Such an amazing “barmaley” fountain. A recreated "children's round dance" fountain was opened in Stalingrad. A fountain made of children holding hands.

Fountain "Barmaley" (Volgograd, Russia) - description, history, location, reviews, photos and videos.

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The fountain on the square near the city station became the subject of an iconic war photo, in which sculptures of children twirling in a round dance are depicted against the backdrop of the burning houses of Stalingrad. The fountain appeared here in 1935 and symbolized a plot from K. Chukovsky’s work “Barmaley”. The same compositions were in many Soviet cities, but it was Volgograd that became popular thanks to photographs taken by journalist E. Evzerikhin after a German air raid.

People called it differently: “Children’s Round Dance”, “Children”, “Children and the Crocodile”.

What to see

The townspeople really liked the fountain. In the center, on a pedestal, 6 cheerful pioneers danced around a curled up crocodile, and around the circumference sat frogs with open mouths from which streams of water were gushing. The figures of children were made in Kharkov according to the design of Romuald Iodko; they were badly damaged during transportation; they were restored on site and whitewashed to hide chips and seams.

Now there are two copies in Volgograd. None of the scripts on site former USSR not preserved.

In 2013, on the initiative of the Night Wolves biker club, the fountain was installed in its original location - on the station square. It was increased in size by 20 cm and made of modern plastic. The second copy in real size is located at the foot of the Gerhardt mill, but this is not a fountain, but simply a sculptural composition.

Practical information

Address: Volgograd, Privokzalnaya sq. and st. Marshala Chuikova, 47A.

How to get there: to the fountain on the railway station square by buses No. 6, 21, 52E, 88; to the composition on the street. Marshala Chuikov - from the high-speed tram station "Lenin Square" go through the square to the street. Soviet.

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Now, it seems, we have lived to see the time when in our city on Station Square, as once upon a time, a very long time ago, stone children will begin to dance around a crocodile. What seemed impossible just a few years ago is becoming reality. Is it good or bad? Let's get a look.

The initial project for the reconstruction of Station Square. Published in the magazine "Lower Volga Project" in March 2012.

Of course, let's start with history. Information about the historical fountain, despite the large number of sources reporting on it, is rather meager. For example, neither the name of the architect, nor the time of construction (only the year is indicated), nor the circumstances are indicated anywhere. As for the date of its dismantling, it is generally reported that it happened “in the 50s”, or rather, no one remembers, as if we are talking not about the recent past, still trembling in living memory, but about the era “BC” ." Information about the fountain can be found in the Wikipedia article and supplemented with data from several forums, blogs and websites.

Pre-war photograph of the central part of the fountain.

So, in 1930, during the reconstruction of the railway station, the Barmaley fountain appeared on Station Square. Actually, “Barmaley” is just one of the options for the officially missing name. Other options were “Children and the Crocodile”, “Crocodile”, “Round Dance”, etc. The motif that formed the basis of the composition was the fairy tale “The Stolen Sun” by Korney Chukovsky, written only five years before the installation of the sculpture, which contains the lines: “Hey, you animals, come out, / defeat the crocodile, / so that the greedy crocodile / turns the sun back into the sky!”. The authors of the composition rethought the images of animals, giving them pioneering features.

The fountain was not conceived in Stalingrad, but was a standard one. Exactly the same fountain or very similar ones were built in Voronezh, Dnepropetrovsk and Orenburg. None of these fountains have survived to this day. The fountain was a circle, in the center of which there was an island protruding upward. The architectural composition was located on this island. There were six children - three boys and three girls. On the outer ring there were sculptures of six frogs from which water was gushing. A somewhat similar fountain - with frogs and a crocodile, but without children - has been preserved in Omsk, in the park of the Agrarian University.

The fountain stood safely on Station Square in Stalingrad for 12 years. In August 1942, he, like the entire city, was subjected to a barbaric bombing, after which he was photographed by photographer Emmanuel Evzerikhin.

The same world-famous photograph of Emmanuel Evzerikhin

In fact, it was this photograph, which became one of the most famous images of the Stalingrad bombing, that made this typical fountain famous. The photo managed to capture the monstrous contrast that arose between the children who did not have time to finish the dance and the terrible sudden disaster that fell on their heads. The piercing photographic image spread across many newspapers and magazines, was captured on newsreels and included in many films about the war.

