Victory Day

Naïve American I am, I was all set to go watch my first Victory Day parade today. In America a parade is a public celebration when you line Main Street and wave flags and watch bands, and cheerleaders and city councilors march past. But in Russia there’s nothing public about it. They close off Red Square and you watch on television from home as lots of soldiers marching about, with government officials standing up straight in open Zil limousines as they tour the assembled masses. But there was a military band playing the grocery store this afternoon, and at the checkout line the cashier gave me one of the orange and black striped ribbons everyone around the city has been wearing for the past week.

Victory Day is when Russians take justifiable pride in the accomplishment of defeating fascism in the Second World War, and a time of remembrance for those lost in a human catastrophe whose totality is so vast it may never be conclusively determined. But unfortunately, it is also an opportunity for Russia’s intense persecution complex and chauvinism to run amok. On Monday Interfax reported on a somewhat flawed recent poll that found two-thirds of Russians believe the Soviets would have won without the Allies.

The public memory of the war is depressingly selective. You hear nothing about Hitler and Stalin’s non-aggression pact, or the opportunistic war against Japan, joined in the final days just long enough to seize a few Pacific islands that Russia won’t give back. No mention is made of on how tragically and callously the war was mismanaged at first by Stalin and his henchmen.

It underscores how maddening a nation Russia can be. RIA Novosti put together a pretty decent website about the victory, but you don’t have to look long to find something horrible. Consider one writer’s remembrance of his grandfather, and this colorful take on Stalin’s mismanaged and disastrous attack on Finland:

He began fighting in 1940 against the Finns and took part in the famous landing at Hango. The Finns had machine guns and the Russians only had rifles. But Russian marines are different from anyone else because they do not fear anyone anywhere. They took Hango and soaked the Finns in blood. My grandfather used to say that Finns were a more cunning and skilled enemy than Germans. Finnish soldiers are courageous and stubborn, not afraid of difficulties, just like Russians. Besides, they fought for their own land. Every time I visit Karelia I remember my grandfather: had he and his comrades been less courageous and brave, we would not have seen this beauty. Russians forever discouraged Finns from venturing into what was originally Russian land.

There is a spit-take in nearly every sentence.

This year, the ugly prologue to Victory Day has been the manufactured outrage over the “Bronze Soldier” in Estonia. Earlier this year the Estonian government moved a Soviet war memorial away from downtown Tallinn, which stirred up a hornet’s nest of bad feelings between Russia and the Baltics. Emotions run very high, but the heart of the situation is really nothing. It is not as if the Bronze Solider was taken to the dump: it was moved to a cemetery on the outskirts of town and rededicated with full honors. Newspaper Novaya Gazeta last week dared to note that it is not unheard of in Russia for war memorials to be moved when elite real estate developments are planned. But most news coverage has been designed specifically to work over Russia’s worst impulses.

As Woody Guthrie sang in one of his best war songs, “The world is digging Hitler’s grave and when the job is done, that’ll be the biggest thing that man has ever done.” Leave it at that.