Battle of Stalingrad from the Stalingrad Front's Political Department on 8 October 1942 that: "The defeatist mood is almost eliminated and the number of treasonous incidents is getting lower" as an example of the sort of coercion Red Army soldiers experienced under the Special Detachments (later to be renamed SMERSH). On the other hand, Beevor noted the often extraordinary bravery of the Soviet soldiers in a battle that was only comparable to Verdun, and argued that terror alone cannot explain such self-sacrifice. Richard Overy addresses the question of just how important the Red Army's coercive methods were to the Soviet war effort compared
The Motherland Monument in February 2018 that the state emblem of the Soviet Union on the shield of the monument should be removed according to the decommunization laws. It is not removed, however, still by today. A scene in the 2006 novel "World War Z" depicts a Ukrainian tank commander and his surviving men fleeing in their vehicles from an abandoned and burning Kiev under the watchful gaze of the "Rodina-Mat". The monument is prominently featured in the music video for the song "Get Out" by the band Frightened Rabbit. The Motherland Monument The Motherland Monument (, ) is a monumental statue in