Back in the USSR Victory Day was a big show, and it seems that Putin's the regime makes an even bigger spectacle out of it. But Russians also fondly remember the day of the great victory over Nazism.
Babies in uniforms, toddlers in cardboard tanks, elementary school students in uniforms. Even before the big one military parades on Red Square The 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany is being celebrated in a number of Russian cities, and it seems that there are no limits to the imagination of parents, nor to state kitsch.
Thus, in Kemerovo, Siberia, the newborns in the hospital there were given military caps and wrapped in gray-olive blankets: "Join us!", the administration is calling over the network. Those "touching" clothes are supposed to show the "connectedness of the generations." "Remember that even the smallest citizens of Russia are part of great history," he reports Deutsche says.
In Voronezh, hundreds of children from kindergartens also organized a "military" parade in vehicles and airplanes made of cardboard, all accompanied by children with the sound of drums. It is by no means the only city with such a manifestation: in Vladivostok, over a thousand elementary school students held the first "children's military parade" of the area, where the "great-grandchildren of victory" perform.
And then just like today…
That parade was also attended by the governor of that area, Oleg Koshemjako, who used the opportunity to connect Victory Day with the war that Russia is waging today: "Today, children whose fathers are fighting at the front are marching. We are rightfully proud of the courage and bravery of our fighters and we know for sure that the enemy will be defeated, just like in the distant year 1945."
Indeed, May 9 has been celebrated as Victory Day in Russia for eighty years, but it was not celebrated as it is today: Ilya Grashenkov from the Center for the Development of Regional Policy recalls that even today for many Russians, that day is "a celebration with tears in their eyes" because that victory was also paid with a huge price. Over 25 million citizens of the Soviet Union lost their lives in the Second World War, but in the first years after the war, even Stalin did not dare to make too much of a show of it.
There were still too many who knew and how many of their comrades died on the battlefield completely senselessly, charging at machine guns sometimes even with empty guns, "politically suspect" were sent to the minefields to clear the way.
Moscow's demonstration of power
However, over time, that day became important for the Kremlin to show its own military strength, says Alex Yusupov from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and in Putin's era it even intensified: "The Russian state has done everything in the past twenty years to become a solid part of this celebration. For Putin, the victory in World War II is a constant on which the entire Russian statehood is based, and of course him as the president who embodies that statehood."
For political scientist Abbas Galyamov, any kind of military parade during the time of war in Ukraine hardly makes sense anyway: "A military parade is a substitute for war. Maybe it is needed in times of peace when the army is not at war, but wants to show off." But the Russian army has been deeply involved in the "special military operation" for three years now, and it is quite obvious that it has not achieved its military goals even in Ukraine. To that extent, the parade in Moscow looks "frivolous": "Until 2022, everyone thought that Russia was incomparably stronger than Ukraine. Suddenly it turned out that this was not true. There is no question of any great military skill."
Grashenkov is sure that children in military uniforms will be brought to Moscow this Friday, but they will not be the most important for Putin. Because the most important thing for this Russian president is that the ceremony turns out to be "as international as possible". International guests will definitely come out of respect for the victims in the USSR and their contribution to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. Putin will also connect the victory in 1945 with the current invasion of Ukraine at that ceremony, but Grashenkov does not think he will insist too much on that comparison.
Propaganda cannot change history
For Galyamov, that parade is a "universal instrument" for both foreign countries and Russian society: "State propaganda will emphasize how the glorious tradition of the victory heroes of 1945 continues. But it will hardly impress Russian society," the political scientist thinks. The comparison between then and now is too forced, and too much of the comparison between World War II and the war in Ukraine does not sit well with today's Kremlin. Today's war could rather be compared to Stalin's attack on Finland in 1939, which ended with certain conquered areas, but in fact the Red Army was defeated to the knees by a small Scandinavian state and only with large reinforcements was Finland forced to make concessions. The end of that war - March 13, 1940. The Kremlin would prefer to completely erase from memory.
It's no different in Ukraine, Galyamov thinks: "In the last three years, the Russians have not even gained complete control in the areas they own, let alone conquered Kiev." Despite this, Galyamov is sure that the Moscow state summit on May 9, 2025 will be full of victorious enthusiasm. And Yusupov is sure: "We will see numerous performances. We will hear many statements. We will experience many special television shows." And the Kremlin will do everything it can to show that Russia is as powerful a power today as it was eighty years ago.
