In the US, the more militarily minded of families tends to observe in some capacity V-E Day, or Victory In Europe Day, or the equivalent from the Pacific campaign of World War II. But I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling the scale of the celebrations here of Victory Day, which marks the same occasion. You might have seen a few pictures or video clips on this on American television or news websites, but seeing it here from within the former USSR has been a very different experience.
Part of the reason for this may be that this is the 70th anniversary, which might command a larger celebration than otherwise, but part is simply because to the countries that fought on the Eastern Front paid a much larger price in lives; the USSR accounts for something like half of the deaths of the entire war, more even than Germany. Stalingrad did not have a happy ending (although it now has the world’s tallest statue, which is really both spectacularly beautiful and a marvel of engineering. It’s also sliding off its foundation slightly).
Over the past few days, we’ve seen a lot of Russian fighter jets flying over Bishkek and over the surrounding areas preparing for aerial demonstrations, and everyone was talking about the parade and the celebrations for days. Despite the rain, on TV we watched downton Bishkek fill up, and the newly minted Prime Minister give a speech about the holiday in the main square before a large military parade went by and the fighters did a fly-by.
The real spectacle came on Russian television, which broadcasts several Russian-language channels here, right alongside China Central Television Russia.
Starting a few hours ahead, Russian TV had live feeds of celebrations in Moscow, and a smaller camera in the corner for “Around Russia,” which pretty much was just a live feed from Sevastopol the entire time apart from about 30 seconds of St. Petersburg at one point. As the countdown got into the last hour and a half, the Moscow Cam switched to professionally following each of the ambassadorial or presidential motorcades as they navigated the grounds of the Kremlin and made their way up to the diplomat’s entrance, then followed the cars and vans over to the parking lot after they had deposited their passengers. They followed the diplomats and presidents leaving their cars, walking inside, being greeted by Putin with a photo op, and then continuing inside. This went on for over an hour, and included Xi Jinping and his wife, Narendra Modi, all the presidents of Central Asia, someone from North Korea, and possibly some others (Angela Merkel met with Putin in Moscow the following day).
The Sevastopol Cam just followed some boats around. I didn’t pay it much attention because the Moscow Cam was more interesting to me.
When noon (I think it was noon) rolled around, the feed switched exclusively to the Moscow Cam, an aerial feed of Red Square showing what must have been tens of thousands in rank-and-file in the square facing a dignitaries area where all the world leaders sat with Putin. Putin got up and gave a speech about the holiday – from what I could understand, he was talking about allies and anti-Fascism, and something about the Nazis and Germany. I would like to see a translation at some point, because it seemed like a good speech from the few words I could understand.
Then, what could only be the Red Army Orchestra played an instrumental Russian/Soviet National Anthem (the melody has been the same for decades, but the words have changed a couple times), which, alongside the Star Spangled Banner, is one of the few national anthems that sends chills down my spine for its musical beauty.
Then, the military marches began, and one by one for over an hour, regiment after regiment of Russian troops in various services marched by, some saluting, some holding machine guns. Some of these squares of men marching in perfect unison must have been several hundred soldiers. Those on the far right of each square stared straight forward as they marched, while all the others turned their heads far to the right and held them high, acknowledging the dignitaries and Putin on the grandstand.
Also marching were smaller regiments from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus (I think it was), Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, India, and China (and maybe one or two others), as well as an all-female regiment of Russians. It wasn’t quite clear, but I think they were included because they contributed soldiers or materiel to the Eastern Front. In any case, all of their presidents were up in the grandstand with Putin.
This went on and on and on, until all the soldiers had marched out of Red Square, which meant that it was time for the tanks. Rows and rows and rows of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, Big Trucks With Wheels, Big Trucks With Treads, Long Tubes That May Or May Not Have Fuel Inside, missile trucks, Big Long Tubes That Look Like Nuclear Missiles, Big Long Tubes That Look More Like Nuclear Missiles Than The Last Set Of Big Long Tubes. That part was pretty spine-chilling for me because war is something that upsets me greatly. Military parades are a relatively normal thing here, but because I hadn’t seen one, it was fascinating and saddening at the same time to see all of that killing power on display at once.
Then came the planes, which many of my friends will probably assume was my favorite part, and they would be correct. First came a Tupelov Backfire, the largest supersonic nuclear bomber in the world (this is at about 1,000 feet over the Kremlin in downtown Moscow). Then came an An-124 strategic airlifter, which is the largest mass-produced cargo plane in the world. Then came 3 Il-76es in formation, an older Soviet design that is the standard Large Cargo freighter in most of the world because of its ruggedness. Plane or group of plane after group of plane went by. Three Il-76 tankers had fighters actually refueling off of them as they flew over the Kremlin. Another had a Backfire refueling off of it, with the added specialty of a TV feed from the refueling boom operator’s cabin on the tanker itself, so we could watch them buzz from the aerial perspective.
After what seemed like ten or twenty different fighter formations and groups went by, one group went by in a formation of the number “70” followed by a group of six with their smoke generators making a Russian tricolor of white, blue, and red. They were the last spectacle of the parade, but then the TV kept following Putin as he greeted military leaders and walked through Red Square to somewhere else. The parade had lasted two and a half hours, and we were ready to move on with our day.
That night, there was a massive Olympic Opening Ceremony-style “history of the war” presentation in Red Square which was also on TV, but if you’ve seen any Olympics opening in the past two decades, I think you can let your imagination take you away on that one. Oh, and they had fireworks. All and all a very interesting and entertaining spectacle.