Sunday 10 May 2015

Victory Day


         Victory Day, May 9th, celebrates the end of the Russians’ participation in WWII (or The Great Patriotic War, as they call it), and is one of the biggest holidays of the Russian year. For a while I watch the parade (if such a word can really be applied to anything so grimly serious) on our jumpy little television, listening to the echo of the cannons on TV and outside the window.  
    The weather is so gorgeous it’s hard to reconcile it with the epitome of dismal we were experiencing a mere week or two ago: I am reminded of how I arrived in Moscow exactly a year before and exclaimed over the loveliness of flowers and blue sky and was told grimly that I should have seen it last week. Now I've seen firsthand the almost overnight transformation as the sky (finally) stopped dribbling snow and menace, the trees all burst into leaf in a single 24 hour period, and a veritable army of city gardeners ran about like shoemaker’s elves rolling out carpets of green grass and planting tulips. 
            With such weather it's impossible to stay inside, so I head out to join the crowds of predictably serious, silent and sober Russians, who all wear victory ribbons, are careful to keep off the grass, and bring to mind not at all celebrants on the 4th of July. Instead of experiencing a sense of jubilation I am reminded of V’s quip that “a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having”, and wonder how exactly that applies. A Victory Day without smiling is missing, well, as an outsider I am hesitant to comment on what it might be missing, only that there is a definite sense that something is. 
           I don't catch the tanks on the actual street, only see them here and there from a distance, but I make it in time for the platoon of orange street cleaners gushing their way along in the rear of the parade while the police yell into their megaphones with a desperate urgency for people to clear the way or get wet. The severity of their tone coupled with their harsh-sounding Russian words and the loudness of the megaphone gives the impression that it's not street cleaners that are approaching but at the very least a rogue tank, if not the Germans themselves. 


     
           A smell of gunpowder, burning rubber and cinnamon fills the streets, which will linger well into the night, as I pick my way through wide, central lanes closed to cars and over the fanciful bridges that lead to the gold-tipped Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
          Nearly everyone, men, women and children alike, wear 1940s cloth soldier hats. Small children are often in full uniforms of the same army green cloth, or hold giant balloons shaped like tanks, or shoot toy guns at imaginary Nazis. In one of the most touching aspects of the day people carry placards with pictures of their grandfathers, or red carnations to give to the veterans they see with heart-felt thanks. 
         As the day wears on the drinking and joviality pick up, though the serious edge never fades. As with so much in Russia, Victory Day is a study in contrasts: it’s both a glorification of military might and celebration of peace, both a day of sorrow and remembrance and a hotbed of patriotic fervor.