Statistics are cruel. Over the past year, the number of veterans of the Great Patriotic War now alive – those whom we can look in the eyes and thank for our lives – has been cut in half. When we now visit on May 9, on Victory Day, those places in Moscow where veterans of that war traditionally gather, places that 20 or 30 years ago were packed with frontline soldiers, breasts full of medals, we painfully see how cruel time can be. Our correspondents visited places where the veterans of that most awful war continue to gather…
The all too aggressive and political declamations ringing out on Mokhovaya street were not audible there on the square in front of the Bolshoi Theater. Here music played. Professionals and amateurs alike performed songs from the war era accompanied by guitar and accordion. On the stairs before the theater, the Poisk [Search] ensemble performed as it has performed each year since its formation on May 9, 1946.
Along the perimeter of the square were little signs – Ukrainian Front, Western Front, Belarussian Front… People of all ages approached the veterans, congratulating them on Victory Day and giving them flowers. Parents asked the veterans to pose with the children for pictures. Some even gave the veterans pictures taken the year before in the very same place, admitting that they come each year to see their now familiar faces from that war. Faces like that of Ivan Ivanovich Bobarykin, who served in the marine corps during the war, receiving an Order of the Great Patriotic War of the Second Degree, two Orders of the Red Star and other awards. And at 90 years of age, he has retained not only an unbelievable vivacity but also optimism enviable even to those who did not experience the war. “Nowadays they say that the young generation isn’t any good. But I visit the tenth grade schoolchildren and I see wonderful kids. Or watch that [children’s knowledge game show] – those kids know what we didn’t know. That’s the future!” Ivan Babarykin says with confidence…
According to tradition, Gorky Park in Moscow has always been a gathering place for veterans on May 9. Starting from 10:00 in the morning, veterans of the Great Patriotic War are given special gift packages. Military field kitchens are set up and all comers are served soldiers porridge. Celebratory tables are set up for the veterans. Those of younger generations come by, giving the veterans candy, bouquets and balloons as a sign of their profound respect. It was very touching to watch a very young girl, who undoubtedly knew about the war through the stories of older people, come up to veteran and giving him a flower say: “Thank you for winning!”
“It was a very difficult war. But we won it through courage, will power and strength,” says one veteran, head of a medical unit, Tamara Fedorovna Slobochinskaya. “On May 2, 1945, at 2:00 in the morning the commander of the medical team sent me to change the bandages of some German POWs. I cried and said: ‘I won’t do it!’ He told me: Senior nurse, stand up and repeat my order.’ I repeated it with tears in my eyes and went to do my job. One of the German women spoke in German, but I understood without a translator: ‘The Russian nurse does good work.’ I carried 86 soldiers off the battlefield for which I received the Order of the Red Star.”
What seems most important today is that the celebrations of Victory Day near the Bolshoi Theater and in Gorky Park were truly touching. And without an sort of excess or politicizing of the events…
Dmitry Yerusalemsky, Greta Bagdoyan (newspaper Kultura) for Russkiy Mir
