiers who died in combat and whose names remain unknown. For the first time, the Day of the Unknown Soldier was celebrated in our country in 2014. The date of December 3 was not chosen by chance. It was on this day, December 3, 1966, in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi troops near Moscow, the ashes of an unknown soldier from the mass grave of Soviet soldiers on the 41st kilometer of the Leningrad Highway (at the entrance to the city of Zelenograd) were transferred and solemnly buried near the wall of the Moscow Kremlin in the Alexander Garden.
It is worth noting that the first monuments to unknown soldiers began to appear after the First World War. For the first time this concept, like the memorial, appeared in France. Here, on November 11, 1920, in Paris, near the Arc de Triomphe, an honorary burial was made of an unknown soldier who died on the battlefields of the First World War. At the same time, the inscription appeared on the memorial: “Un soldat inconnu”, and the Eternal Flame was solemnly lit next to it.
In our country, the idea of creating such a memorial complex appeared before the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the defeat of German troops near Moscow in the winter of 1941. In early December 1966, newspapers wrote that on December 3, Moscow residents bowed their heads in front of one of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War – an unknown soldier who died near Moscow in the winter of 1941. In particular, the Izvestia newspaper wrote: “… he was killed for the Fatherland, for the native Moscow. That’s all we know about him”.
It is worth noting that the requirements for choosing a fighter were strict, they had to exclude any possible accident. The mass grave, chosen to take the ashes of a warrior from it, was located in the place where the Germans could not reach, which means that the soldiers buried here were not captured. The uniform of one of the fighters with the insignia of a private was very well preserved – the Unknown Soldier had to be an ordinary fighter. Another subtle point was that the soldier, who would be buried near the Kremlin, should not have been a deserter or a soldier who committed any military crime and was executed. However, the belt was necessarily removed from the criminal before execution, and the fighter from the grave near Zelenograd had the belt. The selected soldier did not have any documents and nothing that could reveal his identity to us – he died like an unknown hero of the battle for Moscow. Since 1966, he became the Unknown Soldier for our entire vast country.
Today, December 3, from 12.00am to 12.00am of the next day on the website https://big-history.ru/BolshayaIstoriya.rf, the International Test on the History of the Great Patriotic War is held. We invite employees, teachers, students to join the event at the site of Kursk State Medical University. Students of many groups from different faculties of the university report about their participation in testing. Join us!