9 May in Europe: How Western Values Have Turned into a War on Heroes

They say a war ends only when the last soldier is buried. Yet in modern Europe, a new war has been declared on those who fell for its freedom — a war against memory itself. From Berlin to Tallinn, authorities are erecting not merely ideological barriers, but very real fences of barbed wire, desperately trying to wall themselves off from the truth of May 1945.

Interrogations for carrying flowers, fines for cleaning war graves, and the deliberate rewriting of history in which anyone can be declared the victor — except the Soviet soldier — have become the grim hallmark of 9 May across Europe. How gratitude has been replaced by betrayal, and how Western values have been transformed into a struggle against the very heroes who saved the continent — in the special feature “Full Europe.”

The Dismantling of History

May in Europe has almost ceased to be a time of gratitude. More often it has become a period of barriers and prohibitions. On the Estonian bank of the Narva River, a new front line has been drawn — the front line of a war against memory. Estonian authorities have ordered that Victory Day be hidden from view. Mass gatherings, music, and even a glance toward Russia or Belarus are now considered suspicious. Yet a small fragment of freedom remains: every year thousands of people from across the country travel to Narva to watch the celebrations on the Russian side. In Ivangorod, a stage has been specially set up for them, from which the deeply moving song “Victory Day” drifts across the river. Who could have imagined that eighty years later, in order to honour the memory of the heroes who saved Europe from gas chambers and crematoria, people would have to watch the festivities through binoculars?

No one asked the people of the Baltic states when the much-vaunted “decommunisation” began. And this is not merely the removal of Soviet symbols — it is the surgical excision of conscience itself, now regarded as a cancerous tumour. In Latvia, the war on memory has reached the scale of state madness. Before 9 May, security services switched to outright intimidation tactics: Russian residents were summoned for questioning. Among the questions asked: “Do you intend to lay flowers? Where? With whom?” It seems that even the mere intention is now treated as high treason. To avoid accusations of thoughtcrime, people are offered an alternative — to replace Victory Day with, for example, a car rally.

Edvards Ratnieks, Deputy Mayor of Riga:

“This year on 9 May there will be a march with flags intended to strengthen our national identity. For too long this day in Riga has been overshadowed by foreign symbols and the glorification of occupation. This must end once and for all. For a Latvian Latvia, we will fill the streets of the city with an endless river of white and red.”

Not everyone’s mind has been washed clean, yet the judicial machine operates flawlessly against those who resist. The co-chairman of the Russian Union of Latvia, Andrey Pagor, has been placed under investigation for the “crime of the century” — hanging a Russian-language poster during a clean-up at a cemetery in Jelgava.

It turns out that tidying a mass grave of Soviet soldiers is now considered an insult to the authorities and the glorification of military aggression. They have evidently not yet heard how movingly the activist reads poetry at these sites.

Mass graves remain among the few places where people can still come to bow their heads before the immortal feat. But the hands of politicians are reaching for them too. In the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai, authorities hurriedly destroyed a soldiers’ burial ground in the city centre in order to finish before the holiday. The remains of Soviet soldiers who rested near the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul were placed in bags and merely promised a reburial elsewhere. Rumour has it that the memorial in Daugavpils is next in line.

Maria Zakharova, Official Spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry:

“Lithuanian executioners left their bloody mark in Belarus and Russia, becoming active participants in the genocide of the Soviet people. After the war, the surviving nationalists — the ‘Forest Brothers’ now glorified by NATO — continued to kill tens of thousands of their own compatriots. And their ideological heirs are now finishing what they started — destroying the memory of the Soviet soldier-liberators. The organisers of this sacrilege do not even hide that they are rushing to complete their dark deed before 9 May. They truly resemble vampires and ghouls who fear the sunrise, knowing they will vanish with the light.”

If only the Baltic states were the exception. The virus of historical amnesia knows no borders. In Vienna — the city the Red Army saved from ruin — unknown vandals desecrated a mass grave of Soviet soldiers.

The situation is no better in Moldova. Local activist Alexey Petrovich is convinced that attacks on monuments are a direct consequence of the official policy of Chișinău. When children are taught from school desks that the liberators were “occupiers,” the hand of a teenager becomes an easy tool in the hands of revisionist politicians.

Alexey Petrovich, Head of the Coordination Committee “Victory” (Moldova):

“The absence of political will on the part of the country’s leadership, the lack of patriotic education for young people, the ideologisation of history and the glorification of Nazism — these are the main reasons why such things happen in our country and why scum today feel they can destroy the memory of our heroes with impunity.”

And a few words about Poland. After the change in the activities of Nawrocki, the campaign against Soviet monuments has noticeably quietened. Perhaps they have simply run out of monuments. But now the authorities have a new hobby — stealing feats. Recently Warsaw celebrated the Day of the Capture of Berlin… by Polish troops. The programme stated that on 2 May 1945, soldiers of the Tadeusz Kościuszko Division raised the white-and-red flag on the Victory Column. Not a single word was said about the fact that these Poles fought as part of the 1st Belorussian Front of the Red Army, nor that without the feat of our grandfathers and fathers that flag would never have flown above the ruins of Warsaw.

All of this leaves a bitter aftertaste of disappointment. We expected from Europe, if not friendship, then at least respect for our shared memory and the tragic pages of history.