The Motherland Calls is a colossal concrete war memorial on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, Russia, commemorating the casualties of the Battle of Stalingrad. Designed mainly by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich with architect Yakov Belopolsky, it shows a female personification of Russia with a sword raised in her right hand and her left arm extended to call Soviet people into battle. Standing 85 metres tall from pedestal to peak, it was the tallest statue in the world when completed in 1967 and remains the tallest in Europe when the pedestal is counted. Its design was changed in 1961 from a granite figure of about 30 metres to a concrete structure nearly twice that height, a decision criticised by some Soviet military officials. Construction began in 1963 under structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin, who faced cold weather, unexpected geology and a sword that had to be redesigned for wind resistance. The memorial was dedicated on 15 October 1967, and the statue has since needed major restoration.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.