The origins of "Victory"

In recent years, the popular celebration of Victory Day has received a new quality. A certain number of people (including the author of these lines) expect this main celebration of the country with an obvious sense of awkwardness. Well, tell me, to relate to the fact that gymnasters and caps for two to three-year-old children joyfully sell in stores, strollers, stylized for T-34 tanks, roll around the city? How to relate to the fact that in kindergartens throughout the country, obviously by someone’s team, they conduct "parades of children's troops"? What, tell me, to do if some cunning guys in the Great Luki invite you to participate in the "tasting" (they write, in "tasting") of a block portion of bread? And how to understand the Rostov police officers, who, having intended to “plunge into episodes from the life of Soviet soldiers and feel the atmosphere of the war years”, put on the form of the NKVD? There is no need to talk about countless stickers “on Berlin” on expensive German cars - in the growing stream of vulgarity, all this looks quite ordinary. Only photographs of the Taliban (representatives of the organization declared in Russia terrorist), who came to the reception at the Russian embassy in Afghanistan with St. George ribbons ...

Literally before our eyes, the truly folk movement “Immortal Regiment” was strikingly reborn, after it was privatized by the authorities. The action, originally conceived as a means of unity of people who remember their fought grandfathers and great -grandfathers, honor their feat, turns into a standard “May Day” demonstration. With the inevitable order, sent to the enterprise housing and communal services, with the obligatory indication of how the participants should be dressed, where they should stand and whose portraits they should carry. The bosses compete who will put the people more on the event. Only in such a situation, one organization can steal pre -prepared portraits of another organization, as it seems to have happened in Sevastopol. This can be learned only if you understand: the participants are completely purple, whose portraits they carry. And what is the important innovation of the Victory Parade: for the first time the Cadet Corps of the Investigative Committee will be calculated on the Kremlin paving stones. I won’t be surprised if in the near future the “front box” of investigators sets on a red square, and followed by a column of the FSB operas. The true owners of the country want to legitimize their status through participation in the Victory Parade.

All this "victory" has, in my opinion, several reasons. First of all, the farther the war is from us, the less it evokes woeful feelings associated with the death and suffering of loved ones. In the end, the retirement age was already reached by those who, like me, could, as they say, from the original source to hear what it was, that war. From his grandfather, about how wounded in Stalingrad, he was lying in the snow and wondered if the orderlies will have time or not. From my grandmother, about how the German bombed Moscow about how a quiet neighbor was rejoiced until recently, seeing the glow of fires. From a colleague and teacher who fought in the Marine Corps, who only once abandoned: "There is nothing worse than war."

Today, the words that belong to the hero Igor Yasulovich in the remarkable old film “There is no way back is gone” are coming true. When asked what the descendants about the war will think, he replies: they only remember the first hundred years, and then this war will become history. Those for whom the war was pain, blood, and tragedy will leave. Here was the Patriotic War of 1812. What do we know about her? Hussars, menths - beautiful ...

This explains a kind of moral indifference of Russians. The story about the tragedies, about torment annoys the audience, which wants to be spectacular and beautiful. For three quarters of a century, many piercing, honest films about the war were shot: “Cranes fly”, “Go and look”, “Living and the dead”, “Ivanovo childhood”, “Road test”. But instead of them, Standartenführer Stirlitz and Hauptsturmführer Weiss, endless saboteurs who ten in one fell swoop, in the company with brave soreases climb from each TV. And also endless computer games “Tanchiks”, which for some reason call feature films. That is, an attempt to artistic awareness of the great tragedy was quite deftly replaced by entertainment, inventions.

But at the same time, victory, in its lightweight version, becomes the most important event of history, the most important point of self -identification of the people of Russia. In the present, there is nothing to be proud of, the authorities offers to be proud of the exploits of grandfathers. All these inscriptions “on Berlin” on buses that travel to Mitino indicate attempts to calm the inferiority complex.

This state of minds was created by two decades of targeted propaganda. Putin propagandists deftly privatized the victory. Countless enemies, surrounding Russia, wanting to humiliate it, encroach on "our everything." Not to win, of course, but to the official interpretation of the war. According to which, as if there were no horror of fighting under the Rzhev and Kharkov environment, there were no mediocre decisions and losses of such monstrous that their consequences are reflected on the demographic situation and now, three quarters of a century later ... And there were only endless victories under the wise leadership of Comrade. Stalin I.V., whose portraits someone is going to carry to the “Immortal Regiment” shares. Any other view of the war, in addition to the Susal, is considered as a distortion of history and rehabilitation of Nazism. For five years now, the domestic TV without stopping broadcasts about the Ukrainian “fascists” and “Bandera”, trying to present secret operations in the Donbass as a kind of continuation of the Great War. The bosses do everything possible to look in the eyes of the inhabitants of Russia by the heirs of the great commanders.

The main thing is that no one needs those in respectful love for whom the bosses swear non -stop. Only 80 thousand veterans are left in the country. Two years ago there were one and a half million of them. Alas, time is inexorable. It would seem, if you take all these campaigns seriously that no one is forgotten, the life of 90-year-old heroes should turn into paradise. But no. The authorities promised that by 2010 all participants in the war will be provided with normal housing. 9 years have passed! And Vice Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova joyfully reports: only 161 veteran needs a separate apartment. And two years earlier, the Minister of Construction Mikhail Men reported: 270 people remained to provide.

So why was it not enough for two years to do what was supposed to be done nine years ago? Golikova, as they say, reports on a blue eye: in the current line - those who got into it only last year. Why were they not taken into account before? It turns out - attention! - The housing of these veterans, which was repaired for several years, was finally recognized as unsuitable for living.

What, this could not be seen immediately, without a long -term repair? It was just a pity to give apartments, it is better to arrange an endless repair, and there a veteran, you look, and will stop pestering with requests. The whole story with an endless burst shows: officials simply do not want to bother and wait for these old people to finally leave. In order to fearlessly and unpunibacy to arrange more and more pompous celebrations, conduct endless parades and salutes, finally turn victory into military-patriotic performance ...


1. Russia. Moscow region. 04/17/2019. The cadets at the Alabino training ground during the joint preparation of hiking and a mechanized column to participate in the Victory Parade on May 9 on Red Square. Valery Sharifulin/TASS
2 Nikolas Joao Kokovlis/ Zuma/ Tass