Russia celebrates Victory Day

Today is Victory Day in Moscow, a major holiday that comes after weeks of build-up as the nation celebrates its defeat over Nazi Germany in 1945. After New Year’s, it’s Russia’s most important holiday, one that allows the country to revel in a hard-won victory, honor aging veterans who the rest of the year are left by the wayside and build up a militaristic patriotism based on an army that is more often a source of fear than pride. (I wrote about the importance of the holiday last year.)

It’s hard to overstate how bizarre this holiday is. Starting under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, it’s achieved a grandiose level of pageantry (the highlight is an annual parade, which sees tons of soldiers and military hardware – i.e. Topol-M missiles, sans nukes, rolling across Red Square). Russia’s contribution to the war effort is unmistakable, its losses devastating. Yet, in its bid to build up the holiday as Russia’s unifier, the government, in typical fashion, ensures the lack of pubic debate over the role of the Stalin-led Soviet Union’s own role in the tragedy.

Last night, I was at a dinner party and the host got things started with a toast to the memory of his great-grandfather. He’d been arrested by Stalin’s secret police in 1937, like millions of other Soviets, for no reason. Two years later, he was released and as the Nazis approached his southern city, he volunteered to join the war effort. Six months later, he died in battle. These are the stories that are forgotten in the current government’s pomp and circumstance.

Instead, nightclubs hold WWII-themed strip shows, with ads like this:

Outside my house, a huge billboard has gone up reading: “150 grams of bread/ one piece of sugar/ one cup of boiled water per day. You try it! Our grandfathers managed it.” As if to say: stop complaining, life could be worse.

So you can go and watch the parade, and gaze upon the state spectacle that quite a few believe does little to honor what the Soviet Union sacrificed. I prefer to watch the below, a clip from a Soviet film set to a song by bard Bulat Okudzhawa called “Good-bye boys.” It’s a touching clip and the song’s lyrics are heart breaking: