E-Paper
Celebrating the war
As Russia readies to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its victory over Germany in World War II, young citizens are engaged in bringing honour to the dead.
Incredible though it is, unburied bones can still be found on World War II battlefields in European Russia. Pyotr Dunayev, war veteran and military historian, says, "War ages like a man: the passing years alter its appearance and the fervour fades away, leaving nothing but the glorious memory." He does not think it matters anymore whether they are the bones of Germans or Russians. He also recalls the words of the great Russian military leader, Alexander Suvorov, "War is not over until the last soldier has been buried." So, from a moral point of view, "the war is not yet over," the veteran reasons.
Long before the 60th anniversary of Victory Day (May 9), President Vladimir Putin set the country two serious tasks: first, to give all the `lost' military decorations (of which there were more than a million) to the heroes of the war (or to their descendants), and secondly, to give the remains of the fallen honourable burials. Much has been done in the 60 years since the end of the war to collect the scattered bones, and it is school and college students who have been leading the way. Various youth `search groups' have found the remains of many sol- diers in forests and marshlands and have dug up bones in places that saw fierce fighting. Fourteen-year-old Pyotr Borisov, who took part in the `digs' at the Prokhorovka field, the site of an unprecedented tank battle, says his group found bones that had fused with metal.
Pyotr Dunayev believes, "The finds show what an incredible price the people of the former Soviet Union paid in the struggle against this `brown-shirted plague'. Twenty seven million people died in the war and each had about five litres of blood. You do the math!"
Vera Shuvalova, a 13-year-old schoolgirl, wrote, "Our people have probably never loved their motherland as sincerely and deeply as they did during WW-II. They say that in order to appreciate the value of something, we have to imagine it disappearing. The Nazis wanted to take away our motherland and so everyone rushed to defend it." Insightful words. Alexander Sitsev, an 83-year-old war hero, said much the same thing. "It was this `laser beam' of patriotism that shot down the enemy." Sitsev fought in all the famous battles of the war, which are described in military his tory textbooks. Alexander Voloshchenko, a veteran who has taken part in all the post-war military parades, remembers the day when his platoon took up combat positions in vil lage trenches near Moscow. The platoon of soldiers between ages 18 and 20 saw only Voloshchenko survive.
All veterans agree that the Russians' love for their country helped the USSR survive the worst war of the century. "It didn't mat ter what nationality a person was or what religion they believed in," Colonel Alexander Lebedintsev recalls. "I'm Russian Orthodox but I had a `frontline talisman' attached to a bit of string under my shirt just like my comrades-in-arms did: Uzbeks, Azerbai janis, Ukrainians, Georgians, Yakuts and Adygeis." The young `trackers' still come across these military tokens.
An unprecedented discussion about the war is underway on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Victory Day, with a fair amount of negative commentary on events. Their point is that the war losses were `unjustified' and the victorious military leaders Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky and Vasily Chuikov have also been accused of using particularly cruel meth ods, discrediting their military skill.
Today's young people simply do not know what to make of the different interpretations of this monumental event. In Soviet times, it was hard to get to the facts, as the State made a great show of exalting heroism and praising the Soviet victories, while at the same time fail ing to mention the military defeats. Mistakes and miscalculations were effectively covered up. In schools the subject of the war has be come trite and is of little interest to students.
The younger generation is usually more interested in the question: "Why do we, the victors, live in much worse conditions than the defeated nations?" I decided to ask Alexander Sitsev. He said, "Who the hell knows! That's Russia for you!" That made us laugh long and hard, and as Sitsev laughed, his 29 medals, of gold, silver, bronze and enamel, awarded for all his victories in WW-II, jangled on his chest.
