A Bittersweet Celebration

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It was, Vladimir Putin said last week, "the triumph of civilization over fascism." In Russia, May 9 marks the 60th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany — an event that in Western Europe is marked the day before — and Russia is going all out to celebrate. Leaders, from U.S. President George W. Bush to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, are expected to come to Moscow for a military parade in Red Square, flyovers by World War II-era fighter planes and, organizers promise, a "stupendous" fireworks display. But for security reasons, ordinary Muscovites are not invited; instead, they've been encouraged to leave town to work their potato plots. The center of the capital will be closed off so that, in the words of political commentator Sergei Buntman, "vagrants, illegal residents, prostitutes and Muscovites" won't get in the way of the festivities.

It's a pointed reminder that for many Europeans, Victory in Europe day is a bittersweet occasion. For some, the official memories are fond. In the French town of Reims, where the Nazis surrendered, there will be three days of concerts, parades and ceremonies, while President Jacques Chirac will honor Allied war veterans in Paris on May 8. In London, pop stars and celebrities will perform in a concert for 15,000 people in Trafalgar Square. Berlin will host the "Day for Democracy" celebration, a series of speeches and concerts, around the Brandenburg Gate.

In Russia, the victory over fascism was the high-water mark of Soviet achievement. But that triumph came at the loss of well over 20 million lives, largely because Stalin's purges had destroyed the Red Army's officer class before the war started. Until June 1941, Germany and Soviet Russia were allies, and Moscow had seized the Baltic states as part of a carve-up of Eastern Europe provided for by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Even the massive German invasion seemed, paradoxically, to promise an end to Stalin's dictatorship. Russians began to hope that victory over Hitler would bring a political thaw at home after the brutality of the 1930s. They were quickly disillusioned. With victory, repression returned. Hundreds of thousands of returning pows were sent straight to the Gulag for the crime of being captured by the Germans.

There's another kind of ambivalence about V-E day in those states that were once part of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact; many viewed the defeat of Nazism as simply a change of occupier. "We cannot pretend that May 9 was a day of liberty and independence for Poland," said Donald Tusk, leader of Poland's center-right Platforma Obywatelska. "For Poland the fight against Hitlerism and communism ended only in 1989." Rather than V-E day, Poles are more likely to recall the 1940 massacre of over 21,000 Polish officers at Katyn, in western Russia, a crime that Moscow acknowledged only in the Gorbachev era. Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga says she's going to Moscow in the hope that Russia will one day "find the courage to face up to its own past history ... and condemn the numerous crimes against humanity that were committed by the Soviet Union in the name of communism." Around Europe, V-E day will remain an anniversary with an edge.