From official to personal. How the Immortal Regiment changed the celebration of Victory Day
In Transnistria this year, as in the past, the mass march of the “Immortal Regiment” was canceled due to coronavirus. But this no longer matters: the regiment gathers on Victory Day no matter what, people have simply found other ways to honor the memory of their relatives who took part in the war.
Photos of the heroes are posted online. In the windows of houses. On doors and fences. On the stands of school and rural museums. On the walls of institutions and cafes. Finally, people simply go out into the city on a holiday with portraits of front-line relatives in their hands. People stand under the banners of the Regiment themselves - without announcements, rules, reminders or orders.
Several years ago, when schoolchildren were sent to the Immortal Regiment, making it their duty, there was a fear that the idea of the action would be spoiled and distorted. However, time has put everything in its place and weeded out the unnecessary. And the quarantine only confirmed this.
The idea of the Regiment has sprouted among the people with many roots
In Transnistria, a number of public organizations for Victory Day produced portraits of war participants free of charge at the request of residents. The Republic joined the international campaign “Immortal Regiment” in 2014 - since then tens of thousands of photographs have been printed and restored. This work continues.
The Immortal Regiment gave new impetus to the celebration of May 9.
This is especially important for the generation whose great-grandfathers fought in the war. Few people saw great-grandfathers, and very few great-grandfathers who talked about the war. For young people, the war already seemed like something very distant and almost ephemeral, until families, preparing for the Immortal Regiment, took up attics and mezzanines, took war photographs of relatives out of dusty albums, and began to study sites with declassified archival data about heroes and awards.
Instead of a few dry paragraphs in a history textbook, schoolchildren suddenly discovered simple and understandable stories of their own relatives who burned in tanks at Stalingrad, froze in besieged Leningrad, crossed the Dniester, liberated Vienna and Berlin, worked for victory in factories and collective farms, and disappeared in fascist ghettos. and death camps.
And the youth understood: this is their war, this is their victory too.
All this is the merit of the Immortal Regiment - a deep, touching and poignant event of family memory.
How much longer could Victory Day be celebrated the old fashioned way? The small “regiment” of living veterans is rapidly melting away. For example, today in the entire Transnistria there are no more than seven dozen front-line soldiers. A little more - and there would only be textbooks, books, films about the war, and, well, the St. George ribbon. And then suddenly the official holiday of May 9 acquired a new, relevant meaning, became deeply personal for every person, turned into a day of remembrance of one’s own ancestors, a celebration of specific names and surnames united into one huge river.
The Immortal Regiment gave impetus to other projects. Residents of the cities and villages of Transnistria began researching the history of the war and the military path of their fellow countrymen.
Similar work was carried out in the village of Korotnoye, Slobodzeya district. Many residents of this village were participants in the Iasi-Kishinev operation. After the liberation of the left bank of the Dniester from the Nazi invaders, conscription into the 37th and 46th armies of the 3rd Ukrainian Front took place here, where residents of the villages of Korotnoye, Glinoe, Nezavertailovka ended up. Many Korotnians distinguished themselves in the battles for the liberation of Moldova and European countries. Among them are soldiers of the 1st Rifle Battalion: Ivan Lukich Zheman, born in 1925 (medals “For Military Merit”, “For Courage”, Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree), classmates Vasily Nikitovich Zanosyev and Ivan Grigorievich Belokur, born in 1923 born, completed sniper courses and mercilessly beat the enemy (medals “For Military Merit”), and many others.
In one of the microdistricts of Tiraspol, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Victory, the “Road of Memory” event was held. People, inspired by the idea of the large-scale project “Memory Road” of the Russian Ministry of Defense to collect photographs and information about war participants, created a mini-copy of it. They sent photographs and stories about relatives who fought at the front, worked in the rear, or whose childhood was scorched by the war. The collected materials were posted in an online gallery on social networks.
Children also took part in this action. For example, fourth-grader Arina Protsyuk collected information about her great-grandfather Kharlampy Artemovich Protsyuk: she found documents indicating that he reached Berlin, published orders for receiving awards. Red Army soldier Kharlampiy Protsyuk returned to his native village after the war and worked all his life as a combine operator on a collective farm.
And in the city of Dubossary they decided to digitize and publish wartime documents from the personal archives of city residents. An electronic album “Front-line Letter” was posted on the city website, which included more than a hundred documents provided by relatives of participants in the Great Patriotic War. These are letters from the front, front-line photographs, award documents, letters of gratitude to the relatives of soldiers, certificates from hospitals, death notices.
The Immortal Regiment showed that the sacred memory of the feat of fellow countrymen does not dry out, that the very culture of memory of heroic ancestors is alive in souls, that not everything is forgotten under the onslaught of new life and new priorities. In Transnistria there is certainly no question of “how long can Victory Day be celebrated.”
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