Monument “The Anthem for Work”

Location: Elektrėnai, Lithuania

Completed: 1975

Architect: Not known 

Genre: Modernist, Soviet monument, former USSR

Elektrėnai was purpose-built in the early 1960s to accommodate employees of the nearby power plant of the same name. The settlement is one of the country’s newest cities and its name is derived from the Lithuanian word elektrinė, which translates as ‘power plant’. “The Anthem for Work” symbolises the production of energy by way of three smoking chimneys and the flow of alternating current, which is expressed through the plates that protrude from each of the metal columns. There is also the suggestion that the protrusions on the tallest mast, of which there are fifteen, represent the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union with the most elongated being Russia. The plates on the other two columns denote other communist states under the hegemony of the Soviet Union.