My wife’s cousin Alvin Russell was an American war hero.
Trained as a fighter pilot, he was shot down over Czechoslovakia and placed in
a German prisoner of war camp. Unlike his Soviet comrades-in-arms, who went
directly from German captivity to Stalin’s Gulag for the crime of allowing
themselves to be captured rather than dying for Uncle Joe, once the camp was
liberated Alvin was honored and decorated, and Uncle Sam paid for his education
on the GI Bill.
Alvin continued to be honored and to participate in various
celebrations during his lifetime. But by the time he died last March at the age
of 91, I was probably the only person around who was still interested to hear
his war stories. His grandchildren had moved on. For them 1945 was ancient
history on par with the Civil War.
This is how it should be. Historical events remain relevant for
about 70 years – the human lifespan. As Psalm 90 puts it: “The days of our years are threescore
years and ten.” America’s Independence Day, marking the 240th anniversary of
the Republic later this year, was a major celebration back in 1976 – the
Bicentennial – and won’t be hugely celebrated again until 2026. The Armistice
Day on Nov. 11 now honors all war veterans, whereas its original meaning,
the end of World War I – the Great War
and the War to End All Wars, as it was known in its day – has been forgotten.
On May 9,
Russia will mark the 71st anniversary of the Soviet victory over Hitler’s
Germany. But the occasion – which was ignored under Stalin and became a solemn
day of commemoration in the early 1960s, when the entire country was made up of
genuine veterans who contributed to the war effort in one way or another – is
being celebrated by the Putin regime with growing pomp and circumstance. Over
the past 10 years, the Victory Day in Russia has been transformed from a mere
historical event into a full-blown pagan – or rather pseudo-Christian – Victory
Cult.
Deliberately or
not, the Great Patriotic War is being turned into a national religion,
patterned – once again, possibly deliberately – on Judaism, a national religion
that became the precursor of both Christianity and Islam.
Passover is the cornerstone of Judaism, celebrating our
liberation from bondage. What makes Passover so fundamental, turning it into a
religious communion, is the fact that during the seder, every Jew declares a
personal timeless connection to Exodus: it is not my ancestors who were slaves
in Egypt, but I, and it was me personally whom the Lord liberated and led to
the Land of Israel.
It is no accident that Christianity’s own greatest festival,
Easter, stems directly from Pesach, and in the Eastern Orthodox faith even has
to follow it. Christians partake in the Holy Communion, ingesting bread and
wine that is meant to be the body and blood of Christ, thus becoming one with
their God. One of Western Christianity’s most influential saints, St. Francis
of Assisi, received the stigmata as a sign of his personal unity with the
Savior.
This is exactly what the Victory Day celebration is becoming in
Russia, coming as it does in spring, soon after Easter. The war is acquiring
quasi-religious immediacy, with all those period uniforms and medals worn by
men and women of every age, bumper stickers “To Berlin!” appearing on (often
German) cars, pugnacious slogans “We can repeat that” and motorcycle rallies to Germany.
Late in the Soviet era, a ballad became popular encouraging
young people to live as though they were living also “for that other guy who
promised to his Mom to return” from the war but didn’t. But in Brezhnev’s
Soviet Union, Victory was still a historical event – even though the government
was embarrassed to be still focusing on it so many years later. In 1981, during
the unveiling in Kyiv of the war monument subsequently nicknamed “Brezhnev’s
Daughter”, the oft-repeated theme was as follows: even though the Great Victory
is already a distant past, the distance allows us better to appreciate its
world-historical significance.
Doddering Brezhnev, who actually fought in the war, didn’t
think of turning it into a cult. His heirs proved to be smarter – and more
cynical. Self-identification with the war was a Kremlin project as far back as
in 2007. When a pro-Putin youth movement
picketed the Estonian embassy in Moscow, after the authorities in Tallinn moved
a Soviet war memorial out of the city center, they already wore World War II
uniforms.
The Ukrainian Maidan two years ago completed the projection of
World War II onto the present. Russia is now seen as an embattled force for good
surrounded by “fascists” – above all in Ukraine, but also in the Baltics, the
former Communist Bloc, Finland, Western NATO countries, Turkey and, of course,
the Great Satan itself, the United States. The St. George ribbon, which has
been turned by Putin into the symbol of Victory, is also the main separatist
symbol in Donbas. The Great Patriotic War rages on.
True, actual history needed to be adjusted and falsified to
reflect this new vision – and changing history is familiar territory for
Russian propaganda. In the Soviet era, the contribution of the Western allies
was habitually belittle. Any mention was rarely made of the fact that Britain
faced Hitler – and Stalin who supplied Nazi Germany with food and natural
resources – literally alone during the Battle of Britain, or of the American
Lend-Lease program that sustained the USSR in the disastrous early months of
the German invasion.
Previously, the Americans were mildly criticized for not
opening the second front in Europe sooner. Now they’re portrayed in a more
ominous light. Russian talk shows have started to throw heavy hints that
Washington actually sponsored Hitler and sicked him on the Soviet Union.
Putin recently said that Russia didn’t need Ukraine to defeat
the Nazis. Accordingly, ahead of this year’s Victory Day celebration, Kyiv
stood out among the monuments to Hero Cities at Moscow’s Alexander Gardens as
the only one without an official bouquet. Stay tune for the Kiselyov TV to
declare that Ukraine fought on the German side.
It has been noted that Soviet communism was a kind of
substitute religion, with its miraculously (scientifically) preserved relics in
the Mausoleum worshipped by a long line of the faithful, a gallery of saints
and a promise of new life. Communism failed – probably, because it substituted
an abstract concept of class for the traditional national identity, while also
removing the idea of God, salvation and eternal life.
The new Victory Cult proposes to remedy these mistakes. It is a
national religion, centered on Russia and Russianness, even though some “good”
foreigners – Chechens, for example, and people with Ukrainian last names who
are willing to attack the Kyiv junta – are allowed to be associated with it.
Gradually, the Victory Cult is being incorporated into the
Russian Orthodox Church. In this respect, the Communist Party and its lifelong
leader Gennady Zyuganov, who has suddenly become very demonstrative in his
Christian piety, are playing a vital role. Canonizing Stalin has long been
proposed by lunatic old ladies. Suddenly, it is starting to look like a
mainstream idea. In fact, it makes perfect sense in the context of the new
Victory Cult. Stalin is already presented as a Russian patriot Moses, leading
the nation through the desert, imposing iron discipline, building heavy
industry, culling weaklings and traitors and readying the country for its
looming Manichean struggle with fascism.
There have even been early attempts to rehabilitate Stalin’s
monstrous lieutenant Lavrenty Beria. He prepared Russia for the continuation of
that struggle after Hitler had been defeated, by setting up a special labor
camp where arrested physicists labored as slaves on the Bomb.
As often happens in religious narratives, the prophet was
betrayed and his cause was sold out by disciples. The perfidious Judases of the
Victory Cult are Khrushchev, who rejected Stalin’s legacy, and Gorbachev, who
destroyed the Soviet Union on orders from Washingtonian fascists.
This construct, fanciful though it seems, is nevertheless
inexorably taking shape. Next year we may well see Russian priests conducting
services dressed in resplendent St. George orange-and-black vestments. The
question is whether Orthodox believers in Ukraine will want to have anything to
do with this pseudo-Christian cult.
