Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 9 – Many Russian
commentators have pointed out that the way in which Vladimir Putin is exploiting
Victory Day is about the legitimation of the Soviet past, but a Ukrainian
analyst says that the most important function of this day is to exploit victory
over Germany as the only positive thing linking the former Soviet republics
together.
In Kyiv’s “Novoye vremya,” Andrey
Trapliyenko, a military correspondent for Ukraine’s 1 + 1 TV channel, argues “the
cult of ‘the Great Victory of the USSR’ is the only religion which unites the peoples
of Russia in the format of an empire” and the only positive thing remaining linkin
the former Soviet republics together (nv.ua/opinion/tsaplienko/kult-pobedy-poslednjaja-nadezhda-nedoimperii-118713.html).
If it were not for the cult – and it
is certainly the only one that has followers among both Russians and
non-Russians within Russia and in the other post-Soviet states he says, “then
between the countries of the former USSR would be little in common. More than
that,” he says, the non-Russian regions would “also be deprived of an idea
which holds them together.”
Thus, Trapliyenko argues, “the more
serious the risks of the disintegration of the empire, the more pompous the
parades and the more frightening the display of arms on the streets of cities”
not only in Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine but within the borders of the
Russian Federation and wherever Moscow can promote its version of reality.
If the Ukrainian analyst is correct,
then Putin’s use of Victory Day is a reflection not of his and Russia’s
strength but precisely of its increasing weakness, a factor that should be
taken into consideration by all who are trying to understand Russia today and
where it and the post-Soviet space are heading.
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