Today is День Победы (Den’ Pobedy), a.k.a. Victory Day.
On May 9, 1945, Germany capitulated to the Soviet Union, ending World War II (different date from the general capitulation day to all the Allies, which was May 7th).
While in Canada the only people who’d know the official date of the end of WWII would probably be European history students (and then, only those that have taken WWII or Europe in 20th century courses and actually bothered to study), in Russia this day is a national holiday (as it is in several other ex-USSR countries). Although ‘holiday’ suggests a day of celebration, Den Pobedy is also a day of commemoration. The Great Patriotic War cost the Soviet Union approximately 25 million people – about 10 million soldiers and 15 million civillians. Approximately, because official numbers are still, and always will be, disputed, and fluctuate by several million depending on which sources are consulted. Regardless, whether 23 million or 26 million, the war more than decimated the nations – almost 14 per cent of the entire population of the Soviet Union in 1939 didn’t live to see 1946.
All this history seems comfortably removed, but really, it was just a couple generations away. My grandfather remembers the German army marching into his village in the Ukraine, and then occupying it for months. He was about seven at the time. When I was studying German in university I didn’t tell him at first, because he still has a hard time disassociating the language from the war. My grandmother grew up in an orphanage because she lost both parents in the war. My great-grandfather was a senior war plane mechanic at a military base. My great-grandmother remembers walking through Moscow in November 1941, when the German troops were just kilometers away, and the streets were deserted, people bearing down in anticipation of the defense of the capital.
Anyway, every Den Pobedy my parents would dress me up all nice, and then we would buy a few bunches of daffodils or carnations and take the Metro down to the Red Square, where all the veterans who could still get around gathered that day, medals pinned on their uniforms. And then we would walk around, and I would take a flower at a time and give it to a veteran, and just basically say thanks. You know, thanks for fighting for us, for going through that. And then we’d leave a bunch of flowers at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier. I remember my dad telling me that maybe it was one of his grandparents buried there, and for a while I was secretly convinced that it was. I guess that’s the point of that monument – to represent those that didn’t come back and those who weren’t brought back and whose graves are all over the world, marked or unmarked.
War sucks. A lot. For everyone. Whether you’re a winner or a loser, you will have bodies to count at the end. WWII cost the lives of 60 million people. That’s equivalent to all of England, or two Venezuelas, or three Australias. I don’t think someone has to be a pacifist, necessarily, to realize that war is inherently a shitty kind of thing. Without getting into the moralistic debate of pacifism vs. just war vs. other views, I think it can be safely stated that war is an ugly, terrible situation.
Okay, kind of a super depressing blog entry. I meant it to be all cheery “little kids give flowers to smiling veterans! la la la!” entry, but instead it turned into a WWII-fueled lament about war. I don’t think I am capable of short entries – mine inevitably unravel into spiels and long-winded stories. Ah well.
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