The Daily - How Putin Co-opted Russia’s Biggest Holiday

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

For years, President Vladimir V. Putin has taken advantage of Victory Day — when Russians commemorate the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany — to champion his country’s military might and project himself as a leader of enormous power.This year, he drew on the pageantry of May 9 for an even more pressing goal: making the case for the war in Ukraine.Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Victory Day in Moscow this year was set up to be a lavish government-orchestrated show of Russian strength and a claim of rightful dominance over a lost empire.Mr. Putin delivered a speech in which he vowed that the military would keep fighting to rid Ukraine, in his false telling, of “torturers, death squads and Nazis.”For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Every year on May 9th, Russians commemorate their triumph over Nazi Germany and the 27 million of their countrymen who died to make that victory possible. Today, my colleague Anton Trinovsky on how Vladimir Putin is drawing on the memory of that time to make the case for his war in Ukraine. It's Tuesday, May 10th. Anton, you and lots of our colleagues have been running around reporting and writing stories about what's happening in Moscow.

And, you know, from the outside, it's really just a national holiday and a parade. So what were you watching? It's time for the Russian Federation's flag to be raised. So May 9th is Russia's most important secular holiday. It's the day that commemorates the Soviets' victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. And it features a big military parade in Red Square and a massive military band pumping out this martial music. Thousands of soldiers goose-stepping across the square, the drone of tanks echoing between the Kremlin walls and the other historic buildings around that square. And Putin presides over this parade and delivers a major speech.

And that speech, as well as all the choreography around that parade, often serves as a kind of barometer of Russia's geopolitics. So this year, amid the war in Ukraine, May 9th emerged as a major milestone that we were looking ahead to. You know, we're now more than two months into the war. He didn't get that quick victory he anticipated. So we've been waiting to hear from Putin where he goes from here. Does he issue an official declaration of war? Remember that so far he's only been calling this a special military operation. Does he declare a mass mobilization of the Russian public

that would include a large-scale military draft? Or does he declare mission accomplished and look for a way to wind down the fighting. So given all of that, Anton, what did he say on Monday? I mean, what did that barometer say? What was the reading? Well, first of all, he didn't say much. Essentially, we did not get answers to those questions.

But what we did hear a lot about was the importance of this day for Russia. You know, he talked about May 9th, 1945, as being enshrined forever in world history as a triumph of the Soviet people. He talked about it as an unparalleled feat on the front lines and on the home front. And, you know, what you have to remember, of course, is that 27 million Soviet citizens died in World War II. Wow. Millions of Russians, as well as, of course, millions of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, and people from all over the Soviet Union.

Every single family essentially has a history of grandparents who fought in the war and in very many cases, grandparents and relatives who died in the war or who went through horrific suffering. And so that just incredible, immeasurable tragedy is probably the one thing in today's Russia that kind of binds people together in any kind of common identity. I don't think that most Americans know that 27 million Soviet people died in World War II to stop Nazi Germany. I mean, it's just an unbelievable sacrifice, how much the Soviets gave up. That's right. It really is something that resonates in essentially every household. And Putin's strategy in years past has been to use May 9th to kind of galvanize patriotism, to basically channel that almost universal remembrance

of tragedy and heroism back in the 1940s into present-day patriotism. Putin has been co-opting this day for his own political purposes, for sort of the purpose of militarizing Russian society, getting it behind his policies, projecting himself as a man of this enormous power and authority for the better part of a decade.

You said he co-opted it this day. How did he do that? Well, May 9th, for a long time in the late Soviet years and also back in the 90s, was mainly a family holiday. It was a day when families gathered with grandparents, you know, toasted to those they had lost, maybe heard stories from war veterans who were still living, maybe visited a cemetery where family members were buried. It was really a day of quiet remembrance.

quiet remembrance. And then Putin, after he came to power in 2000, really started making it into kind of this more bombastic, militaristic national holiday, with that huge military parade as the centerpiece that seemed to be kind of getting bigger and more lavish with every year. What was he trying to do with that, Anton? Why reach back to this Soviet past? Well, Russia under Putin has been in search of an identity, or maybe better put, Putin has been in search of an identity for Russia and a way to kind of define and justify his brand of authoritarianism.

And the Soviet victory in World War II, as we mentioned before, is really that one shared experience common across basically all Russian households. And so he really played on that. He really tried to build that up into what really some analysts I've spoken to about this call kind of a cult of victory. This idea that what makes Russia great, what makes it deserving of being respected on the world stage and a great power, is the legacy of the Soviet victory in World War II. You know, you saw that back in 2005, the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, when Putin had more than 50 world leaders gathered at Red Square to watch the parade, including President Bush. I mean, it seems so surprising in today's context that an American president would

have been sitting up there next to him on the dais watching this victory parade? Well, remember, of course, the Soviet Union won World War II with the US, the UK and France at its side. So earlier in Putin's tenure, he actually used that Victory Day parade and used that cult of victory in order to try to reach out to the West. But, you know, then that starts to change. And over the years, as Putin's relationship with the West grows more and more confrontational, May 9th increasingly becomes less about alliances and more about enemies, Russia's enemies. So fast forward to 2014. To what America is officially calling a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops

