Monument to Stratonaut Heroes

On the square, in front of the railway station stands a monument to the dead heroes-Stratonauts. The opening of the monument took place on January 30, 1963.

Andrei Vasenko, who became the developer of the stratostat, Pavel Fedoseenko and Ilya Usyskin, in 1934, climbed to a height of 22 km on the Osoaviakhim-1 stratostat. The accident took the lives of all the participants of the flight. The stratostat fell and crashed in the south of Mordovia - the village of Potizh-Ostrog.

Initially, they wanted to install the monument on the place where the children died, but soon it was decided to install it in Saransk, the capital of Mordovia. The monument is presented in the form of the figure of a young man dressed in an aviation helmet and a developing jacket, and dressed in aviation undies. The figure is mounted on a tall cylindrical pedestal, which is lined with dark gray labradorite. Also, the pedestal depicts bas-reliefs of the faces of stratonauts and a plaque with the words: “Heroes-Stratonauts”. The architect A.N. Dushkin and the sculptor A.A. Written worked on the project of the monument.

The solemn opening of the monument was visited by relatives of the victims, who handed over some personal stratonauts to the local history museum.