Celebrating Victory Day - and (mis)appropriating it

Hopefully my last post didn't create the impression that I don't think May 9th should still be celebrated in Russia. Of course it should. As I mentioned before, I think the way it was celebrated back in 2005, with a retro-style parade, was perhaps more fitting, but if there's a consensus among the population or the elites that a display of missiles is the right way to honor veterans, then so be it (though I liked how Russian LJ blogger peresedov summed up his reaction - with the witty phrase "танки, гоу хоум!").

In any event, the state does not have a monopoly on Victory Day - people will find their own ways to celebrate this holiday (see pictures of such celebrations from last year in this great photoset from Darkness at Noon), which is so very personal for many Russians and people throughout the former Soviet Union.

Ilya Barabanov writes about not having anyone in his family tree who was taken away by the war, which is unusual in Russia, and concludes that the holiday is one of the top three holidays for anyone, along with one's birthday and the New Year. He also directs readers to livejournals apparently written by war veterans, who are of course being congratulated by many readers today. Barabanov's wife, Natalia Morar', marked the holiday in Berlin and noticed the Germans' "amazing ability to acknowledge their historical mistakes."

Georgian blogger cyxymu writes about how the war affected his family, posts a photo from last year's Victory Day celebrations in Tbilisi, and comments that "for me personally this is a big holiday, the last Soviet holiday that unites all of us." Some folks in the Baltic states might disagree, feeling that the greater evil of Nazi Germany was merely replaced by the lesser evil of Soviet power, but on the whole he's probably right.

Natalia Antonova writes:

My grandmother started crying on the phone:

“I don’t want you to ever know what it’s like to hear the shelling and know that it’s coming for you.”

War is banal and blind and savage and ultimately meaningless. But there is still something to smile about today, at least for me. If only because its survivors had children, and those children had children, and one of them was me, and another one was my beautiful baby brother. And there’s a reason why we’re here, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives finding out what that reason may be.

This multimedia project looks to be a great - if time-consuming - way to honor the past by brushing up on your knowledge of the history of the war, and the same can be said of this website which archives the reminiscences of war veterans.

All of the worthy reasons to celebrate Victory Day, and the many ways in which it's possible to celebrate with dignity and respect, make attempts by the government and various groups and individuals supported by it to use the holiday for their own PR purposes (чтобы пропиариться, in contemporary Russian terms) seem especially distasteful. Sometimes it's just a matter of degree, and of course your own distastefulness mileage may vary (на вкус и цвет товарища нет, after all).

The proliferation of the St. George's ribbon - a great and certainly potent symbol of victory - is rather amazing by any standards. The Russian government's website features it along with the Soviet "Patriotic War" medal (this imagery is common on many websites today, including Russian search engines), which is no doubt a fine way to mark the occasion:

But simply displaying the ribbon is not enough for some. There is a dedicated website (using the by-now-familiar layout from websites like zaputina.ru and chernymspiskam.net with tiles of userpics of supporters at the bottom) which seems to have the purpose of providing people with these striped ribbons. I remarked a couple of years ago on how taking such fetishization too far in fact cheapens the holiday - the occasion for that was this crazy visual:

July 28, 2005, 12:35pm, near the entrance to Red Square.

The trivialization of the holiday and its symbols is not the worst thing, though - more disturbing is their instrumentalization for current policy purposes. One of the banners from RIA Novosti's tribute website 9may.ru appears to feature the controversial "Bronze Soldier" statue and is captioned, "Those who do not respect the past have no future!"

9may.ru also has a page dedicated to promoting and documenting the distribution of St. George's ribbons. I guess this - state-run organizations promoting an unrelentingly patriotic vision of history - is what passes for civil society in Russia today, and perhaps it's better than nothing.

As one might expect, the youngsters of Nashi are a bit more direct. Their banner shouts, "He's OUR SOLDIER! It's OUR war...and OUR history!"

This banner appears on Nashi's "Estonian State Fascism" page.

Without wanting to risk committing the same offense I just criticized in attempting to draw conclusions from the holiday which coincide with my worldview, I try to always remember the fact that victory was achieved not only by Russia - though Russia suffered more than any of the other Allies - but in a partnership with the West which unfortunately has yet to be repeated.

The anniversary was a couple of weeks ago (though I don't think it was celebrated this year as it was on the 60th anniversary), but there's no reason on Victory Day not to remember the famous meeting of US and Russian soldiers on the Elbe:

[image source]

"Happy 2nd Lt. William Robertson and Lt. Alexander Sylvashko, Russian Army,
shown in front of sign [East Meets West] symbolizing the historic meeting of the
Russian and American Armies, near Torgau, Germany on Elbe Day."
Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration,
Pictures of World War II, image #121.

