When the Nazi Germany capitulated, it was a sign of victory for the whole world, for every continent. Through the common effort, through blood and tears, several of the world’s greatest armies fought – and defeated – the biggest threat the modern history has ever seen. It was the brave actions and the lives of thousands of soldiers of different nationalities and allegiances that brought down this terrifying enemy, and this must not be forgotten by those who are allowed to live afterwards.
However, there are limits to such a vision – or, at least, the rational mind dictates that there must be. While it’s important to honor those who have laid their lives for the sake of their children, it’s also important not to turn it into an obsession. It was a terrible tragedy that happened to the whole world, and we ought to be grateful for it to have been ceased, but there is no longer any honor in celebrating the victory. It happened, and like with all things of the past, we must learn from it and then let it stay in the past; not of ungratefulness, but of concern with the lives that we have now and the problems we have to solve to let the future come a shade brighter.
It pains me to see, therefore, how the Russian culture is malformed under the premise of patriotism whilst celebrating the “glorious victory” the Soviet Union held seventy-some years ago. In preparation for May 9th, banners are strung above the roads saying something to the likes of “Congratulations with N years of victory!”, public transportation serves as a moving such banner of its own, silk lines – orange-and-black Georgian brands, presumably after Georgiy Zhukov – are given away on the street to be worn as a symbol of commemoration of the event and the whole country seems to be going crazy for around a month.
Clearly, it’s not only my sentiment. I’ve wrote about this thing in a different blog last year, in Russian, and while looking through the statistics of visits to the page, I’ve noticed the search engine queries that brought people to that page. One that stuck is, translated, “madness about the seventy years of victory”. Something tells me that it was a young person, like myself, who asked Google that: people over thirty rarely question such things happening around them – they’re too weary to care.
As children, we are forced to take part in the school-hosted celebrations where the local veterans – those who are still alive, their number diminishing with time – are invited to tell about the war and their part in it. We do silly things, like reciting poems about how the Soviet Union gloriously defeated the great enemy or holding lessons about the general course of the war itself, with the spotlight on the events that make the Red Army look like total badasses. “Many people laid their lives to save the country”, they usually say, continuing the line of thought with the same sentiment for the entirety of the lesson. No word on the foreign armies’ sacrifice, no word on the inhumane abuse of those hated and persecuted by the Nazi, and no word on the mistakes the Union made, either. No truth about what happened.
There’s no truth in how we’re shown this war, and yet, we’re forced to celebrate; to do otherwise is to be an outsider, and in Russia today, nobody likes an outsider.
There are things that I feel like I ought to be unquestionably grateful for. The sacrifice made by the Red Army soldiers was immense – it’s counted in millions dead – and the effort they’ve put into saving their home country is astonishing – more so made by the fact that they’ve succeeded, against all odds. I’m not a Jew, but any country that punishes people based on their nationality and/or religion is a terrible country to live in. I’m not gay… I wish I could say that I don’t live in a country where such people are persecuted, but at least homosexuals aren’t put in concentration camps just for being of “wrong” sexual nature. So on about all the rest of the classes and social groups the Nazi have stigmatized and made into enemies of the state – I’m grateful not to live in a country where that still happens.
There are, however, things one can’t but notice when looking critically at the way Russia treats the victory today. When I say “treats the victory”, sadly, I mean it: it’s the victory itself that’s under the spotlight of every single conversation regarding May 9th; not the immense losses, not the mistakes of the Soviet Union during that time (giving a reason to start the Cold War is just one that comes to mind), not even the horrors of war that should scare people out of even thinking about committing to such a horrible action without a damn good reason (as crude as it sounds, it wouldn’t be a far fetch in the modern Russia) – just the victory.
The veterans we’re so eagerly promoted to congratulate and shower with flowers are still waiting for the housing they’ve been promised by the Soviet government way back then; many didn’t live to see their name on the list approved, and with time, fewer and fewer of them are able to. They get free public transportation around any given Russia city for life, but the medicine they so desperately require is gold-expensive for their miserly pensions, and there are no discounts in the pharmacy. They don’t get social support they need with age, and on the rare occasions that they do, it’s volunteers that help out. In short, the support we ought to provide to the war veterans seems to be nothing but a veil with which the government covers their real neglect and uncaring while doing nothing due to excessive corruption and bureaucracy, fighting with which with fire only seems to deepen the problem.
Moreover, the whole ordeal with the celebration seems superbly superficial. It has become about saying the words with faked enthusiasm, about waving the orange-and-black brands as if they mean anything, about forcing children to fake their joy of meeting the veterans (as opposed to inspiring them to admire those who worked their damn hardest to defend their country from the merciless, horrible attack) and make the typical gift of flowers that’s nothing more than symbolic. Moreover, it has become just another reason for people to drink: “Well, we ought to celebrate, ain’t we?”.
I feel like Russia has been stuck in the past at least since I was born. We still look back to the Soviet films and sigh at the ill state of the homeland cinematography; though this is justified: those films are made well and are a delight to watch. People still recall the good times that were the days of the Soviet Union – while, naturally, leaving behind all the terrible things that have happened there and then. Many people are still nostalgic about times when people couldn’t get good food without connections, couldn’t get a good service without a bribe, couldn’t express themselves openly or criticize the country they live in because apparently, communism has ego problems.
Maybe people’ve been stuck because there truly is nothing admirable about the present. All I hear from people around me is how it sucks to live in this country: prices are high, pay is low, crime is everywhere, police are dumb brutes abusing their power, the government doesn’t give a rip about their people, so on, so forth… And maybe they’re right. Not because they actually recite facts – most of what they say is pessimistic nonsense – but because they prefer to believe it rather than admit that it’s on them to make Russia a better place. It’s so easy to say “I don’t want to care, it’s none of my business, I just carry on about my life, as poor as it is, because then, I’m the victim and I can wallow in the juices of powerlessness because then I get pity and it’s so much easier than to do something about what sucks”. It is much harder to stand up, say “No, this isn’t good enough, and I’ll do what’s in my power to make it better, no matter what others think of it” – and, not to sound conspirative, maybe the government knows it and abuses it because it’s much simpler than to actually consider giving benefits of any sort to people who don’t care about themselves.
Maybe this is why we still celebrate May 9th with such vigor: because it’s among the best things that’ve happened to this country in a long while.
metaphoria 