spreading out throughout the strategic Crimean Peninsula. That's the year, of course, that Russia annexes Crimea, foments a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. In his first trip to the Black Sea Peninsula since its annexation from Ukraine in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a triumphant visit to Crimea Friday. On May 9th of 2014, Putin actually flew to Crimea after giving his Victory Day speech in Moscow to give a second Victory Day speech in Crimea. Wow. to really push on the theme of Russia rising up against its enemies and against those in Ukraine who, in Putin's false narrative,

were trying to repress Russian speakers in the east of the country and on the peninsula. But the second thing that's happening around May 9th, 2014, that's maybe even more important, is that Putin starts to tap in to this deep-seated Russian fear of fascism, of the remembrance of the fact that it was the Nazis from Germany who invaded Russia and the Soviet Union and tried to annihilate that country. In 2014, that spring, Putin is referring to the pro-Western revolution that happened in Ukraine that year as a fascist coup. He says that neo-Nazis and anti-Semites and Russophobes carried it out. He refers to them as the ideological heirs of Hitler's accomplices in World War II. In Russia, when people hear fascists, they hear Nazis.

In Russia and in the Soviet Union in general, the German Nazis were referred to as fascists. So Putin, by 2014, is using Victory Day and World War II remembrance to tap into the fear that Russians have of Nazis and fascists in their history to win support for his political aims. We'll be right back. So Anton, when Putin says in 2014 fascists were behind the political upheaval in Ukraine, did it work? Did Russians buy that rhetoric? Well, many of them did.

Part of the reason is the history of Ukraine in the 20th century and the stereotypes that Russians have about Ukraine that came out of it. So Ukraine had a very tragic and bloody 20th century. You know, it became part of the Soviet Union after World War I. It suffered through a horrific famine that killed millions in the 1930s that Ukrainians consider a genocide that was engineered by the Soviets against Ukraine. And so out of that oppression,

when World War II started and the Germans invaded Ukraine in the Soviet Union, there were Ukrainians who saw the Germans as liberators. So Ukrainian independence fighters did fight with the Nazis against the Soviets for some time in World War II. So that was a real part of the history. It was. It was certainly a very complex history. And then much more recently, you know, 2014, the pro-Western revolution is also complicated. There were far right groups and groups with neo-Nazi ties at that time that were involved in battling the pro-Russian government, as well as then the pro-Russian separatist forces.

When the war began, there were far-right paramilitary groups that were very important in repelling the separatist assault against eastern Ukraine. But of course, it's an absolute lie for Putin to take these instances and turn it into this narrative of Ukraine somehow being dominated by far-right or even Nazi forces. So he's exploiting this history. He's also really exaggerating it, blowing it completely out of proportion. But do the claims of a fascist threat, do they still resonate with ordinary Russians? Well, for many, they do. I mean, look, Putin is essentially plugging into a ready-made slot in the Russian psyche here. It's this slot that has this deep-seated fear of fascists and Nazis. And if you look closely at what Putin has been saying

in recent years, that rhetoric about the threat of a new generation of Nazis in Eastern Europe, near Russia's borders, has been getting more and more intense. And so by the time we get to 2021, to Victory Day, May 9th of last year, if you listen closely, you hear Putin essentially making a very direct case about there being a real and present threat to Russia from Nazi ideology. He says that nearly a century after it first emerged, Nazi ideology is again being deployed by Russia's enemies.

And, you know, these are words that in a way they sound like a stock phrase, but in retrospect, it almost feels like Putin was trying to tell us something that a lot of us missed about just how serious his preparations for war were. He said that Russia will defend itself against these Nazis, that it will be tough in protecting its national interests and the security of its people using the Russian armed forces. Glory to the victorious people! Happy holiday! Happy Victory Day!

Hurrah! Hurrah! You know, at the time it sounded like a vague and empty threat. But then if you put that in the context of how Putin has been hyping that Nazi threat more and more, it sounds like a preparatory justification for the war that was to come. But does he say, Anton, where the threat is coming from? I mean, who are these Nazis? So he doesn't actually say it in that speech in 2021. But the way Putin has laid out this narrative now for several years is that he says that far right forces in Ukraine,

anti-Russian, Russophobic forces in Ukraine are being fostered and supported by the U.S. in the name of weakening Russia. That's his overarching narrative is this is all about the U.S. allegedly being determined to destroy Russia by strengthening fascist far-right forces on Russia's borders. So by the time we get to this Victory Day speech on Monday, Putin has really already laid the groundwork for why he went to war in Ukraine. I mean, what his justification was. Yeah, exactly.