Directly during the bombing on August 23, 1942, the fountain was slightly damaged. It received serious damage in September 1942, during fierce battles for the station building, which changed hands several times. As can be seen in photographs taken after the end of the fighting, the fountain received additional damage: sculptures of children were damaged, one sculpture was missing its head.

Judging by the shells stacked under the fountain, the photograph was taken shortly after the end of the fighting, in the early spring of 1943. The sculpture closest to the photographer has no head.

The fountain has not yet been restored: some sculptures do not have hands

"Barmaley" was one of the first to be restored in the city. Already in 1945, against the background of the ruins standing around it, the fountain shone with fresh whiteness.

This is especially striking in the unique color photographs of Mark Redkin, also taken in 1945.

The fountain has been restored. There are still ruins around

Color photo by Mark Redkin. It appears to be heavily photoshopped, but impressive nonetheless. Living children repeat the dance of plaster children - the triumph of life over death! True, in the live round dance there are only girls

In post-war Stalingrad, the fountain stood for about 10 years and was destroyed, as already indicated, in the 50s. The specific reasons why it was decided to destroy the fountain are not indicated anywhere. Most likely at that moment it was believed that a typical plaster fountain had low artistic value and looked cheap against the backdrop of the monumental station building. This assumption is confirmed by the fact that the twin fountains were demolished everywhere in the 50s and 60s, and in not a single case was there any good reason for this. In Voronezh, on the site of the demolished fountain, another fountain was built, in Orenburg, a monument to Pushkin and Dahl was erected, and in Dnepropetrovsk, on the site of the fountain, a valuable asphalt platform was created. In any case, no one planned any construction on the site of the fountain; in Stalingrad, at first a large flower bed was placed on the site of the fountain, which was then replaced with a more valuable artistic image - a parking lot.

Voronezh, Koltsovsky Square. The local fountain was built in 1937. As you can see, the Voronezh fountain was different from the Stalingrad one: the frogs sat not on the outer rim, but in the water

Voronezh, 1967. The Voronezh fountain was demolished in 1977.

Another shot from Dnepropetrovsk

The destruction of the Stalingrad fountain is seen from our time as an act of vandalism in relation to the history of the city. If the demolition of fountains in Orenburg, Voronezh or Dnepropetrovsk was an economic matter, then the death of such a bright and famous image of the Battle of Stalingrad is a tragedy. The destruction of a world-famous monument and its replacement with a flowerbed spoke not only of a complete misunderstanding of the essence of historical values ​​and the presence of tourism potential among the “city fathers” of those years, but also simply of a lack of basic love for their city.

Flowerbed in place of the fountain. Photo from the mid-60s.

In 2007, the question of restoring Barmaley was officially raised for the first time. The square reconstruction project was developed by the Omsk company Mostovik. The project is quite global, involving a complete reconstruction of the area. The fountain is located on the surface, and the parking lot (where would we be without it!) is moved to the underground floor. This project seems to have been a guideline, but later it was significantly simplified. The sculpture itself is made by specialists from the Stroganov Art School. Moreover, they write that not one, but two copies of it are being made - the fountain before the bombing and after it. The first one will be installed on Station Square. The “bombed” copy will be transferred to the museum-reserve “ Battle of Stalingrad", it is planned to install it next to Pavlov's House.

Initial plan for the reconstruction of the square. Published in March 2012 in the magazine "Project Lower Volga"

In our time, the fountain has already been restored once - on the site of a film studio on the set of the sensational film by F. Bondarchuk

Meanwhile, work began on Station Square. This is what it looks like on the second day after they started

Is it a good idea to restore Barmaley? Judging by what is written on the Internet, the vast majority of authors support the idea. Indeed, the square will become more interesting, another tourist attraction will appear. But, on the other hand, a remake will always remain a remake. It will always be clear that this is not “the same” fountain, but only an approximate copy of it, recreated from old black and white photographs. A shadow of the past.

The exact location of the fountain on Station Square with the adjacent platform, linked to modern objects, can be viewed on our interactive map .