At the risk of further politicizing history, I think it's worth remembering that the Allies' cooperation did not just consist of fighting the same foe on different fronts. US military aid to the Soviets under the Lend-Lease program ran the gamut from basic supplies (like the plastic Soviet uniform button with a hammer-and-sickle within a star on one side and "U.S.A. 1943" on the other side that I have lying about somewhere) to more advanced equipment.

A website that appears to be affiliated with the Russian Air Force (VVS) has an account of lend-lease here. Here, one Russian has posted restored photos chronicling his father's military service flying American airplanes. Here is some information about the ground vehicles supplied. And here is an article that looks like it might be interesting about how things changed at the end of the war.

An appropriate final word on Victory Day can be provided by Vladimir Vysotsky, whose songs over the decades allowed veterans to remember and provided to those too young to remember with some of the most evocative descriptions of the war available. A large part of Vysotsky's body of work is made up of songs about the war; here is how the bard once tried to explain this (my translation from a concert CD):

"I write a lot of songs about the war, the reason for that--and I even get letters where people ask, 'Hey, are you that same guy I broke out of siege with near Orsh?' But it was impossible for me to make it out of siege, because I was a little kid, but songs about the war are probably--you know, somehow, our generation which had their first childhood impressions of the war, we must be still fighting out the war or something…I don't know why, but in any case I know that quite a few relatively young people write songs about the war, I have a military family, and, well, anyhow, that's why."

Vysotsky was able to convey a sense of the many forms of loss created by the war even though he was born in 1938 and was not old enough to be a participant in hostilities. His skill as an actor at taking on the roles of his song's narrators makes many of his songs on other topics more powerful as well, but it's especially apparent in his songs about WWII. It's hard to say what his most famous songs about the war are since there are so many. In fact, he wrote a whole play in verse about the war, which was the source of several of his better songs on the subject.

Although I don't think anyone would question Vysotsky's patriotism, only a couple of his war songs are unabashed flag-wavers: "We Turn the Earth" probably falls into that category, as does his song about the marines who stormed Evpatoriia. Vysotsky's war is a more personal and complex war than the official version summed up by the red flag waving over the Reichstag; Vysotsky managed to perceive the war from all sides. He has a song written from the perspective of a fighter plane as it is getting shot down; a couple of songs from the perspective of soldiers in penal battalions; and even one from the perspective of the German invaders.

Vysotsky never served in the military, but he played military men in
several roles on the big screen, including an American marine in the
movie "Flight 713 Requests to Land" [image source]

He sang about the loss of couples torn apart by the war; about the loss of one's buddy in battle; and about the collective loss of the country, in his famous song "Common Graves" (Here's a video of him singing it - "There are no tearful widows at the common graves / Tougher people come here. / They don't put crosses on the common graves / but does that really make it any easier?").

Some of his songs - like the one about a commander who made the correct tactical decision to retreat and was still ordered shot for it, but was not shot after all (see the story at the end of the song here) - are loosely based on true stories, and some no doubt on composite impressions he formed from talking to veterans. The songs about the many tragedies of war are some of Vysotsky's most moving, true tear-jerkers without being overly sentimental.

Vysotsky also wrote songs about the underreporting of Soviet casualties, about a hated but well-connected draft-dodger who ended up a Hero of the Soviet Union, and about the high price of glory and heroism. He wrote a song about the war's end (with the prescient final couplet, "А все же на Запад идут и идут эшелоны / А нам показалось, совсем не осталось врагов.") and about a misunderstood veteran drinking with an uncomprehending youngster twenty years after the war.

Vysotsky as a White Army officer in "Two Comrades Were Serving" [image source]

Here is how he described the post-war scene at the train station in Leningrad in his autobiographical "Ballad about Childhood":

[...]А из эвакуации толпой валили штатские.

Осмотрелись они, оклемались,
Похмелились, потом протрезвели.
И отплакали те, кто дождались,
Недождавшиеся отревели.

And here is his song from the perspective of someone who grew up during the Siege of Leningrad:

Я вырос в ленинградскую блокаду,
Но я тогда не пил и не гулял.
Я видел, как горят огнем Бадаевские склады,
В очередях за хлебушком стоял.

Граждане смелые!
А что ж тогда вы делали,
Когда наш город счет не вел смертям?-
Ели хлеб с икоркою,
А я считал махоркою
Окурок с-под платформы черт-те с чем напополам.

От стужи даже птицы не летали,
И вору было нечего украсть,
Родителей моих в ту зиму ангелы прибрали,
А я боялся - только б не упасть.

Было здесь до фига
Голодных и дистрофиков -
Все голодали, даже прокурор.
А вы в эвакуации
Читали информации
И слушали по радио "От Совинформбюро".

Блокада затянулась, даже слишком,
Но наш народ врагов своих разбил,-
И можно жить, как у Христа за пазухой, под мышкой,
Да только вот мешает бригадмил.

Я скажу вам ласково:
- Граждане с повязками!
В душу ко мне лапами не лезь!
Про жизнь вашу личную
И непатриотичную
Знают уже органы и ВЦСПС.