Joshua Yaffa: ‘V’ is for Vladimir
May 9th, when Russians celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, is the country’s only true national holiday—a day to remember the collective suffering and achievement of the Second World War, which the closest thing that post-Soviet Russia has to a foundational unifying story. The wartime losses were enormous, with more than twenty million dead, and each Russian family was touched, in some way, by the conflict. The memory of the Second World War may have passed into the realm of history in Europe and in the United States, but in Russia it remains very much alive, part of the country’s everyday consciousness. For that reason, the annual celebration of Victory Day is unavoidably political: the defeat of Fascism, nearly seventy years ago, provides an unassailable justification for whatever the Russian state does today.