Posted on 05/10/2014 4:59:19 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
On Friday, May 9, 2014, Moscow's Red Square was once again the site of massive demonstrations as Russia commemorated the 69th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Units representing all branches of the Russian armed forces paraded down the square, as the surrounding buildings, including the Kremlin, were decorated with communist Soviet-era emblems and hammer-and-sickle insignias.
Standing alongside top Russian military brass and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the parade. There was the stereotypical goose-stepping, as a select honor guard of Russian soldiers marched under both the modern Russian flag and the red Victory Banner bearing the communist hammer and sickle.
Putin delivered the opening speech, in which he observed,
Sixty-nine years have gone by since the Great Patriotic War ended, but May 9 was and still is our biggest holiday. It is the day of our national triumph and our people’s pride.On this day we see the overwhelming strength of patriotism and feel especially acutely what it means to be loyal to our homeland and how important it is to defend our country’s interests.
We must remain worthy of our forebears’ deeds.
Speaking to the veterans in attendance, Putin concluded,
We will look after Russia and its glorious history and will make service to our country the highest value, as it always was throughout our history. I am sure it will always be so in the future, too.
Following the president’s speech, the military orchestra played the Soviet National Anthem, which Putin reinstituted as the country’s national anthem in 2000. Drummers from the Moscow Military Music School then took part in military marches as 11,000 ground units from the Russian Ground Forces (army), Russian Navy, Naval Infantry, Russian Air Force, Russian Airborne Troops (VDV), and battalions from both the Strategic Missile Troops and Aerospace Defence Forces, paraded their way down Red Square.
The ground units were followed by a parade of light armored vehicles, heavy tanks, and mobile missile launchers, including Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The parade concluded with Russian helicopters, fighters, jets, and bombers, including Tuplev Tu-160 supersonic strategic bombers and Tuplev Tu-95 “Bear” strategic nuclear bombers, flying in formation over the Kremlin and Red Square.
Victory Day celebrations, commemorating Stalin’s victory over Nazi Germany, were also held in Belarus, parts of which were formerly East Germany, and in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol, which Russia annexed earlier this year through a controversial “democratic” referendum.
Russia’s Victory Day parade was akin to the Soviet Union’s old May Day celebrations, which incidentally Putin officially reinstated eight days prior on May 1. Although the Russian Communist Party (CPRF/КПРФ) celebrates May Day every May 1, May Day 2014 was the first time since the alleged collapse of the Soviet Union that the Russian government officially authorized it.
As on Victory Day, Putin also gave speeches on May Day. Both Putin’s United Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, led by Gennady Zyuganov, held May Day demonstrations.
Gennady Zyuganov serves in the capacity of both first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, since 1993, and chairman of the Union of Communist Parties — Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU), since 2001.
Since 1993, Zyuganov has served as an active member of the State Duma (Russian parliament), and since 1996 has also been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Between 1975 and 1991, Vladimir Putin was an agent of KGB, which Lenin referred to as the (then Cheka) “sword of the shield of the revolution.”
In addition to the array of Soviet emblems, crests, communist red stars, and various hammer-and-sickle flags adorning the surrounding buildings at the Victory Day parade, Russian troops also marched to large red flags bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin (the principal architect and founder of the Soviet Union) with the letters CCCP (the Cyrillic acronym for USSR) below.
Could one imagine if the Bundeswehr (armed forces of Germany) paraded through Berlin today, goose-stepping and marching to flags adorned with Adolf Hitler’s face and surrounding buildings plastered with swastikas? No one doubts the collapse of Nazism in Germany. Yet in Russia, where somehow supposedly “communism is dead,” or so the West has been led to believe, the hammer-and-sickle flags continue to flutter in the Moscow breeze.
Where are all the Putin Groupies tonight?...
I guess outed there USSR Pin up as a KGB Commie is too much to take!
“We must remain worthy of our forebears’ deeds.”
The mass-murdering ones? Don’t think they’ll have a problem maintaining that standard.
Hey, the war against the Nazis ended for us too.
Where are OUR presidents remarks......crickets.
Russians celebrating the end of a war they helped to start.
Asylum with nuclear weapons. The only hope for humanity is if they nuke themselves.
I believe that this situation is foreseen in the Biblical prophecy concerning the kings of Babylon. And I have noted this to be the case since 1982-83 thus making the present tense acceptable in the interpretation.
There will be seven kings of Babylon (i.e., leaders, Secretary-General, of the USSR). (The first five were Lenin, Stalin, Malenkov, Khruschchov, Brezhnev) The sixth whom you now see (Andropov, late 1982 to 1983 due to ill health) will be followed by a seventh (Chernenko) who will rule for a short time. Then will come an eighth (Gorbachev) one who is, is not, and is to come. This describes the period from Gorbachev through Yeltsin to Putin — it is communism that was, was not, and is to come (now).
Thus we see the end stages of this Babylon prophecy.
Yesterday morning, a thread about this parade got pulled for the following reason: "Anti-Soviet elements".
I guess outed there USSR Pin up as a KGB Commie is too much to take!
My guess is Putin longs to bring back the Soviet Empire and is using symbols from the old days to whip up enthusiasm for that cause. But I highly doubt he wants to resurrect communism. The oligarchs would kill him.
And point out, that had they not lost to Japan in 1905, odds are the Bolshevik Revolution probably never gets off the ground.
I agree.
Even Russian nationalists who despise Communism salute the patriotic achievement of the Soviet people in defending the country from fascism.
Soviet era veterans have earned respect in post-Communist Russia. The pride in the national victory is a universal sentiment.
I just wish they would be honest and admit that Stalin had a huge hand in starting the war, and that they defeated the Nazis, in spite of Stalin.
The term “Great Patriotic War” is the counterpart to the term “Patriotic War” invoked against Napoleon over a century earlier.
Russia kept its agreement with Germany and historians generally agree Stalin tried hard to avoid a confrontation with Hitler. In 1941, the Soviet Union was nowhere near ready to take on the Third Reich militarily.
Stalin made a lot of mistakes in prosecuting the war but the patriotism and determination of the Soviet people made the difference evident in the outcome to World War II.
Stalin, due to the purging of his Generals, set back the timeframe for his offensive war to 1943.
His intention is signing the Non-Aggression Pact, was to bring war to the West, where the German, French and British armies would exhaust themselves, making it easy for the Red Army to swoop in.
Of course, France falling in six weeks was something he didn’t count on, and he had to know it was only a matter of time before Hitler went after him.
Hitler had a similar time frame.
Stalin’s purges of his officer corps and the Red Army’s poor performance in the Winter War with Finland convinced the Nazi dictator that Russia was ripe for the pickings.
Hitler thought if he moved up the offensive, he could finish off the Soviet Union before its posed a threat.
All he did was replicate Napoleon’s failure in 1812. Of course, the Soviet Union posed no real threat to Germany but Hitler could never be content in living in peace with his largest neighbor and supplier - you heard that right - the Russians supplied with raw materials and good right up to June 22, 1941.
Thanks Tailgunner Joe.
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