Last summer, Fyodor Bondarchuk filmed his new film “Stalingrad” near St. Petersburg, which is scheduled for release this fall. Perhaps there will be a large illustrated story about the filming location, but for now I will tell you everything I know about the fountain, which is the central element of all the scenery. The fountain is mesmerizing. No matter where you turn, no matter what you photograph, you will look back at the fountain again and again. And again and again the boy will look directly at you with his empty eye sockets.

This spring, the place with the scenery for the film suddenly became popular. I managed to visit there in the first two days of May, and, judging by the tags on Instagram, we were one of the first there. I absolutely didn’t want to “shine” the location of the object, but even some of my friends, completely adequate people, managed to put geotags under photographs from there. “Well, now it’s all gone. The Kalabukhov House has disappeared,” as Professor Preobrazhensky used to say, but we will return to the fountain, one of the names of which is “Children’s round dance.” I would like to immediately note that if the figures of the children in the original fountain of 1935 were junior schoolchildren, then when the fountain was made for decoration, the children had matured, and now they are no longer children, but teenagers.

The fountain became widely known thanks to the famous photograph of front-line correspondent Emmanuel Evzerikhin entitled “August 23, 1942. After a massive raid by Nazi aircraft." Here the contrast is clearly visible between the fragility of a serene peaceful life, children playing carefree and the horrific picture of the destruction of the city. The photograph became one of the symbols of the Battle of Stalingrad.

The sculpture group, however, was a typical project. In the 1930s, similar sculptural works appeared in several Soviet cities. But the fate of the Stalingrad Fountain was not immediately favorable. This is what the newspaper “Stalingradskaya Pravda” wrote on October 30, 1935 in the article “Sculpture for the Fountain”: “The design of the fountain on the station square is being completed. Yesterday the installation of sculptures received from Kharkov began. They have to be restored somewhat, as pieces of some figures were broken off along the way. The pioneer and pioneer woman suffered the most. Once installed, the sculptures will be coated with white oil paint.” The next time the pioneer and pioneer woman will “suffer” after seven years, but not from transportation.

For the residents of Stalingrad, the fountain evoked associations with the fairy tales of Korney Chukovsky, so it was called “Children’s Round Dance”, “Dancing Children”, “Crocodile”, “Children and the Crocodile”, “Children” and even “Barmaley”. The sculptural composition was possibly an allegory for the poem “The Stolen Sun” (1925), in which children and animals fought with a crocodile that swallowed the sun:

Hey you animals, come out!
Defeat the crocodile
To the greedy Crocodile
The sun was back in the sky!

As I drew your attention to earlier, the sculptural composition was represented by six children, three boys and three girls, holding hands and dancing around a crocodile. So why did the creators of these wonderful film sets portray older pioneers rather than children? We can only guess. In the meantime, let's study the photographs.

Along the perimeter of the fountain sat nine (as far as I could count in pre-war photographs) frogs with water jets coming out of their mouths. Later, the “Children’s Round Dance” fountain repeatedly appeared in military newsreels and in photographs by domestic and foreign photographers.

In the photograph presented above by E. N. Evzerikhin, the sculptures are still intact, with a burning railway station in the background. But already in the photographs, starting from the end of August 1942, the sculptural composition is partially destroyed.

The exact date of restoration of the fountain is unknown, but in a color photograph by Mark Redkin from 1945, the fountain has already been restored.

Here are several similar fountains in other cities: Koltsovsky Square in Voronezh (photo from the mid-1960s)

Now let’s take a closer look at the Dnepropetrovsk fountain. It seems to me that this project was taken as the basis for the scenery - the pioneers had clearly grown up. I wonder if anyone besides me noticed this discrepancy between the original and the copy, including Fyodor Sergeevich Bondarchuk himself?

Here is another photograph taken in some Ukrainian city during the occupation. And also children, not teenagers.

The Stalingrad fountain on Station Square was dismantled in the 1950s, during the post-war restoration of the city, as being of no artistic value... Several years ago there was talk about restoring the fountain either on Station Square, or in another place, but in reality this was not the case didn't pass. I think that the fountain could stand on a par with the memorable military sights of Volgograd: the flour mill (Gerhardt Mill, which should not be confused with the Pavlov House - both buildings received significant damage during the Battle of Stalingrad, but the Pavlov House was restored, and the mill was left unrestored), the Panorama Museum “Battle of Stalingrad”, Mamayev Kurgan and the Motherland Memorial.

