Victory Day (9 May)

• 1. Introduction

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  Victory Day on the 9th of May is one of the most emotionally charged public holidays in Russia and across the former Soviet world. At its heart is a question of time: the war in Europe ended, officially, on the 8th of May 1945 in Central European time. But by Moscow clocks, the signing ceremony had already crossed into the 9th. That time-zone difference became the fault line between two calendars of memory that still divide East and West today.

  The Soviet government announced the victory early on the 9th of May, after a second surrender ceremony was held in the outskirts of Berlin. The holiday was inaugurated immediately across all fifteen Soviet republics. Yet for two decades it remained an ordinary working day. It was only in 1965 that the 9th of May became a non-labor day, and the parade and the mass gatherings that most people now associate with the holiday began to take their familiar shape.

  How a single date became a political touchstone, a religious occasion, and an international flashpoint is the story this documentary explores.

• 2. Two Surrenders

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  Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the German OKW, signed the first instrument of surrender in Reims, France on the 7th of May 1945. The Soviet signatory was Ivan Susloparov, and he was a problem: a relatively low-ranking officer who had not been authorized to commit the Soviet High Command to that text.

  Joseph Stalin was direct about his objections. He stated that the main contribution to the victory had been made by Soviet people and not by the Allies, and that the capitulation therefore had to be signed before the Supreme Command of all countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. He also argued that Berlin, as the center of Nazi aggression, was the only fitting location. Dwight D. Eisenhower immediately agreed, and a second ceremony was organized.

  That second signing took place late on the 8th of May in the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst. Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed for Germany. Marshal Georgy Zhukov signed on behalf of the Red Army. Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder signed for the Allied Expeditionary Force, with General Carl Spaatz of the United States and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny of Free France present as witnesses. Both English and Russian versions of the Berlin instrument were treated as equally authentic.

  The revised Berlin text went further than Reims in one specific respect: it explicitly required the complete disarmament of all German military forces and the handing of weapons to local Allied commanders. Both documents set the same operational deadline, 23:01 hours Central European Time on the 8th of May 1945. The Moscow clocks, already reading the 9th of May when Keitel signed, would make that deadline the permanent dividing line between the Western and Soviet dates of commemoration.

• 3. From Holiday to Ritual

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  The Soviet government moved quickly after the Berlin signing. A ceremonial Moscow Victory Parade was held on the 24th of June 1945, with the Red Army and a small detachment from the First Polish Army marching on Red Square. Then, for twenty years, no equivalent parade was held.

  The holiday's formal character evolved slowly. Though celebrations spread through Soviet republics between 1946 and 1950, the 9th of May became a non-working day only in the Ukrainian SSR in 1963 and in the Russian SFSR in 1965. The parade returned in 1965 and became a regular fixture after that hiatus.

  Over the following decades the commemoration acquired a set of recognizable elements: ceremonial meetings, speeches, lectures, receptions, and fireworks. The war became a topic of sustained cultural importance in cinema, literature, school history lessons, mass media, and the arts. Following Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the Russian government leaned into the holiday as a source of national self-esteem. The 60th and 70th anniversaries, in 2005 and 2015, became the largest popular holidays Russia had seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  In 1995, world leaders converged on Moscow for the first state-sponsored ceremonies since the Soviet era. Twenty years later, in 2015, around 30 leaders including those of China and India attended, while Western leaders boycotted because of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine that had begun in 2014. The 2020 parade, marking the 75th anniversary, was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Minute of Silence, broadcast at 6:55 pm Moscow time each year, is a tradition that dates back to 1965.

• 4. The Immortal Regiment

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  Since 2012, a civil procession called the Immortal Regiment has become one of the most visible expressions of Victory Day. Participants carry photographs of relatives or family members who served during the Second World War. The front line of the march bears a banner inscribed with the words "Bessmertniy Polk."

  The procession has spread to cities far beyond Russia, including Washington D.C., Dushanbe, Berlin, and Yekaterinburg. Up to 12 million Russians have taken part nationwide in recent years. Since 2015, President Vladimir Putin and senior Russian officials have joined the Moscow procession. The march has attracted criticism from some observers, who have noted that participants are sometimes seen discarding the photographs after the event concludes.

