In the center of Saratov, in the square of the Radishchev Museum opposite the opera and ballet theater, stands the monument to the fighters of the 1917 revolution and the eternal flame at the mass grave of the defenders of Soviet power. This monument is located between Bolshaya Kazachya Street and Theater Square, which was called Revolution Square during the Soviet era in honor of those buried there.

After the suppression of a three-day counter-revolutionary uprising that broke out in Saratov on May 16, 1918, the executive committee of the Saratov Soviet decided to bury comrades who fell in the struggle for the workers' and peasants' revolution in a mass grave. The burial site became the square at Theater Square.

On May 26, 1918, ten Red Guards, member of the provincial executive committee Ivan Polishchuk, editor of the newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda" David Tsirkin, who died two weeks earlier during a demonstration commemorating the anniversary of the February Revolution, and the first commissioner of the press of the Saratov Soviet Pyotr Alexeyev, who was killed on March 26 during the nationalization of the printing house, were buried with military honors. In July 1918, the chairman of the executive committee of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies M. M. Struin, who died defending the Volsk Revolutionary Committee, was buried in the mass grave. On August 4, 1918, the funeral of the soldiers of the Latvian special purpose regiment took place, on January 19, 1919, one of the organizers of the regiment K. K. Blukis, and at the end of May, the deputy chairman of the provincial revolutionary tribunal G. D. Khatskelevich, who died in Khvalynsk while eliminating green insurgents. On May 21, 1921, member of the provincial committee of the RCP(b) G. P. Petrov was buried.

The first monument at the mass grave appeared on November 7, 1918, on the anniversary of the October Revolution. It was a wooden obelisk with three crossed rifles and a helmet, rising above a brick crypt. Before the Great Patriotic War, the obelisk was replaced with a commemorative stone. On the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, a concrete monument created by Saratov sculptor V. I. Perfilev was installed. The monument depicts a victorious Red Army soldier, a machine gunner with a grenade, and a standard-bearer holding a flag with the inscription "For the Power of the Soviets!" The inscription on the pedestal, created by architect V. M. Degtyarev, read: "To the Fighters of the Socialist Revolution of 1917."

At the foot of the monument is a granite slab with the names of those buried. On November 6, 1967, as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the revolution, an eternal flame was lit at the monument, brought from the Eternal Glory flame at the Volgograd Square of Fallen Fighters. On October 1, 1977, a pioneer-Komsomol post was established at the eternal flame, where students from Saratov schools stood guard. In 1987, the concrete sculpture was replaced with an exact bronze copy.

In the fall of 1991, the new authorities abolished the guard, and the square was renamed back to Theater Square. However, the memorial was fully preserved, and it remains one of the main monuments of the Soviet era in Saratov.