They could have contributed in any capacity – armed forces fighters and service personnel, partisans, home-front workers, and more.
Russian victory day holiday tv#
In 2012, three journalists from a local TV station in the city of Tomsk in Siberia invited residents to take part in a parade carrying pictures of family members who participated in the war. The Immortal Regiment marches show that – for many Russians– Victory Day still holds enormous personal significance, associated with their family history. In the Putin era – especially after the 2014 occupation of Crimea – Victory Day foregrounds readiness to fight to protect the motherland and the value of self-sacrifice.
Soviet era commemoration focused on the promise of peace and the duty to prevent another war. Significantly, the tone of Victory Day events also gradually shifted over the years. In a country that lost many of its idols and heroic achievements with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, triumph over Nazism remained a source of enormous collective and personal pride.įilling the void left by discarded Soviet holidays, May 9 celebrations expanded and grew more lavish, especially after Vladimir Putin became president. Victory Day was the only major public holiday that made the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Military parades remained reserved for special anniversaries until the USSR’s collapse. Still, many people continued to commemorate the war among family, friends and comrades in arms. Private practices, such as visiting cemeteries or giving flowers to war veterans, were incorporated into official events. May 9 became a day of public celebrations, family outings, concerts and fireworks – all broadcast on national television. In the following years, massive war memorials were erected throughout the Soviet Union. This marked the beginning of the cult of the great patriotic war. That year, the Victory Day parade was held on the Red Square in Moscow for first time since 1945. The day only became an official public holiday in 1965 on the 20th anniversary of Germany’s surrender in Europe. In the first post-war decades, May 9 was a regular working day when families and military units quietly came together to remember and mourn their dead. Across the vast Soviet empire, there was scarcely a household left untouched by the war. The Soviet Union sustained the biggest losses during the second world war, with roughly 27 million soldiers and civilians left dead and many cities levelled to the ground. The most striking change is the cancellation of the “Immortal Regiment” marches, which have been the centrepiece of civic commemorations of Victory Day over the past ten years. In several regions, including Crimea and the Kursk and Belgorod oblasts that border Ukraine, the traditional military parades will not take place at all.
Many of the day’s features - the parades, songs and commemorative practices - date back to the Soviet era.īut this year’s celebrations will be scaled down.
The public and the state come together in a patriotic celebration during which people remember their family members who sacrificed their lives to defeat Nazism. Victory Day, which commemorates the defeat of Nazism in Europe is the most important holiday in Russia. Russians celebrate the end of the “great patriotic war” on May 9 each year.
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