Just outside the main entrance to the kremlin is a monument to the famous Tatar poet Musa Cälil (also transliterated as Musa Dzhalil). The monument was unveiled in 1985 and depicts the poet defiantly standing on rocks while his hands are tied and his legs wrapped in barbed wire. During the Second World War, Cälil was captured by the Nazis and spent time in concentration camps until he was released to fight against the Soviets in a Nazi legion made up of Volga Tatars. However Cälil’s units killed their Nazi commanders and defected to Belarusian partisans. In August 1943 Cälil was captured once more, severely beaten and sent to the Moabit Prison in Berlin. Here he wrote his most famous poems in two notebooks which became known as the Moabit Notebooks. Cälil was sentenced to death and guillotined at the prison in August 1944, but before this he was able to hand over his notebooks to his cellmate and eventually they were returned to the Soviet Union where they were published. Although at first Cälil was considered a traitor, he was later rehabilitated and posthumously awarded the honour of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1956 and the Lenin Prize for Literature in 1957; the only person to hold both awards.

Next to the monument is a bas-relief dedicated to the 11 other members of the Volga-Tatar Legion which turned against their Nazi commanders and were subsequently executed.