Chkalov Monument

By St. George's Tower stands a monument to a pilot: a bronze figure in a flight suit rises on a granite pedestal. Its author sculpted it from life and portrayed the pilot as though he were heading out to an aircraft for another test. He took new aircraft into the sky and tested flight regimes that were to enter regular service. The granite is marked with two dashed routes: one runs toward the Russian Far East, while the other crosses the North Pole and leads to the American city of Vancouver, Washington.

During his lifetime, test pilot Valery Chkalov came to this site with Isaac Mendelevich. Nizhny Novgorod was then called Gorky. Mendelevich, a sculptor and Chkalov's friend, was selecting a place for a future monument to the writer Maxim Gorky, whose literary name the city bore. They chose the edge of the Volga Slope near St. George's Tower.

Chkalov was a native of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. Two flights are marked on the granite pedestal beneath his bronze figure, after which the whole country knew the pilot's name. In nineteen thirty-six, he commanded a crew that flew nonstop from Moscow to the Russian Far East. A year later, the same crew flew across the North Pole to the American city of Vancouver, Washington.

Long-distance flights brought Chkalov fame, but his life was devoted to testing new aircraft. He tested aircraft and flight regimes in the air before they were put into service. On December fifteenth, nineteen thirty-eight, Chkalov took a new I-one hundred eighty fighter on its first test flight. The aircraft crashed, and the pilot died at the age of thirty-four.

After his death, the residents of Gorky petitioned for a monument to their fellow countryman. The work was entrusted to Mendelevich, who had previously sculpted Chkalov from life. The sculptor depicted his friend in a flight suit before another departure. The monument was unveiled on December fifteenth, nineteen forty, exactly two years after the pilot's death. About fifty thousand people gathered at the site, and Mendelevich later received the Stalin Prize for this work.

No monument to Gorky was ever erected here. What remained of the original plan was the very point chosen by the friends: Mendelevich's Chkalov stands on it, and two dashed lines on the granite lead to the Russian Far East and through the North Pole to America.