Bowing to Soldiers of the Victory

From the editors: We bow to the ground in front of you, Soldiers of the Victory!

Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the war-veterans would always be proud of the heroic deed of their great ancestors who defeated Fascism.

Dear war veterans and workers of the home front! No, let’s not say it like that. It sounds too official, like the Minister of Defense would say it. Let’s do it differently.

Dear veterans, our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, dear Soldiers of the Victory. Yes, just like that – capitalized – and no other way.

During the day, when you’ll be reading these lines, gala regiments aren’t going to be lined up on the Red Square in the capitol of our country, and the head of military department isn’t going to ride around the troops, congratulating them with a great holiday.

A thunderous “hurrah” isn’t going to rise upon the Kremlin, and the artillery pieces aren’t going to salute them with gun roar. It’s all up ahead – ceremonial marching of the military academies and famous regiments on the paving blocks, roaring of the tank engines and smooth rocking on the steel springs of the once unseen rocket complexes “Topol,” shuttering of the accredited on-the-square correspondents and foreign military attachés, and the heart breaking march “Farewell of Slavjanka.” Our newspaper is simply published a few weeks earlier than May 9, but we couldn’t help congratulating you, our dear veterans, with the greatest day of you life – Victory Day.

We couldn’t help accentuating that the grand parade on the Red Square in honor of the 64th anniversary of the defeat of Fascist Germany, isn’t only an army show and demonstration to the whole world of our military strength and power, despite however and whoever might want to see it that way. It’s a parade in your honor, victors, in honor of your great deed.

We don’t intend to and aren’t going to diminish anyone’s contribution in that victory. Neither the armies of the U.S., France, Great Britain or any other countries who were fighting together with us in an anti-Hitler coalition against the world’s strongest army. But we must consider the great deed of Russian soldiers and Russian people, who routed 600 divisions of the enemy and its satellites – three-fourths of all Nazi troops, 75 percent of all their military equipment, that was on the battle fronts of World War Two – 70,000 airplanes, 50,000 tanks and assault weapons, 167 pieces of ordnance, over 2500 fighting ships, sea transports and auxiliary boats… If not for our selflessness, that made such an incredible sacrifice to the victory – the lives of 27 million people: not just soldiers and officers, but also women and children, old people, millions and millions of unborn humans, who will never see sunlight – there wouldn’t even be a holiday today. And neither we nor the people who are trying to forget, and who would strike out the of history your great deed, would be able to enjoy it. But as long as your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – your heirs – are alive, nobody will be able to do that.

Yes, it’s true that not everything is going well. State, society and authorities still have a debt too great to be repaid to the veterans. It is a shame, but for now the victors, unfortunately, are living in worse conditions than the vanquished. The government promises to provide all the World War Two soldiers with their own apartments and give disabled war veterans their own cars. Those promises, as a lot of us remember, were made on the fiftieth war anniversary and on sixtieth, but the problem is that officials are being indifferent, and it goes on and on as if nothing ever happened. How else can you explain the fact that a lot of monuments to the war heroes in our country and in the countries of CIS remain unattended, fall into decay and go to ruin, despite publicly made statements by some government officials about “the need to reinforce patriotic education of young people”? It gets even scarier when nationalistic vandals in Baltic States and Western Ukraine dig up graves of the liberators, and destroy their monuments, trying to compensate at least psychologically for their feelings of inferiority.

But let’s not talk about sad stuff.

Nothing and nobody can spoil our Great Victory Day! Soldiers of Great Patriotic War, conquerors of Nazism, living in Russia or abroad, what ever their future fate may be, must and will know – their heroic deed is immortal. It, along with their glory, has been acknowledged and sized up by all the civilized world. Soldiers of the Victory must be sure that whether they have a lot of money in the bank or not, they have lived their life in an appropriate and honest manner. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are proud and always will be proud of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. And what else do the veterans need to feel happy? Lots and lots of health! That is what we wish you with all our hearts! And of course to celebrate many more Victory days together.