A human tide in Moscow
For the city of Moscow alone, tens, even hundreds of thousands of people marched as part of the “Immortal Regiment”, which honors the memory of veterans of the Second World War. This initiative, born in the mid-2010s in the city of Tomsk, in Siberia, has become an essential moment in the celebrations of May 9, very popular with the population.
Despite the rain, a huge crowd was present in Moscow, following two years of interruption due to Covid-19. We see Russian flags and red flags, countless military caps, including on the heads of children, and a sea of brandished portraits – those of relatives who fought between 1941 and 1945 or who suffered from the war.
“It was my great-great-grandfather who was a soldierexplains Piotr, 12 years old, kepi on his head and carrying a black photo in bench of a certain Oleg Artemenko. We need to remember what our ancestors did for us so that we might be alive. »
L’“special military operation” launched on February 24 this year gives the event a particular hue, but in a discreet, almost secondary way. The organizers had warned that participants might if they wished carry portraits of soldiers fighting in Ukraine, but few are visible.
Very few participants, too, wear “Z” badges, although they are distributed by volunteers along the procession. This symbol of “Special Operation” is far less popular with the crowd than the orange-and-black St. George’s Ribbon – although this served as a rallying sign for post-2014 Russian nationalism, it is seen in the country as a consensus symbol.
“I don’t want to mix the two, the memory of our grandparents and politics”explains a woman in her fifties, who nevertheless says “personally support everything the president does to protect us”.
Many in the crowd hum or frankly sing old military or popular airs broadcast by sound systems, moments of popular communion that are hard to imagine anywhere else than in Russia. Between each song, during the few moments of silence, the crowd chants with the same energy a cry well anchored in the present, this one: “Russia, Russia! »