Olga Romanova’s grandmother served as a primary care nurse in World War II. She was small and thin, Ms. Romanova said, but somehow she carried “big, grown, wounded men” to safety. She met her husband in her four years on the Eastern Front.
For Ms. Romanova, the Russian holiday of May 9, which marks the Soviet victory over the Nazis, is about commemorating those grandparents, a day “to extend our love to them, to express in some way what we couldn’t do when we were little.”
But this year, May 9 means something completely different for President Vladimir V. Putin. Monday’s commemoration will be a lavish, government-orchestrated show of Russian might and a claim of rightful dominance over a lost empire — a day to boost public support for the war by defaming Ukraine as Nazi Germany’s successor.
Fighter planes will fly over Moscow in a “Z” formation – symbolizing support for this year’s invasion – and airborne troops who recently fought in Ukraine will parade across Red Square in their armored personnel carriers. In the Baltic naval city of Baltiysk, the local organizers of the march of the “Immortal Regiment” – a solemn procession of people with portraits of their World War II veteran relatives, held across the country on May 9 – join wounded marines from Ukraine. in.
It is a powerful political strategy in a country that celebrates May 9 Victory Day, as the most important secular holiday, one that calls on the shared sacrifice of 27 million Soviets who died in World War II. But for many Russians, Putin’s prolonged politicization is an attack on their identity, distorting one of the few shared experiences that unites nearly all Russian families and is now using it to build support for a 21st-century war of aggression.
“They have turned this unifying myth that Russia had turned into a justification for a real war,” said Maxim Trudolyubov, a Russian journalist who has written on the matter. “It has subtly turned everything upside down — a cult of victory in a cult of war.”
Trudolyubov points to the use of May 9 for the creeping militarization of Russian society. In some places, schoolchildren dress up in World War II military attire, and war films glorify the idea that the battles in Russia were always fair. A popular WWII bumper sticker reads, “We can do it again.” In 2020, the government opened the army-green Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces outside Moscow, with a 1,945 centimeters dome and a floor made of melted down German tanks.
Mr Trudolyubov acknowledges that he and many others have missed how much the Kremlin’s obsession with May 9 prepared Russian society for a real war, rather than just mobilizing support for Putin. Even for many of Putin’s critics in Russia, he thinks, the reverence for Soviet victory provided “an easy way to think we’re on the right side of history.”
“They apparently didn’t just use that, as I thought was the case, as a tactic, as a kind of political campaign mechanism,” Trudolyubov said. “They turned theatrical and imaginary reenactments into a real land offensive, with all the physical tanks and guns and troops.”
Mr Putin is expected to make a major speech at Monday’s major military parade in Red Square, with some analysts and Western officials anticipating that he would officially declare war or call for a mass mobilization of the Russian public. On Sunday, the Kremlin said Mr Putin had sent a congratulatory telegram to the heads of the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine; he stated that the Russians “fought shoulder to shoulder to rid their homeland of Nazi garbage” and vowed that “the victory will be ours, as in 1945.”
The most dramatic example of the divisions sown by Putin’s politicization of World War II is the Immortal Regiment, the May 9 custom of marching with portraits of deceased relatives.
Started in 2012 as a grassroots movement in the Siberian city of Tomsk, the ritual became immensely popular as a way to bring a dying generation back to life. The marches drew millions of people in the former Soviet Union and in cities around the world with large post-Soviet diasporas.
But it was soon co-opted by the Russian government, “which saw a threat in an independent movement,” Sergei V. Lapenkov, one of its founders, said in a telephone interview from Moscow. Mr Putin personally took part in the march several times, trying to channel the memory of those who died in support of his rule.
Last month, Mr. Lapenkov and his co-founders issued a statement distancing themselves from what their movement had become, stating that “we no longer deem it possible to associate ourselves with what is happening in the columns on the street.”
This year, said Mr. Lapenkov, authorities removed a crane’s logo from the banners hung at the head of the parade, saying the bird was seen as too solemn and not “mobilizing” enough. Instead, organizers are encouraging protesters to put the letter “Z” on the portraits of their relatives to show support for the war in Ukraine.
“If we go down this path, it will be very dangerous for my country, for my homeland, because it will lead to conflicts between people,” said Mr. Lapenkov of the idea of using the “Z” or other political symbols in the march. “The aim of the regiment was to unite as many people as possible.”
Mr Lapenkov said he did not plan to join the march on Monday, but that many of those who do are acting only in memory of their relatives, not “supporting any particular political agenda”.
Ms. Romanova, whose grandmother was a nurse, is a coordinator of a march of the Immortal Regiment in the Ivanovo region near Moscow, reiterating the idea that the memory of World War II should not be used to boost support for the current war.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
A token of support. In a high-profile show of solidarity with Ukraine on the eve of an important Russian military holiday, Jill Biden, the first lady, paid an unannounced visit to western Ukraine. Canada’s leader Justin Trudeau also made an unannounced trip to the Kiev suburb of Irpin.
“I think we have to separate these two events because if you lump everything together, nobody will understand anything,” said Ms. Romanova, a psychologist, 44, in a telephone interview. “I go out specifically for the purpose of honoring the memory of my loved ones.”
As she spoke, she passed a billboard on the side of a local military commissariat with posters from World War II and the words: “Everything for the front! Everything to victory! For victory!” A photo of the billboard she later sent showed that some Cyrillic letters had been replaced by Latin “Z” and “V”, another sign of support for the war.
But in the city of Baltiysk, the local coordinator of the march of the Immortal Regiment, Andrei Vedmuk, 59, has embraced the idea that today’s struggle in Ukraine is a continuation of the Great Patriotic War. The Kremlin has pushed that story with the false rhetoric that Russia is fighting “Nazi” oppressors. Mr Vedmuk said he hoped wounded Marines at the local hospital would join the march “if they can”.
“It turns out that the war never ended,” he said in a telephone interview. “Our grandfathers and fathers and everyone else fought so that we too could get rid of this Nazism.”
For some Russians opposed to the war, however, the current campaign in Ukraine is evoking disturbing memories of the more sinister side of the country’s 1945 victory. Ivan I. Kurilla, a historian at the European University in St. Petersburg, said that he had seen renewed attention for such things as the “trophies” – loot – brought home from the front, still present in many Russian homes, and the rape of German women by Red Army soldiers.
“As war became a reality in today’s life, that war also became more present,” Mr Kurilla said in a telephone interview from St. Petersburg. “The very memory of the war is changing.”
mr. Kurilla said a few days ago that he encountered a line of tanks preparing for the May 9 parade on the shore of St. Petersburg, which left him with a haunting feeling: Perhaps these killing machines would soon be heading to the front, too. Before hanging up, he stopped expressing himself the congratulations typical of Russia at this time of year.
“I don’t even know if I should congratulate you on the upcoming vacation in this context,” he said, but didn’t.