And he didn't even really need to explain the whole subtext. We know it so well by now, you know, that this idea that Russia is allegedly fighting Nazis in Ukraine who are being financed and armed by the U.S. in the name of eventually destroying Russia. Right. And I guess, Anton, fundamentally, what's so strange about this is that it's Russia, of course, who's the aggressor, right? It's Russia doing the bombing of Ukrainian cities. And it's just in some ways so perverse that Putin is making the argument that the big bad aggressors are in Ukraine, when in fact he is the one making the war. in Ukraine, when in fact he is the one making the war. Absolutely. And so, you know, this is really the clearest indication of how Putin has perverted, distorted this most important of Russian

holidays. You know, this holiday used to be about the idea of never again, that Russians would never again allow this kind of war to happen. And now it has become, to quote a popular bumper sticker in Russia, it's become, we can do it again. The idea that Russia has this tremendously powerful military and deserves some kind of great power status that allows it to dominate its neighbors. So yes, it's all turning reality upside down by using the World War II history to justify what is now a war of aggression. And it's also undermining that fundamental meaning of this holiday and the very special and solemn place that it held in the traditions of so many Russian families. Yeah, in a way it cheapens it. Yeah. So Anton, I'm thinking of the fact that this day is called, of course, Victory Day. And

from everything we know about what's going on in Ukraine right now, Russia is pretty far away from that. In fact, could not be farther away from that. So given everything you've told us about this day, its meaning, the speeches, and how Putin has used them, how are you processing what he said on Monday? I mean, bring it back to that barometer metaphor, right? What did Monday's speech tell us? Well, one thing it told us is that Putin is still very sensitive, I think, to Russian public opinion. Again, there were all these expectations

that he would call on some kind of national mobilization, some kind of new national sacrifice to take on these so-called Ukrainian Nazis, but he did not. And it seems the one reason he didn't is that he's still very sensitive of asking too much from the Russian public. sensitive of asking too much from the Russian public. Putin sees that there is broad support of the war, but I think there's a fear in the Kremlin that that support is skin deep, that once Putin starts asking Russians to give up a lot for this war effort, that he might see that support dissipate. So that's one thing that we saw, this reluctance on Putin's part to ask too much of the Russian public. In that sense, there's a fear that the May 9th rhetoric about the present threat may kind of be catching up with reality about the war, right? That

Russian soil, Russian lives aren't really in danger, but a mass mobilization would put them in danger. Yes, absolutely, it would. So that's, you know, I think one reason why we didn't see that in that speech on Monday. And then the second thing that this leaves me with is the concern of what happens next. You know, Putin really didn't lay out any kind of path to how this war is going to end. And he's been in recent weeks increasingly casting it as essentially a war between Russia and NATO, that the US is using this as a proxy war against Russia to weaken Russia. And every new arms delivery by Washington to Ukrainian forces strengthens that narrative from Putin's point of view. And what we have not seen yet is Putin respond somehow.

Putin hasn't hit back yet. He's been saying and threatening that he would hit back. A few weeks ago, he said that his retaliatory strike would be lightning fast whenever it is that the West crosses Russia's red lines here. But we don't really know where those red lines are, and we don't know how Russia will respond. There's a broad view among analysts that at some point, we will see some kind of Russian retaliation, but we haven't seen it yet. And so that's probably the main thing that a lot of folks came out of this Victory Day speech asking is what will Putin do next? And we still don't have that answer.

Right. So you're left really trying to understand the things he didn't say as much as the things he did say. Absolutely. This was really one of those speeches where what was left unsaid was just as important, if not more so, actually, than what was said. Anton, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. Thank you, Sabrina. On Monday, as Russia commemorated its victory in World War II, Britain's Secretary of Defense, Ben Wallace,

accused Russia of committing the same sins as Nazi Germany by invading Ukraine and killing its civilians. Through the invasion of Ukraine, Putin, his inner circle, and his generals are now mirroring fascism and tyranny of 77 years ago, repeating the errors of the last century's totalitarian regimes. Rather than honoring the memory of May 9th, Wallace said that Russia was now betraying that past. Their unprovoked, illegal, senseless, and self-defeating invasion of Ukraine, their attacks against innocent civilians and their homes,

their widespread atrocities, including the deliberate targeting of women and children, they all corrupt the memory of past sacrifices and Russia's once-proud global reputation. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the son and namesake of the former dictator of the Philippines looked set to win the country's presidential election, 36 years after his family was forced into exile. Early results showed that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won 28.8 million votes,

more than double that of his closest rival. Ferdinand Marcos was driven from office in 1986 when millions of Filipinos united to decry deadly abuses and rampant corruption. But his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., returned to the Philippines with his mother in the early 1990s. His opponents fear that, as president, Mr. Marcos, who is now 64,

will shield the departing leader, Rodrigo Duterte, from prosecution. Mr. Duterte, who ruled as a strongman, worked to aid a Marcos comeback during his years in power. Today's episode was produced by Caitlin Roberts, Sydney Harper, Michael Simon-Johnson, and Ricky Nowetzki. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Rachel Quester, contains original music by Marian Lozano,

and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.