What do you think could be depicted in the composition of such a fountain? The first thing that comes to mind is the fairy tales and poems of K.I. Chukovsky “Doctor Aibolit” and “Barmaley”. But when you see the Barmaley fountain, the question will be completely different: what connects its sculptural composition with the above-mentioned fairy tales? This is the question we will try to answer.

Victims during transportation

In 1935, the design of Station Square in Stalingrad (now and historically - Volgograd) was completed. Here they began installing the sculptures brought for the new fountain. The newspaper "Stalingradskaya Pravda" reported that several children's figures were damaged during transportation, and time is required for their restoration. When the restoration process is completed, the sculptures will be installed in the bowl and painted in White color.

The author's decision, or What is the Barmaley fountain?

Six children aged 10-14 years: three boys and three girls dance in a circle around an image of a crocodile with open mouth. The pioneers are dressed in shorts (skirts) and T-shirts, with a traditional pioneer tie tied around their necks. They enjoy life, their happy Soviet childhood. There are eight frogs underfoot. It’s not clear, what does “Barmaley” have to do with it? If we recall the work of the wonderful Soviet poet-storyteller Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, then only another fairy tale - “The Stolen Sun”, in which “a greedy crocodile swallowed the sun in the sky.” But if you follow the text, then it was not the children who went to rescue the sun, but the bear: “He crushed it and broke it: “Give us our sun here!” And in general there is not a word about the pioneers in the fairy tale.

In addition, the proportions of children's bodies also raise questions. If you look closely at the anatomy used in art schools to depict children, fountain children have short legs, overly long torsos and broad shoulders, as well as very long arms. But their faces speak of openness to the world and a happy childhood in the Soviet country.

True, the childhood of both fountain and very real Soviet children turned out to be not eternal. In 1941, Nazi Germany destroyed this fragile, ringing world.

Suggested allegories

The fountain stands out as a particular dissonance against the background of buildings destroyed during the bombing. Children are dying all around, but the fountain pioneers were quite alive and well back in 1942. And they danced merrily around the crocodile.

However, you can look at this photograph from the other side: a fountain with dancing children can serve as a symbol of perseverance and courage, children's courage and courage of the pioneers who stood on an equal basis with adults to defend their homeland (remember the exploits of the pioneer heroes who fought with enemies not only at the front , but also in underground organizations, in partisan detachments, at machines and in hospitals). In this case, the crocodile becomes an allegory - the image of an evilly grinning enemy, cowardly under the threat of spiritual strength and fortitude, giving in to the desire to live in peace, friendship and harmony.

The fate of the fountain

But the tragic fate did not spare the fountain children either: in the same 1942, when the battles for Stalingrad captured by the Nazis took place, the station and the Barmaley fountain were destroyed. The station building turned into ruins, and the fountain children were crippled, just as real children and their destinies were crippled. Some of the sculptures had various damages, and several had their heads torn off - they lay nearby as a reminder of the cruelty of fascism. Only by 1945 was the fountain restored. But it existed only until 1950 and was dismantled. A flowerbed was built in its place. Then she was removed too. They filled it with asphalt and made it a paid parking lot in the 80s.

But the question of restoring the Barmaley fountain has not ceased to worry the residents of Stalingrad since 1960. True, representatives of the art world did not consider this idea a good one, since, in their opinion, the composition was not particularly cultural value both from an ideological and aesthetic point of view, and in addition, it was also typical - in other cities of the country there are several synonymous fountains.

The history of the Barmaley fountain continued thanks to the action of bikers. On their initiative, a new similar composition was created, somewhat different from the previous one in proportions, poses and faces of the children. They also delivered the sculptures to Stalingrad.

Last summer, Sergei Bondarchuk filmed his new film “Stalingrad” near St. Petersburg, which is scheduled for release this fall. Perhaps there will be a large illustrated story about the filming location, but for now I will tell you everything I know about the fountain, which is the central element of all the scenery. The fountain is mesmerizing. No matter where you turn, no matter what you photograph, you will look back at the fountain again and again. And again and again the boy will look directly at you with his empty eye sockets.

