Indeed, his fellow marchers varied from cranky to outraged on the subject of the parade. “They don’t realize there are tanks lined up right behind them.” Petrov, 40, who carried an anti-NATO banner. “Younger people think NATO is a fabulous group of people, kind uncles with drums and shiny uniforms,” said Mr. Petrov, who joined about 7,000 Communists at a May Day march last weekend, said in an interview that he had noticed the generation gap. The resistance, she said, comes less from veterans, many of whom view the foreign presence as a tribute, than from Russians ages 40 to 55, those most powerfully imprinted by Soviet education.ĭmitri S. American troops were invited to march in the parade. Russian sailors waited Tuesday for a rehearsal of the Victory Day parade scheduled for Sunday. Medvedev had taken a political risk by inviting troops from the United States, Britain and France, but not a big one, and that he did it, almost certainly, after consulting with pollsters. Trenin, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. In recent years, the mausoleum has disappeared behind large posters of the Russian flag, but the Kremlin reintroduced the display of tanks and nuclear missile launchers, a show of muscle that was phased out after the Soviet collapse.Įmbedded in this year’s parade is a symbolic challenge to generations of Soviet textbooks, which cast the conflict as an exclusively Soviet-German one, said Dmitri V. But he climbed back up in 1996, when he was desperately in need of Communist votes. Yeltsin broke from tradition by reviewing the troops from the foot of Lenin’s mausoleum rather than from its roof. The Victory Day parade has always presented the Kremlin with a battery of symbolic choices. Invite Ramses the Second! Let them vindicate themselves, too.” “I see any action on their part as a form of vindication. Bortsov, an 83-year old veteran, with a smile. “I think it’s good, though many, many are against it,” said Fyodor G. Many say the Allies held back until it was clear which side would win. Most Russians say they believe that the Red Army would have defeated Hitler without any assistance from Western allies, Levada’s research shows. There is ambivalence, even for those in the first category. Russian leaders have taken pains to explain that the Americans - along with contingents from Britain, France and Poland - were invited as representatives of the “anti-Hitler coalition.” The occasion is the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, a date that carries an almost sacred meaning in Russia. Never before in history have active-duty American troops been invited to march in the Victory Day parade, according to the United States military. He might do something with his footwear the question is what. Three-hundred-dollar Italian negligees pool in the windows of the State Department Store, that showcase of proletarian output a 20-foot Mercedes-Benz symbol glints on the skyline across the Moscow River.īut it is still worth considering how the irascible Soviet premier would react if he were treated - as all of Russia will be on Sunday - to the sight of American infantrymen marching through the gate toward Moscow’s great fortress, the Kremlin. MOSCOW - There is a lot about Red Square these days that would make Khrushchev squirm.
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