‘Live, work and fight’
A cyclone from the east and an anticyclone from the west hit the Russian capital over the May holidays, bringing snow on 8 May, and leaving the dignitaries attending the Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square the next day to freeze in the cold.
The weather doesn’t appear to have put off visitors to Poklonnaya Hill, however, and the metro is packed to the gills. At the exit to the Park Pobedy metro station, where cover bands can usually be found singing Western hits, an elderly man wishes everyone a happy Victory Day and performs songs by Pesnyary, a Soviet group from the seventies. A voice can be heard from the speakers: a pro-government actor breathlessly urges listeners to “live, work and fight like they did”. Flags bearing portraits of Stalin with the words “Thanks for victory, Granddad” drift by, followed by the banner of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic”.
Poklonnaya Hill’s Victory Park was opened on 9 May 1995 with the first parade in honour of Victory Day in recent Russian history. The first part of the parade was held on Red Square, where the guests included world leaders and the secretary generals of both the UN and NATO. A poster at the History Museum depicting Soviet and US soldiers even proclaimed “Glory to the peoples of the countries that conquered fascism!”.
By contrast, in 2024, Moscow’s Victory Day parade was attended by such luminaries as the dictators of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Laos and Guinea-Bissau. Indeed, on Poklonnaya Hill today, all that remains of the West’s presence are various trophies and the odd lone statue of allied soldiers who fought Hitler.