Today’s main issue of the contribution of the peoples of Russia to the Great Victory is the issue of preserving the historical memory of the Great Victory as the achievement of all Soviet people, of all nationalities of the USSR, the leading analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza, Andrey Petrov, said today during a live broadcast of the National Question program on Vetsi FM.
The National Question is a weekly program on Vesti.FM, during which various aspects of the national relations, primarily in Russia, are discussed. Today's program was dedicated to Victory Day, the participation of the peoples of Russia and more broadly, the entire USSR in the Great Patriotic War.
As Andrey Petrov explained, first of all, while the historical memory of the multinationality of the Great Victory lives in people, it holds them together and ensures the interethnic unity, ‘’to which one should strive simply for the sake of a normal life in a multinational Russia." ‘’If a person remembers that his ancestors fought and won with the ancestors of his Georgian / Buryat / Jewish / Ukrainian neighbor, he will not face the question ‘’What are we all doing together in this country?’’ Because if the peoples found the strength to unite during the difficult wartime, then, during more or less stable peacetime we do not have any significant reason for discords, " the analyst stressed.
The obvious problem is that according to human standards the Great Victory was long time ago- it happened 72 years ago, and the number of veterans, who are already 90 years old, is falling. "And this means that there is less and less alive memory of the war. Before the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, the Public Opinion Foundation conducted a poll, which showed that 79% of the respondents had a relative, who fought, but 74% of the respondents said, that their relatives-veterans were no longer alive. 43% did not know where their relatives fought, 38% did not have any military relics, only 28% had military photos. Only 28% listened to the stories of the war veterans, and among youth this figure is even lower - 21%. This creates the conditions for the memory loss, " Andrei Petrov noticed.
In his opinion, the solution to the problem is the initiative ‘Immortal Regiment’, during which people bring back symbolically their relatives-veterans to the formation and show that their feat has been preserved in the family and national memory. "Thanks to the Immortal Regiment, people see the multinationality of the Great Victory firsthand: the representatives of different nations march together, shoulder to shoulder, as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers once did. This is what we need - people to see that their families were united in the past, and feel their unity during such events, " the leading analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza assured.
"So now the task is to popularize the Immortal Regiment as much as possible. The poll published yesterday by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) reports, that 95% of the respondents know about this initiative and are positive about it, which is good, but only 24% participate in it, another 40% plan to participate in the future. If we raise the number of participants in the march, we will guarantee the preservation of the historical memory of the Great Victory’s multinationality, ‘’ Andrey Petrov concluded.
