Monument to the Victims of the Deportations of the Communist Regime - Chisinau

The somber and evocative Monument to the Victims of the Deportations of the Communist Regime stands in front of Chișinău railway station. It presents a stylized sculptural mass of interlocking, block-like human figures in motion, carved in dark stone and mounted on a long sloped plinth. The composition begins with a compact grouping of adults and children at the front, gradually becoming more abstract and fragmented toward the rear: “families, mothers with children, and faceless people that transform towards the end of the monument into stone blocks, in a long line of uprooting and pain”. The monument by Iurie Platon was inaugurated in 2013 to commemorate the mass deportations from Moldova during Soviet rule, particularly the waves of 1941, 1949, and 1951 – many from the Chisinau railway station to Kazakhstan and elsewhere. I am including it here due to its direct connection to the Soviet period and even the influence socialist-era art has has on this sculpture.