Venerating Stalin’s Ghost

Club Orlov:



A few days ago, on May 9th, Russia celebrated the 72th anniversary of its victory in the Great Patriotic War, or, as it is known in the West, World War II. All but unnoticed in the West, this is a very big deal in Russia. All elements of the parade, the speech, the music—the iconography—are by now beautifully polished. It is a key ritual of Russia’s state cult. Its religious nature is manifested by Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, who, emerging from within the walls of the Kremlin standing in a classic Soviet-era limousine, makes the sign of the cross: if you are still stuck in the frame of “godless communism,” you need a rethink. Although the parade is a display of military might, unmistakable in the collection of modern military hardware that rumbles through the Red Square, the overall message is one of peace. “Russia has never been defeated, and never will be” is the overarching message. And although Russians want to be recognized for their tremendous sacrifice in pursuit of victory, they see this victory as everyone’s: everyone—even the Germans—benefited from the Soviet destruction of a perfect evil in the form of Nazi Germany’s genocidal machine.

Sergei Shoigu

Victory Day parades have been held ever since the first one was held on June 24, 1945. But over the past two years a new ritual has emerged: throughout Russia, the former USSR and beyond people in their hundreds of thousands and millions parade through the streets with portraits of their fallen relatives. This year, the count throughout Russia was eight million; 600,000 took part in the Ukraine, in spite of threats, harassment and outright violence from the Ukrainian Nazis—descendants and admirers of Nazi collaborators who have recently been posthumously rehabilitated as Ukrainian nationalist heroes.



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