Victory Day: We remember but not going to grieve or reconcile
Enlightened intellectuals are often skeptical of honor guards, “Immortal regiments” and laying flowers on May 9th. What's the point? Let bygones be bygones...
With the annual progressive growth of anti-Soviet rhetoric, the issue of the need to celebrate May 9 is increasingly being raised. Enlightened intellectuals are often skeptical of honor guards, "Immortal regiments" and the laying of flowers. What is this fetish all about? Why do you have to go on the Victory Day to the monument of the Unknown Soldier and roll war movies on TV all day? Do you need all this at all?
The Old Testament, undeservedly neglected by the Orthodox, contains many instructive and hitherto relevant stories for all occasions. The episode that interests us in this particular case can be found in the book of Joshua the Son of Nun.
The forty-year desert crossing was completed, and the Jews began to conquer the Promised Land. When approaching Jericho, all the people of Israel had to cross the Jordan. At the command of the Lord, the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant entered the water and stopped in the middle of the stream. The river flow stopped, and the Jews crossed the Jordan on a dry bottom. When the transition was completed, Joshua commanded the representatives of each of the tribes of Israel to take a large stone from the bottom and make a memorial of them. In the edification of the descendants: “so that it may be an [always lying] sign when your sons ask you, ‘what do you have these stones for?’, you would answer that ‘the water of the Jordan was divided;’"; thus, these stones will be [among you] a monument for the sons of Israel forever. ”(Josh. 4: 1-7)
Monument, memorial are one-root words with the word "remember".
Here the saying “Out of sight, out of mind” fits best of all. Monument, memorial are one-root words with the word "remember". All these holidays and special dates exist in order to remind you of some important events. To stop at least once a year and think deeply about the past and its lessons.
A person, ideally, never stops in his development, and can be different a year later: he knows and understands more. Therefore, an already well-known phenomenon can be discovered every time from a new perspective, because with the expansion of our personal outlook, we are able to appreciate an increasing number of facets and nuances.
Why is it so important to honor the Victory Day? Since we're talking about it.
Of course, one can use this day as a reason for the next picnic. Most people view holidays in this way. For them there is no difference between Easter, Constitution Day and Woman’s Day. This is just an opportunity to have rest, eat and drink. Of course, it is customary to celebrate any holiday with a feast, but food ought to be given not only to the body but also to the mind.
Why is it so important to honor the Victory Day? Since we're talking about it.
Someone will say that all countries used to fight with someone so why make a kind of cult out of it given that so many years have passed.
All fought but not all won. Moreover, the war had no analogues in history: cruel and terrible, with huge toll among the civilian population. In addition, it was our grandfathers and great-grandfathers who could defeat fascism, while withstanding a logistically much stronger army.
Special mention here deserves almost the identification of figures of Hitler and Stalin. Of course, Joseph Stalin was far from being virtuous and holy, but to boil down the victory in the Second World War to the triumph of one tyrant over another is still not entirely correct. Stalin was a despot, mercilessly destroying his political opponents; Hitler was the father of the ideology, according to which there were groups of people just unworthy of life.
Ethnic cleansing is when you are killed regardless of age or gender simply because someone has decided that you do not correspond to someone else's idea of the right person and therefore, you have no right to live.
In some periods of the existence of the Soviet Union, they also massively killed people but, for example, Orthodox priests were repressed and executed because they were perceived by the Bolshevik government as a threat to the still weak and emerging state. The clergy in Russia really supported the monarchical system and, to put it mildly, did not welcome Bolshevik innovations. However, even with all the documented atrocities, only the priests alone were persecuted. Their children, wives and parents, as a rule, remained intact. Sure, they were objects of public censure and so on, but they were not massively killed for that.
Ethnic cleansing is still something else. This is when, regardless of age and sex, you are killed simply for the fact that someone has decided that you do not correspond to someone else's idea of the right person and therefore, have no right to live. While the Soviet government was looking for at least a formal reason for the arrest, then for the fascists it was just enough that, in their opinion, you were “untermensch”. The Soviets exploited prisoners in the camps, while the fascist scientists conducted experiments on living people (by the way, it was because of this fact that the German pharmaceutical industry took a step forward). NKVD staff de-kulakized rich peasants, while the German masters made various crafts out of the living people. The list of examples can be continued.
Hitler's ideology conceptually determines who is worthy to live and who is not. This is a claim to the place of God in this world.
By the way, it’s not a secret to anybody for a long time that Hitler and his inner circle were seriously engaged in occultism. For this end, a special organization, “Anenerbe,” was created, which, among other things, tried to restore the pagan beliefs of the German and Scandinavian peoples. Even the notorious SS abbreviation was styled as a runic letter. So, the ideas of neo-paganism are not that new.
Some of those who have poor knowledge of history wonder why so many victims were needed, whether it was worth defending Leningrad at such a high cost and whether we’d better have surrendered quietly to drink Bavarian beer and drive along smooth autobahns in high-quality German cars now. Well, we would speak in another language, so what? These ideas are voiced seriously and more and more frequently.
Those of us who would be lucky to be born would, at best, make a perfectly smooth road surface or serve this very beer.
What is there to answer? By the number of victims. The fascists had no intention of leaving too many people alive – the concentration camps are proof of that. Redundant people were destroyed there on an industrial scale. Therefore, the prospect of driving and drinking beer is rather questionable. Those of us who would be lucky to be born would, at best, make a perfectly smooth road surface or serve this very beer.
Secondly, the further our generation is, the more difficult it is for it to embrace such a notion as “self-sacrifice” in the mind. We did not know the real famine and did not encounter large cataclysms. We are extremely dependent on comfort. In general, people have been losing spiritual depth. Sometimes it seems that a modern individual for having access to wi-fi will easily do what people couldn’t have done a couple of generations back under the most cruel torture.
Nevertheless, what kind of self-sacrifice can we talk about when the elderly and women in the last months of pregnancy in the transport are pathologically not let to have a seat? And they may be even pushed aside by men who flop themselves on a vacant seat. Where is "to lay down your life for your friends"? (John 15:13) Christianity is increasingly departing our mentality and everyday life.
May 9 for good reason is like a thread with a needle, which always goes together with the Bright Holiday of Easter. Victory Day is about returning from death to life and about gratitude to the Lord and those who made it possible.
No matter what anyone said, it was the Great Victory of the great nation over the great and terrible adversary. The events of May 1945 and the previous war years are far from mediocre, so Victory Day is not just a memorable date. Hence, to boil it down to grief is simply blasphemous. What’s the point grieving? About the fact that thanks to our ancestors, an army with literally infernal ideology was defeated in our land?
May 9 for good reason is like a thread with a needle, which always goes together with the Bright Holiday of Easter. Victory Day is about returning from death to life and about gratitude to the Lord and those who made it possible.
Eternal memory to all the victims. All those who have sacrificed their lives so that we can now live on our land and speak our own language. People did not go to fight for Stalin. They simply saw with their own eyes what kind of future was prepared for them and their descendants (whose birth had already been called into question) in the event of a loss.
Many of our contemporaries, under the cries of national identity, are ready to exchange this identity at whim for a more comfortable life abroad and for the absence of potholes on the roads.
We should grieve over this fact, but we can only rejoice about the Great Victory!
