Victory Day?
Bac Lieu, Vietnam, May 9th, 2015
Salaroche


A fair definition for the noun “Victory” would be “To prevail over a rival or enemy in competition or battle”. Along those lines, anyone can be proclaimed victorious who comes in first in an open, fair competition, or who clearly defeats an enemy in the battlefield.

There may be other interpretations for that term too. For example, there can also be victories over personal obstacles or adversities, such as those won by handicapped individuals who overcome their physical limitations and perform feats that might even be difficult to perform for people who don’t suffer from such limitations.

Then there are those relatively narrow victories, such as that of JFK over Nixon in 1960 or, much narrower still, that of G. W. Bush over A. Gore in 2000.

When talking about war, a national victory often implies defeating an enemy bent on depriving the people of that nation of its freedom to chart its own sociopolitical path or of deciding their national destiny through their own institutional mechanisms.

From a purely military perspective, however, the Nazi invasions of Poland in 1939, France in 1940, and those of a few other countries before and after those years, were clearly military victories, even as the Nazi intentions were not to liberate those nations but to oppress them.

Today, May 9th 2015, the Russian people are celebrating the 70th anniversary of their victory over the Nazis. No doubt that was a clear and decisive victory. By some counts, the Soviets actually eliminated or disabled close to 80% of Nazi forces, thereby gaining control of Eastern Europe and most of Central Asia in line with the allied deal made at the Yalta conference in February of 1945.

Today, the masterminds and heirs of the Soviet Empire, the Russians, are perfectly entitled to celebrate their immediate ancestors’ victory over the Nazis in that same year. The Soviet’s military performance at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in 1942-43 and at Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1943-44 were clear examples of unrelenting nationalist resilience and bravery that clearly demonstrated the mettle of their people. Celebrations for that victory, therefore, are legitimately and necessarily called for.

But when talking about victory as a military, or otherwise, means to restore a nation’s freedom to chart its own sociopolitical path and to decide their national destiny through their own institutional mechanisms, the Soviet victory over the Nazis loses plenty of lusters. The Soviet example plainly tells us that victory at war does not in and by itself represent a victory for the people who fought it.

The workings of the Nazi regime were perhaps the most inhumane and brutal enterprise the human race has ever embarked upon. Such senseless systematic subjugation and slaughter of our fellow beings had never before been recorded in history at such a scale.

Anyone participating in bringing about the defeat of such an arrogant regime deserves nothing but praise, therefore, the Russian people deserve the utmost praise for their decisive participation in defeating the Nazis.

But when it comes to the liberation of the Russian people from the iron hand of oppression, the tone of the discourse changes drastically, as the people of the then-Soviet Union didn’t really fight or die to free themselves from oppression in general but only to free themselves from Nazi oppression in particular, so that they could continue to be oppressed and exterminated by their own fellow Soviets.

No freedom for the Soviet people ever stemmed from the Soviet victory over the Nazis. The real victory in 1945 was that of the local Soviet murderers and oppressors over the foreign murderers and oppressors, which basically merely legitimized the Soviet elites’ right to exterminate and oppress their own populations as opposed to allowing any foreign power to do exactly the same thing.

To celebrate Victory day today in Moscow is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but to look at Russia’s international standing as we see it today is not a very encouraging sight to see. Russia’s destiny is again guided by an authoritarian one-strong-man regime, its foreign policy is now guided by resentment over the West’s relatively-successful political, economic, innovative trends, and its economy is still reliant on natural resources rather than technology, services, and industrialization.  

I have very dear Russian friends who, along with me, lament the present state of affairs in Russia. To watch as a people so steeped in literature and the arts falls again prey to nationalistic demagoguery and fallacies as those the Putin regime continues to excite them with, cannot cause but disappointment and distress in the hearts of many people like myself who have been exposed to Russian culture, even as, in my case, that exposure may have been of a relatively superficial kind (i.e., Museums, Palaces, Architecture, Culinary arts, Personal friends etc.)

To celebrate Victory Day today in Russia, therefore, seems like a very appropriate thing to do, but only in as far as the Soviet’s military victory over the Nazis is concerned.

As far as it pertains to the Russian Federation’s people, however, their real freedom as individuals and as a society continues, as of now, to be put in hibernation by the same Russian traditional authoritarian forces that have for centuries dominated the sociopolitical landscape of that otherwise fascinating country.

May the natural forces of advancement soon allow our Russian brethren to awaken  to the reality of their immense human potential thereby inducing in them  the inspiration to build a 21st century society cemented on the wealth of their historical achievements, thus enabling them to create a national reality considerably immersed in the richness of their culture, yet still in harmony with the rest of the world.

Salaroche