  In Belarus on non-jubilee years, a separate procession runs from October Square to Victory Square, where wreaths are laid. In 2015, a parade of young people, cadets of military lyceums, and young athletes took place on Bishkek's Ala-Too Square, attended by President Almazbek Atambayev and Prime Minister Temir Sariev. Across Russophone communities in many countries, public gatherings and even parades are organized on the 9th of May regardless of the day's official status in those states.

• 5. Symbols and Their Meanings

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  The Victory Banner is a Soviet military flag raised on the Reichstag building in Berlin on the 1st of May 1945. Soldiers created it under battlefield conditions during the Battle of Berlin. It was the fifth banner made, and the only one prepared for the Reichstag that survived the fighting. Its Cyrillic inscription identifies the unit: the 150th Rifle Division, Order of Kutuzov 2nd class, from Idritsa, part of the 79th Rifle Corps, 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front.

  Every the 9th of May, a specially made replica is carried by a color guard of the 154th Preobrazhensky Independent Commandant's Regiment through Red Square. The original banner was brought to Kyiv in October 2004 for the parade marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Ukraine, and in 2015 it was taken to Astana for the Defender of the Fatherland Day parade on the 7th of May.

  The Ribbon of Saint George has a longer history, dating to the era of the Russian Empire. Its black and orange bicolor pattern, with three black stripes and two orange ones, became an awareness ribbon in the early 21st century to honor veterans. In Ukraine and the Baltic states, the ribbon has more recently been associated with Russian irredentism and, since 2022, with Russian support for the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine replaced it with the remembrance poppy used in British Commonwealth commemoration. On the 5th of May 2014, the Belarusian Republican Youth Union encouraged activists not to use the ribbon; by Victory Day 2015, Belarus had replaced its colors with red, green, and white from the Belarusian flag.

• 6. Faith and Remembrance

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  The Russian Orthodox Church gave Victory Day a spiritual dimension from the very beginning. In the Easter message of 1945, Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow wrote that the Easter joy of the Resurrection of Christ was combined with the hope of an imminent victory of truth and light over German fascism, which he described as being crushed by the combined force of Soviet and Allied troops.

  Every year on the 26th of April by the Old Style calendar (which falls on the 9th of May by the New Style), the Russian Orthodox Church marks a fixed commemorative day for the dead. After the liturgy, a memorial service for fallen soldiers is held in all churches and monasteries. The annual commemoration of soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 was formally established by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1994.

  On the eve of the 65th anniversary in 2010, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called for all churches of the Russian Orthodox Church to perform a prayer service in memory of the deliverance of the people from mortal danger. The patriarch based his special prayer on a text by Philaret Drozdov, originally written in honor of the Imperial Russian Army's victory over Napoleon's Grande Armee in the Napoleonic Wars. The completion of the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces was timed to Victory Day in 2020.

• 7. A Divided Calendar

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  Ukraine's relationship with the 9th of May traces an arc from near-unanimous celebration to formal rejection. A poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2010 found that almost 60 percent of Ukrainians considered Victory Day one of the biggest holidays in the country. By 2021, only 30 percent held that view. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, only 13 percent said they were ready to celebrate the 9th of May at all.

  In 2015, Ukraine had already begun reframing the commemoration. The parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed legislation that replaced the term "Great Patriotic War" with "World War II" across all Ukrainian law, and prohibited Communist and Nazi symbols from the 15th of May 2015 onward. On the 8th of May 2023, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree shifting Ukraine's principal commemoration to May 8. On the 29th of May 2023, the Verkhovna Rada formally cancelled Victory Day on the 9th of May and established the 8th of May as the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II 1939-1945 as a public holiday instead.

  Poland made a parallel move. From 1945 to 2015, Poland observed the 9th of May as "National Victory and Freedom Day." Since the 24th of April 2015, Poland has recognized the 8th of May as "National Victory Day," aligned with the Western VE Day date. Moldova recognized the 9th of May as a public holiday from 1991 to 2023 before changing course. Latvia, which does not officially recognize the 9th of May, saw its parliament pass a law on the 20th of April 2023 banning all public celebrations on that date, with the exception of Europe Day. Azerbaijan presents a different story: the holiday was deliberately removed from the calendar after independence in 1991 by the Popular Front government, then restored when Heydar Aliyev came to power. Israel, meanwhile, upgraded its Victory Day commemoration to official status by vote of the Knesset in 2017, and now hosts the largest such celebrations outside the former Soviet Union, including marches of the Immortal Regiment in cities with large populations of Red Army veterans and their descendants.