Russians Increasingly View Victory Day Not as a People’s Holiday but as an Official Action

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – The Public Opinion Foundation reports that the share of Russians who view Victory Day as a people’s holiday has fallen from 58 percent in 2018 to 51 percent now while the share of those who identify it as “a government holiday” has risen from 31 percent to 39 percent over the same period.

            That shift, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says, “makes this date completely different from what it was in the past and points to its decline, albeit still slow, given the traditional view that official events are staged rather than natural (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/18297 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=663B9FD38A214).

            “Instead of a quiet and purely family event involving the memories of grandfathers and great-grandfathers,” El Murid observes, “there are now marching columns of rumbling equipment, the slogan ‘we can repeat’ on foreign cars and obligatory patriotism about the need to rally round today’s commander in chief who promised [Russians] accelerated entry into heaven.”