May 9: The day of mourning that Putin has turned into his holiday

MoscowMoscow, on May 9th, is a city of major celebration. The streets are decorated with banners commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II, shop windows are filled with red stars and Sant Jordi ribbons—a controversial black and orange ribbon honoring military valor—concerts are held, fireworks are set, and citizens are on fire, and citizens are strolling through the parks.

Nothing suggests that, until recently, this was a day of mourning to remember the more than 26 million dead in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, a day of conspiracy to avoid repeating the mistakes of history. One only has to scratch a little among all the pomp, all the aestheticization, and all the commercialism—photos of veterans are printed on paper cups in cafes or cakes shaped like tanks are sold—to see that Victory Day has become the basis for justify the invasion of Ukraine.

When Putin came to power in 2000, New Year's Eve was the biggest holiday for Russians. 81% of Russians considered it one of their most important celebrations, while only 34% mentioned Victory Day. 25 years later, the tables have turned: May 9th is the most followed holiday by 75% of Russians, ahead of New Year's Eve, at 59%.

A founding myth of Putin's Russia

As historian Konstantin Pahaliuk explains in the ARA, it was from 2005, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the victory, that Putin began to transform this milestone into "a founding myth of modern Russia." The objective was to extol the "heroism" of the fallen and present Russia as "the victim of history, constantly attacked by Western countries ready to commit genocide against the Soviet people," and, at the same time, as "the liberator of Europe from Nazism."

Sociologist Viktor Vakhxtain places the "apotheosis" of this transformation ten years later, in 2015, after Russia's annexation of Crimea. This was the moment when comparisons between the Ukrainian government and the Nazis flourished, and propaganda began to draw historical parallels. The Kremlin believes that the strength of the Soviet victory over Hitler can be used to convince the population that it is necessary to continue defending that triumph, now against new enemies.

When the Russian army invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the symbolic ground was more than fertile. "For the entire previous decade, Putin had been spiritually preparing us for a new war through a greater sacralization of the memory of the Great Patriotic War and the cult of victory over Nazism, but at the time we weren't aware of it," a Russian historian who preferred not to be named told ARA.

Analyst Aleksandr Baunov sums it up thus: "Victory is no longer perceived as the end of the war, the first day of an eternal and final peace, and is increasingly experienced as a day of celebration of some future victory, a kind of future in the past." In this sense, Pahaliuk believes that the Russian government has recovered a kind of "type" repetition of the biblical story.

This exaggerated and manipulative devotion to victory even has a name, poverty, from Russian power (victory) and kiss (demon). For historians, it's an anomaly that we've stopped honoring the victims of 80 years ago and instead used their legacy to "incite new victims." And that May 9th no longer symbolizes a "great victory" but rather a "military aggression." From "Never again" we've moved on to "We'll do it again."

Recovering family tragedies

Although many Russians experience it this way, whether due to the effectiveness of propaganda or because there are fewer and fewer survivors of the Great Patriotic War, a large majority of citizens deeply suffer from the perversion of that day. Irina Yervakova, co-founder of the historical memory organization International Memorial, writes: "It hurts me how the government blackmails people who genuinely have family memories of these tragedies."

The Kremlin has distorted and diluted one of the most iconic images of May 9: the marches of the so-called Immortal Regiments. These spontaneous demonstrations, in which the descendants of World War II victims carry portraits of their ancestors, were first institutionalized and, in cities like Moscow, eventually banned in 2023, citing security reasons. The unspoken fear was that they would serve to criticize the war in Ukraine.

"To what extent will families be able to recover what was taken from them as a result of the monopolization of state memory policy?" asks sociologist Vakhxtain, who, however, is optimistic and hopes that this date will once again be a "family holiday." Xervakova is more skeptical: "It will be difficult to return to the tragedy of the village after what happened today. It will be a painful process. I don't know how it will go, but it is necessary."