VE DAY POINTS OUT THE WAY

[OSINACHI]

Victory Day at 60
May 10 2005, 23:52

For the Westerner in Ukraine, the weight accorded here to commemorating victory in the so-called Great Patriotic War for the Fatherland can be humbling. To witness the holiday is to be reminded that whatever Ukraine▓s current bright prospects; and however powerfully the economy here is booming; and whatever fun we▓re all having in this beautiful city of Kyiv as summer approaches, Eastern Europe was once, and within the memory of people who are not quite old yet, at the center of the most hideous events to which humanity has ever subjected itself. Victory Day puts things in perspective.

There▓s no real Western analogue to Victory Day, of course √ no holiday there is so freighted with emotion and meaning. That▓s partially due to the fact that no other victorious country suffered to the astounding extent to which the Soviet Union did in World War II.

But there▓s another, sadder reason: that for many Soviet veterans of war, there was nowhere to go after the triumph over Germany but down. The U.S. veteran returned home to a free college education and a new house courtesy of the GI Bill, and history▓s strongest economy. Even the defeated German, at least in the west, settled into a society that within a generation would be rebuilt and would soon experience an ⌠economic miracle.■ The Soviet vet went back to Stalin, and decline. He might well march in his medals to honor his youthful triumphs; they, and his disintegrating state pension, might be all he has. His Western comrades, who moved on to better things, mostly put away their own decorations long ago.

Victory Day is also interesting for how it illuminates a nation▓s attitude toward its past √ which, as the cliche goes, determines its approach to the future. Take the difference between how the holiday was celebrated in Russia and Ukraine this year.

The Kremlin treated itself to an orgy of Soviet nostalgia. Only the presence in the Red Square viewing stands of Western and Asian leaders distinguished Moscow▓s parade from something out of the Stalin era. The event had the feeling of an adolescent fantasy of phallic might. It was a show of imperial military strength that Russia actually no longer has √ but that it obviously wishes it had.

By contrast, Ukraine▓s events were more subdued. A garish and aggressive military parade was not part of the program, even though Ukraine was at the heart of the Eastern Front. And President Viktor Yushchenko, the son of a Red Army veteran, issued a statesmanlike call for veterans to reconcile themselves with Ukrainian partisans who fought the Red Army as well as the Germans.

In other words, what was on display was the difference between adolescent fantasy and responsible adulthood; between empty dreams of strength and a sober reckoning with a tragic past. That Ukraine chose sobriety and adulthood bodes well for its future.

N.B: From Kyivpost.
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