MOSCOW — Russia is wrapping itself in a patriotic spectacle for Victory Day, a celebration of its defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II that President Vladimir Putin has made a pillar of his nearly quarter-century in power and a justification of your entry into Ukraine.
Although few veterans of what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War are still alive 79 years after Berlin fell to the Red Army, the victory over Nazi Germany remains the most important and widely revered symbol of the country’s exploits and an element key to national identity.
Thursday’s festivities across Russia, led by Putin, who this week began his fifth term, remember that wartime sacrifice on what has become its most important secular holiday.
The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people in the war, an estimate many historians consider conservative and one that left scars on virtually every family.
Nazi troops overran much of the western Soviet Union when they invaded in June 1941, before being driven back to Berlin, where the hammer and sickle flag of the USSR was raised over the ruined capital. The United States, United Kingdom, France and other allies mark the end of the war in Europe on May 8.
The immense suffering and sacrifice in cities like Stalingrad, Kursk, and Putin’s native Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) still serve as a powerful symbol of the country’s ability to prevail against seemingly overwhelming challenges.
Since coming to power on the last day of 1999, Putin has made May 9 an important part of his political agenda, with displays of military might. Columns of tanks and missiles cross Red Square and squadrons of fighter jets roar overhead as medal-covered veterans join him in reviewing the parade. Many wear the black and orange St. George ribbon that is traditionally associated with Victory Day.
Putin, 71, frequently talks about his family history and shares memories of his father, who fought on the front lines during the Nazi siege of the city and was seriously wounded.
According to Putin, his father, also named Vladimir, returned home from a military hospital during the war and saw workers trying to take away his wife, Maria, who had been declared dead of starvation. But Putin’s father did not believe she had died, saying she had only passed out, weak from hunger. His first child, Viktor, died during the siege when he was 3 years old, one of more than 1 million Leningrad residents who died in the 872-day blockade, most of them from starvation.
For several years, Putin carried a photograph of his father in Victory Day marches (as well as others honoring relatives who were war veterans) in what was called the “Immortal Regiment.”
Those demonstrations were suspended during the coronavirus pandemic and then again amid security concerns after the start of fighting in Ukraine.
As part of its efforts to burnish the Soviet legacy and trample any attempts to challenge it, Russia has introduced laws criminalizing the “rehabilitation of Nazism,” including punishing the “desecration” of memorials or challenging the Kremlin’s versions of Nazi history. the Second World War.
When he sent troops to Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin evoked World War II to try to justify his actions, which kyiv and its Western allies denounced as an unprovoked war of aggression. Putin cited the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of Moscow’s main goals, falsely describing the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust, as neo-Nazis.
Putin attempted to present Ukraine’s veneration of some of its nationalist leaders who cooperated with the Nazis in World War II as a sign of kyiv’s alleged Nazi sympathies. He regularly made unfounded references to Ukrainian nationalist figures such as Stepan Bandera, murdered by a Soviet spy in Munich in 1959, as an underlying justification for Russian military action in Ukraine.
Many observers see Putin’s focus on World War II as part of his efforts to revive the influence and prestige of the USSR and its dependence on Soviet practices.
“It is the continued self-identification with the USSR as the victor of Nazism and the lack of any other strong legitimacy that forced the Kremlin to declare ‘denazification’ as the goal of the war,” Nikolay Epplee said in a commentary for Carnegie Russia Eurasia. Center.
Russian leaders, he said, have “locked themselves into a worldview limited by the Soviet past.”