Before the great military parade of May 9 in the Red Square in Moscow, especially the young Russians celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. The imagination of their parents and state organizers does not seem to have limits.
In a maternity clinic in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, newborns are disguised as infantry soldiers. According to the clinic address, the “moving” costume, with a campaign cap and a green olive sleeping bag, symbolizes the “connection between generations.”
“Remember that even the smallest citizen of Russia is part of the great story,” he says. At the same time, hundreds of nursery children parade through a neighborhood in the city of Voronezh, in the center of Russia, with homemade military vehicles and aircraft.
Identity ideology
In Vladivostok, in the Far East, more than a thousand and a half thousand primary school parade through the city center as “great -grandchildren of victory.” Governor Oleg Kozhemyako personally directs the “first children’s parade in the region”, and announces that the columns of children are headed by combatants in the war in Ukraine: “Today children whose parents fight in the front. We are proud of the courage and the courage of our fighters and we know with certainty that the enemy will be defeated, as in the distant 1945.”
For eighty years, on May 9 it is held authentically and intimately in Russian families. However, Victory day has been used more and more by the State as an ideology of identity creation, says Russian Alex Yusupov, a political scientist at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in an interview with DW.
In the last two decades, Kremlin has learned to “militarize this day, or rather to activate it, because it has been recorded in the collective memory of many Russians as something that has really joined the country. It has become an instrument of mobilization for the regime,” adds the expert.
“Celebration with tears in the eyes”
The Kremlin uses mostly symbolic anniversaries, such as the 80 -year -old war, to establish historical parallels between the Soviet Union, as the winner of World War II, and the current Russia and the Russian government, says Yusupov. Thus the State intends to demonstrate its strength and legitimacy, he explains.
Likewise, the political scientist Moscow Ilya Grashenkov, of the Center for the Development of Regional Policy, underlines the importance of Victory Day for Moscow: “In the last twenty years, the State has done everything possible to be part of this celebration. For Putin, the victory in World War II is a constant on which the entire Russian state is based and of which he himself is part of himself as president.”
Speaking to DW, Grashenkov adds that, for millions of footnotes, on May 9 “it is still a celebration with tears in the eyes,” and remember that, for years, after the war, the celebration was a day of mourning without a military parade.
For the independent political expert Abbas Garyamov, who lives in Israel, the parade is “superfluous” in times of war with Ukraine. “The parade is a substitute for war. It is necessary in peacetime, when the army is not fighting, but wants to demonstrate its power,” he tells DW. However, since the Russian army has not yet achieved its main war objectives in three years, Moscow’s parade is “problematic,” he says.
International parade
For the president, Vladimir Putin, it is important that the celebration “has the greatest possible international character,” believes Ilya Grashenkov.
And it is that foreign guests will come above all to celebrate the historic victory of 1945: “The message of Victory Day is that Russia has paid a very high price for peace in Europe.” “Putin will undoubtedly project the 1945 victory over the current fighting in Ukraine. But it will not emphasize it much,” says the independent expert.
(vt/ms)
