Short answers, pulled from the story.
The personification of Russia is most commonly called Mother Russia, expressed in Russian as Matushka Rossiia, Mat'-Rossiia, or Rossiia-matushka. A related term, Rodina-mat', translates as Homeland the Mother. The image has been feminine and maternal since the Middle Ages.
Scholars point to several converging sources. Harald Haarmann and Orlando Figes trace the image to the ancient Slavic goddess Mokosh. Mikhail Epstein links it to Russia's agricultural history, which encouraged a view of the earth as a divine mother, and to the feminine grammatical gender of the names Rus' and Rossiia in the Russian language.
The Motherland Calls, known in Russian as Rodina-mat' zovyot, is a colossal statue in Volgograd, Russia, built to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad. It is one of the most recognized monuments associated with Russian memory of World War II.
The statue stands in Kyiv as part of the Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II. Originally called Mother Motherland, it has since been renamed Mother Ukraine.
Most Mother Motherland statues were built during the Soviet era to commemorate the Great Patriotic War, the Russian name for World War II. The Bolsheviks made extensive use of the Motherland image during that conflict.
Both words refer to homeland in Russian, but they carry different genders. Rodina, meaning place of birth, is feminine; otechestvo and otchizna, meaning fatherland, are masculine. The feminine term rodina is the one most closely associated with the Mother Russia concept.