This spring, the place with the scenery for the film suddenly became popular. I managed to visit there in the first two days of May, and, judging by the tags on Instagram, we were one of the first there. I absolutely didn’t want to “shine” the location of the object, but even some of my friends, completely adequate people, managed to put geotags under photographs from there. “Well, now it’s all gone. The Kalabukhov House has disappeared,” as Professor Preobrazhensky used to say, but we will return to the fountain, one of the names of which is “Children’s round dance.” I would like to immediately note that if the figures of the children in the original fountain of 1935 were junior schoolchildren, then when the fountain was made for decoration, the children had matured, and now they are no longer children, but teenagers.

The fountain became widely known thanks to the famous photograph of front-line correspondent Emmanuel Evzerikhin entitled “August 23, 1942. After a massive raid by Nazi aircraft." Here the contrast is clearly visible between the fragility of a serene peaceful life, children playing carefree and the horrific picture of the destruction of the city. The photograph became one of the symbols of the Battle of Stalingrad.

The sculpture group, however, was a typical project. In the 1930s, similar sculptural works appeared in several Soviet cities. But the fate of the Stalingrad Fountain was not immediately favorable. This is what the newspaper “Stalingradskaya Pravda” wrote on October 30, 1935 in the article “Sculpture for the Fountain”: “The design of the fountain on the station square is being completed. Yesterday the installation of sculptures received from Kharkov began. They have to be restored somewhat, as pieces of some figures were broken off along the way. The pioneer and pioneer woman suffered the most. Once installed, the sculptures will be coated with white oil paint.” The next time the pioneer and pioneer woman will “suffer” after seven years, but not from transportation.

For the residents of Stalingrad, the fountain evoked associations with the fairy tales of Korney Chukovsky, so it was called “Children’s Round Dance”, “Dancing Children”, “Crocodile”, “Children and the Crocodile”, “Children” and even “Barmaley”. The sculptural composition was possibly an allegory for the poem “The Stolen Sun” (1925), in which children and animals fought with a crocodile that swallowed the sun:

Hey you animals, come out!
Defeat the crocodile
To the greedy Crocodile
The sun was back in the sky!

As I drew your attention to earlier, the sculptural composition was represented by six children, three boys and three girls, holding hands and dancing around a crocodile. So why did the creators of these wonderful film sets portray older pioneers rather than children? We can only guess. In the meantime, let's study the photographs.

Along the perimeter of the fountain sat nine (as far as I could count in pre-war photographs) frogs with water jets coming out of their mouths. Later, the “Children’s Round Dance” fountain repeatedly appeared in military newsreels and in photographs by domestic and foreign photographers.

In the photograph presented above by E. N. Evzerikhin, the sculptures are still intact, with a burning railway station in the background. But already in the photographs, starting from the end of August 1942, the sculptural composition is partially destroyed.

The exact date of restoration of the fountain is unknown, but in a color photograph by Mark Redkin from 1945, the fountain has already been restored.

Here are several similar fountains in other cities: Koltsovsky Square in Voronezh (photo from the mid-1960s)

Now let’s take a closer look at the Dnepropetrovsk fountain. It seems to me that this project was taken as the basis for the scenery - the pioneers had clearly grown up. I wonder if anyone besides me noticed this discrepancy between the original and the copy, including Fyodor Sergeevich Bondarchuk himself?

Here is another photograph taken in some Ukrainian city during the occupation. And also children, not teenagers.

The Stalingrad fountain on Station Square was dismantled in the 1950s, during the post-war restoration of the city, as being of no artistic value... Several years ago there was talk about restoring the fountain either on Station Square, or in another place, but in reality this was not the case didn't pass. I think that the fountain could stand on a par with the memorable military sights of Volgograd: the flour mill (Gerhardt Mill, which should not be confused with the Pavlov House - both buildings received significant damage during the Battle of Stalingrad, but the Pavlov House was restored, and the mill was left unrestored), the Panorama Museum “Battle of Stalingrad”, Mamayev Kurgan and the Motherland Memorial.