Why do russians celebrate victory day

A flyover of helicopters, bombers and fighter planes completed the show of military might. Victory Day on June 24 this year Russia was forced to postpone the traditional May 9 Victory Day celebrations due to the coronavirus pandemic this year. Last month, Putin rescheduled the parade for just a week ahead of a July 1 public vote on controversial constitutional reforms. He announced the new dates last month for both parade and vote -- initially planned for April -- despite Russia still recording thousands of new coronavirus cases every day.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron had been scheduled, before the pandemic, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Kremlin chief at the parade, in a testament to Russia's growing international influence under Putin.

However, due to the pandemic, the plans were cancelled. Rajnath Singh attends Parade Defence minister Rajnath Singh attended attended the parade at the iconic Red Square and said he was extremely proud that a member Tri-service contingent of the Indian Armed Forces participated in the 75th anniversary of the Victory Day Parade.

Singh arrived in Russia on a three-day visit on Tuesday at the invitation of the Russian ministry of defence to attend the celebrations. The Tri-Service contingent of the Indian Armed Forces comprised 75 all ranks and marched along with contingents of Russian Armed Forces and 17 other countries, according to an official statement.

With agency inputs. Facebook Twitter Linkedin EMail. Many Russians celebrate Victory Day on May 9. Victory Day is a public holiday. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed. Many people attend a local military parade and watch the fireworks at night on Victory Day. Most veterans wear their medals as they head to the parade or an event organized by a local veteran organization.

Another tradition is to give flowers, usually red carnations, to veterans in the street and to lay wreaths at the war memorial sites. Neighborhood schools may host a program prepared by the students, featuring wartime songs and poetry.

At home, families gather around a festive table to honor surviving witnesses of World War II and remember those who passed away. These films are repeated each year but the audience seems to never grow tired of them. Victory Day is a national holiday in Russia. These changes were also part of the quest for new legitimacy.

The most important political festival remained 7 November, however the October Revolution was now too distant and could no longer generate the required degree of loyalty, especially since few figures among the remaining party leaders had played any part in it.

The Great Patriotic War, on the other hand, had affected every Soviet family. Twenty years on, memories were still fresh and former soldiers, many of whom now occupied key positions in society, were happy to see themselves being celebrated by the younger generation. Local forms of commemoration were taken up and homogenized into a nationwide cult of the Great Patriotic War.

Victory Day became a national holiday for the Soviet people. In the process, the cult of the Great Patriotic War was transformed. During the Stalin era, it had stressed the collective heroism of the Soviet people, especially the Russians. Now, however, commemoration began to focus more on the contribution of individual regions, towns or factories.

It was also urbanized. The Soviet Union was rapidly becoming an urban consumer society, a process that was accelerated in the s by the windfall from selling natural resources. Huge blocks of comparatively comfortable flats sprang up in their thousands across the suburbs, which received new war memorials and whose streets were named after war heroes.

Removed from the rural or forested areas where most of the battles had taken place, the new city-dwellers rediscovered the battlefields as tourist attractions. Victory Day became an occasion to thank war veterans for having made possible the peaceful and comfortable life that the younger generation enjoyed. The ninth of May would also become the date for visiting cemeteries and commemorate the dead with the family, thus combining religious, or indeed pagan, rites with the new Soviet traditions.

Victory Day was also now part of the festive calendar. There were also festivals that restored — in a Sovietized framework — elements of religious, popular and ethnic traditions. These included the Russian maslenitsa just before Lent the equivalent of Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras , the Ukrainian vetchornytsi parties for young people during long winter nights , or song festivals in the Baltic countries. The entertainment and carnivalesque atmosphere associated with these days began rubbing off on commemorative festivals such as Victory Day; solemn ceremonies were increasingly accompanied by popular celebrations, with new informal activities such as family photographs in front of war memorials.

In most central European countries, commemorative activities typically moved to 8 May after the collapse of the Soviet empire. EU accession, whether achieved or aspired to, caused many countries to celebrate Europe Day on 9 May. This date was officially introduced in the European Community in to celebrate the signing of the Schuman Declaration in Only Poland continued to observe Victory Day on the 9 th , along with some of the former Yugoslav republics: Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia where it is a day of national commemoration but only counts as a work-free holiday in the Serb part.

In the former Soviet republics, however, 9 May has retained its status as an official holiday. The only exceptions are the Baltic countries. The status of Victory Day nevertheless varies between countries. With new holidays introduced to commemorate dates in national history, Victory Day is not always a first-tier holiday. After the bloody constitutional crisis of October , Russia was politically fractured and the authorities were searching for new sources of national unity.

Labour Day and 7 November day of the October Revolution, renamed Concord and Reconciliation Day in were too closely associated with Communist tradition; and 12 June, commemorating the declaration of sovereignty in , was anathema to those who resented the end of the USSR.

The opening of the huge Victory Park in Moscow and two military parades — one on Red Square and the other in the new park — on 9 May marked the rebirth of Victory Day as a major national holiday. The parades became a fixture of the annual celebrations. This trend was reinforced under Vladimir Putin: 9 May now bolstered a new-found national pride, following a decade that was widely considered to have been a humiliation for Russia.

With the anniversary celebrations, Victory Day acquired even more significance, with a large and varied program of nationwide events. Victory Day, Moscow, Photo by may9. Beyond its consolidating role within Russia, commemoration of once more became a geopolitical tool.

Offices responsible for commemoration were added to several Russian embassies. These are in charge of military cemeteries but also try to steer grassroots commemorative initiatives towards a pro-Moscow stance. Indeed, numerous such initiatives have emerged since the final years of the Soviet Union. They also include historical re-enactors and participants in secular military pilgrimages, who retrace the route taken by an individual military unit by cars or on motorcycles, following routes that often end in Berlin on 9 May.

Paradoxically, it was the removal of the Iron Curtain that made this kind of activity possible. Many Russian-speaking immigrants have also introduced commemorative practices rooted in Soviet traditions into their new countries, in some cases making an impact on local norms.

Victory in Europe Day, Haifa, There is much cross-border collaboration between such grassroots groups, and even between former Soviet republics whose relationship is beset by conflict, such as Ukraine and Russia. In Russia and Belarus, the authorities have made efforts to co-opt such initiatives, for example by incorporating the poiskoviki into state or para-state agencies. This has been successful, but only in part, since the patriotic feelings typical of such groups do not automatically translate into unconditional regime support.

Victory Day in Minsk, In the Baltic states and Germany, participation in 9 May rituals follows its own logic. For a large proportion of the participants, they express an ethnic or political identity distinct from that of the majority. What were once compulsory practices such as commemorative processions are revived and infused with new meaning.

Even though participation typically grows out of a desire for domestic recognition, Russia often presents itself as a patron of these kinds of activities. Victory Day in Riga,