VE Day’s role in creating an identity for post-Soviet RussiaWhy does VE Day matter so much in post-Soviet Russia? One obvious reason is that the triumph over Nazi Germany in WWII is the only victory relevant to the entire nation that can act as a unifying force.
Why does VE Day matter so much in post-Soviet Russia? One obvious reason is that the triumph over Nazi Germany in WWII is the only victory relevant to the entire nation that can act as a unifying force.
Of course, there have been many other glorious chapters in Russia’s military history, including victories in the Napoleonic campaign of 1812 and against Polish invaders in the 17th century. But they do not have as much relevance to Russians these days. Although they remain prominent in history books, these events are too distant to have any resonance in living memory. Russians today have no idea what side their ancestors were on in the Time of Troubles, or even of their role in the Napoleonic Wars.
By contrast, there is still a strong personal connection with World War II. There are still veterans alive who can offer their living testimony, and most Russians today do not only know of that war from textbooks, but from their relatives’ first-hand accounts.
Memories of the blood shed on battlefields may serve to unify a nation, but they can also be a divisive factor. One striking example is the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939: modern Spaniards are still largely split along the lines of their parents’ and grandparents’ allegiance.
In today’s Russia, this schism may not be as painful or obvious, but there is little point in denying the existence of the Russian Liberation Army and numerous collaborators who fought for the Nazis. As a rule the children of those who in some way or other worked with these occupying forces see things very differently from those whose ancestors fought in the ranks of the Red Army. This blood divide is also present here, in our country, but admittedly, this rift is not as conspicuous as the Franco vs. Republicans divide in Spain. However, for Russians, this understanding of a blood-link between the present and the past is very important, as important as this perceived social division along blood lines.
There is also another, more profound reason behind the importance attached to VE Day in today’s Russia. The country’s ruling elites are rooted in the Soviet past. It is hardly surprising therefore that, not long after the Beslan tragedy, Vladimir Putin described the Soviet Union’s collapse as “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century,” adding that the USSR had been in part preserved, under a new name: the Russian Federation.
A corpse-filled chasm lies between Imperial and Soviet Russia: hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives were lost to the Civil War and the ensuing Red Terror. An entirely new breed of people then came to power.
But no such change followed the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991: there was no chasm, no mountains of corpses and no change in the political elites. Not only did the same Communist ruling system remained unchanged, in many cases individual officials even stayed in office. This modern Russia, as Vladimir Putin correctly noted, is a continuation of the USSR, only with the action now unfolding in a new economic, political and geopolitical setting. The USSR and today’s Russia are one and the same country.
Until the Perestroika took hold, Soviet ruling elites viewed the Russian 1917 Revolution as the heroic moment in which their nation was formed, with November 7 being the main public holiday in honor of this fact. To them, the revolution was sacred and untouchable. People were free to criticize Stalin, Khrushchev, the purges, but anyone who dared raise their voice against the revolution found themselves immediately excluded from Soviet society. One striking example of this is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He called the Bolshevik revolution a mistake and in doing so immediately made an enemy of the ruling Soviet elite.
These days, the Bolshevik revolution is no longer a sacred national myth, but a fact of history open to appraisal and re-evaluation. Today, for Russia’s ruling elites, WWII has replaced it as the major shrine of the nation’s recent history. Thus, post-Soviet Russia draws its national inspiration from the Soviet era. Consequently, for most of us, this military victory is just as sacred as the October 1917 revolution was for previous generations.
Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin is no longer seen as a national hero and owes his continued entombment in the Mausoleum to inertia alone. His successor Josef Stalin, by contrast, is accorded a certain degree of respect by the young, who largely associate him with the victorious war rather than with political persecution, famine and gulags. That is why the modern Russian state looks to the war of 1941-1945, and specifically victory of May 9, 1945, rather than the Bolshevik revolution or its Imperial predecessor for this national inspiration. It is also why the Great Patriotic War carries such importance both for the state, and as an event with which we are directly linked through our forefathers’ memory and the blood they shed.
Regrettably but unavoidably, in this second reason, we find ourselves drawn to an historical event which is, to say the least, controversial. The victory was, undoubtedly, a great national achievement, but the war itself and the actions of the USSR’s leadership combine to form one of the Communist regime’s greatest crimes.
For the Soviet Union the war started in 1941, largely because of the incorrect course Stalin followed in the years 1939-40 and the Soviet army was immediately forced into retreat because Stalin had virtually exterminated the Red Army’s entire military elite in those years. Only after the Battle of Moscow did the formation of a new army begin in earnest, replacing the many officers and men killed or taken prisoner in the first six months of war. And the Comintern ideology of the early Soviet era then gave way to a new kind of patriotic consciousness and a return to the word “Russia.” Suffice it to recall the words of the poet Konstantin Simonov, who wrote “I was still proud of this dearest of lands, of the Russia where I was born.”
In 1945, however, the country was again in the grips of totalitarianism, mass political persecution, poverty and hunger. It was often said that VE Day was a day of “laughter through tears” but these tears were not only for the millions dead, but also because none of those wartime hopes – for freedom from the camps and forced labor, for the dissolution of the kolkhoz (collective farm) system, for freedom to worship – were realized.
That is why although today May 9, 1945 is seen as an objective starting point for contemporary statehood, as an historian I believe that the sooner we find something else, something less controversial to base our sense of nationhood on, the more coherent the Russian state will become.
The date of the putsch, August 21 1991, is indeed significant, but that fact alone is not enough. It could make a good replacement if only Russia had developed differently after 1991. Unlike Eastern Europe, where the fall of the Berlin Wall and all the ensuing events are celebrated as the long-awaited liberation from Communist rule, Russia sees the upheavals of the 1990’s not as the time they were freed from totalitarianism, but as signalling the demise of their great empire, once feared and revered by the outside world, and in which, the story went, even ordinary folk lived well. That is why, in the context of contemporary Russia, the date August 21 cannot suffice. The events of 1991, much like the war of 1941-45 and the 1917 revolution must be viewed in the broader context of Russian history in its entirety. Only then will we be able to comprehend their true scale, and their true significance.
In this sense, the choice of November 4 for a new national holiday – Unity Day – was a wise one: it marks the Russian state’s resurgence in the early 17th century, and as such seems more suited to this role than the available alternatives. That mountain of corpses dating from the 1920’s onwards means we are unable to perceive our pre-revolutionary history as “ours.” It is as if it were another people’s history, perhaps as Ancient Rome must seem to modern-day Italians: related, but alien. This is the tragedy it is so vital we overcome.
At some point in the future a new national holiday will emerge, replacing May 9: one which is as yet shrouded in obscurity. In finding and embracing it we will come to see ourselves as a nation whose historical heritage spans centuries rather than, as Dmitry Medvedev said, as a country that has only existed for a couple of decades. We will become a nation that draws its identity from the original, millennia-old Russia, rather than merely being the largest surviving fragment of the now defunct Soviet Union. The WWII victory and other tragic events of the 20th century will then take their true place in our collective history.
