Every country has a national holiday which defines it. For Russia, it is Victory Day, celebrating the end of the Great Patriotic War, as the World War II is referred to by the Russians. When the peace treaty had been signed late on 8 May, 1945 in Berlin, Moscow (being in a different time zone) received the news in the early hours of 9 May. For the past 70 years, 9 May has been a public holiday in the Soviet Union and now in Russia, celebrating victory over Nazis and remembering all those who had died, defending their Motherland.
I grew up in the Soviet Union with stories of sacrifice, courage and patriotism, conveyed through books and films. War games were popular among children, collecting toy soldiers and tanks and fighting each other with snow balls in winter. Every year my parents took me to the city centre to see the fireworks on 9 May. Later we met there with friends and drank beer getting tipsy under the bright, magical lights in the spring sky. With the passing years, the memories of the veterans of 1941-1945 are becoming more precious. Soviet Union lost some 27m people in the Great Patriotic War, and no family remained unaffected. Some people fought on the front lines, some worked three shifts a day to supply the army. As such, the scale of the 70-year anniversary of the Victory Day should come as no surprise.
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