... victory is indivisible. We cannot test, either, whether some of the Allies would have been able to achieve the Victory without the assistance from others. We should therefore respect the historic choices made back then and remember that the end of the World War II is the multinational achievement of all the countries and peoples of the coalition who each in their way contributed to the grand victory and grand peace.
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The 58th anniversary of the Victory, May 2003, Moscow. A few days before the ...
... continent, which seemed so far away from the European political conflicts, was compelled to take a very active role in both wars. However, the contribution made by Africans to the victory over fascism remains largely underappreciated.
For Africans, World War II began in 1935, when Italy invaded Ethiopia. In a sense, the war continued – in the form a battle for independence – long after 1945, when Africans demanded that their contribution to the allied victory over Hitler’s Germany be recognized....
The 70th anniversary of the end of World War II is a major celebration for the United Kingdom. The British people commemorate the victims of this world war. Though, in the spring of 2015, the British public was preoccupied with the election campaign (the general election was held on the ...
Britain, as an ally in the anti-German coalition, made an invaluable contribution to the victory in World War II. As in the rest of Europe, Victory Day in the United Kingdom is celebrated on 8 May, not 9 May. This is a day of remembrance celebrated every year with annual parades and events dedicated to those killed in the terrible war of 1939-1945. ...
The fates of Sweden, Norway and Denmark during the Second World War were different. Sweden opted for neutrality, whereas Denmark and Norway fell victims to Nazi aggression. Each Scandinavian nation has its own historical memory of the events that took place in those years. And they celebrate the end of the war on different dates: on May 5, Denmark celebrates a national holiday associated with the liberation of the country from its Nazi occupants; the majority of the Danish territory was liberated...
... shaping the historical memory of the Second World War. In many of these countries, this memory is clearly different from that in present-day Russia. This is particularly true for the former Soviet republics which were occupied by the Germans during World War II or which witnessed fierce combat. In a number of post-Soviet states, WWII is no longer seen as an unambiguous battle of good against evil, or of defender against aggressor.
Victory Day revised
This is just as true for Ukraine. Already in ...
Among the memorable dates observed in the United States are those associated with World War II: May 8 – Victory in Europe Day; June 6 – D-Day in memory of the Normandy landings in France; September 2 – Victory over Japan Day; December 7 – National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
We see that there are two Victory ...
The Great Patriotic War has deeply scarred the memory of people across the vast territorial expanse of the former Soviet Union. However, as time passes, and veterans pass away, the event is increasingly viewed as a subject in a textbook, which raises the need to keep the memory of the war alive within the population.
On the eve of the 70-th anniversary of Victory Day, most post-Soviet countries held large celebrations culminating in the May 9 military parade in Moscow. All the Central Asian republics...
... selective attitude towards these issues. However, examples of paradoxically close commemorative and festive priorities can be found even in the conflicting countries. The Day of Victory (or Victory Day) in the Great Patriotic War (the name given to World War II in Russia and other former Soviet countries, dating from the Soviet Union’s entrance into the conflict in 1941) is probably the most vivid example of shared commemorative practices.
In Georgia, May 9 is a national holiday, a day off ...
Since Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994, Victory Day, the memory of it and its symbols have become an integral part of Belarusian statehood and the ideology of the Belarusian state. Back then, 20 years ago, when many ex-Soviet countries were aggressively revising the Soviet legacy, the people of Belarus and the Belarusian leadership definitively determined Victory Day as a sacred day for the country.
There are many reasons for this. There is the price Belarus paid for the Victory: one in...
