This year the day of the Legionnaire is March 16 — it has been almost no protests and scandals: detained just a few malcontents, and “Latvian anti-Nazi Committee” he skipped they claimed the rally. But protests are now planned for the celebration of the opposite camp: may 9, society Nacionālo karavīru atbalstam is going to organize a picket of fifty people at the National library.
“National warriors” — soldiers of the Latvian SS units in the terminology of their fans. Celebrating in may are usually protesting in March — that they are going to respond in kind. Newton, napadow osibisa his Apple, hissed: force of action is equal and opposite reaction. He assented Neatkarīgā rīta avīze in the article about the planned picket, saying that Russian used to dampen the occasion the players will now receive a “return”, a symmetrical response. That before the city authorities, but they hold neutrality: everyone is free to celebrate and to protest within the law. If only there was no war — in the sense of the massacre.
So, two spring dates increasingly resemble each other. Kind of like polar opposites — and in fact almost twins.
I previously had to compare the March events at the Freedom monument and the may at a Monument to liberators. Say, two towers, two towers opposing each other almost by Tolkien.
Both informal — and both are, nevertheless, become the primary information reasons. Both serve as a symbol and catalyst of ideological divide, which on other days is possible though as-that “to hush up”. Moreover, may 9 and 16 March directly “feed off” each other, inspiring ideologues on both sides for intransigence. Many are quite quiet and loyal Russian peredergivaete annually in March hearing: “the procession of legionaries SS and their supporters”. Well, the may events in Victory Park really look amazing in a country where Soviet symbols is prohibited by law, and the outcome of world war II are officially interpreted as a re-occupation (denying what shines 5 years on the bench). Don’t be the annual Victory Day celebrations, the terrifying tales about the Russian fifth column, much would have lost in credibility. In the Donbas were also popular the ribbons.
About “the two towers” I once wrote in a book published in Russia a book about Riga, saying that spring fever in the two series is our national identity. Where, paradoxically, there is even something obsheprinyatoye. It’s kind of forced to found local formula tolerance: each of the two camps your holiday, its heroes, its pain and its historical truth. Both camps frown, but suffer. The protesters are protesting a little bit, the police stands out, the authorities allowed the March of the Legionnaires, but turn a blind eye to Soviet symbols. Not that the Donbas, and even the massacre doesn’t happen. Enforced parity. The balance is maintained.
In the same way?
No, not so.
I mean, Yes, the muzzle do not beat it, we all have done, we must continue in the same spirit. But the holidays aren’t equivalent.
Anything they don’t like: on may 9 and March 16. And are celebrated equally, and evoke different emotions. And the truth behind them is different and different pain.
May 9 brings together the vast majority of Russians in Latvia. In fact, it’s almost the only thing we truly have in common: regardless of their social status, political activity and ideological orientation. We are passive and fragmented, we don’t organize street actions and often ignore the election — but Victory Day is not ignores almost none of us. Too huge scale of perfect, in the 1940s, our nation, is too much paid it for this price (27 million dead is 13 present Latvia). Too obvious to all of us that our ancestors were “on the right side of history.”
March 16, Latvians, by contrast, divides. Because like it or treats the historical facts no matter how we cultivate the idea of the country of the victim (largely justified) — still people who swear Hitler, die and kill for the Nazi Reich (whatever they may believe) could not be the subject of an unconditional national pride.
It is for us, may 9 is a day of pride. It is that unconditional and national. I have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in talking about both grandfathers-war veterans.
16th Mar same the majority of Latvian politicians and the media speak in offended-irritated tone: again, this date enemies want to use for provocations and name-calling! That is, they — speak — themselves one way or another acknowledge that the reason for the name-calling there, something questionable from the point of view of outsiders. Something makes excuses to be annoyed, Prim lips. Something may need, but is not intended for prying eyes — like the administration of natural needs. Well, some “shameful pleasure” guilty pleasure, historical and ideological self-satisfaction.
What good is the victory over Nazism, I not only understand, Russian, but also American, English, French, German, Israeli, Chinese — and on through an endless list. And try to explain all of them (Americans, French, and especially the Israelis), what good would be a victory for the Waffen-SS: including the Latvian Legion division “Dead head” and Einsatzgruppen.
History, especially the history of wars, deals with a different hook, not combined with each other and not amenable to forming in order of size. There are however Latvian farmer, removed in 1940 in the carriage-cattle to the Yenisei, and really landed in a concentration camp Salaspils inhabitant of the Pskov villages, burned the Latvian shutsmanah. Not so often the case when one of the parties in war acts power so consistently, deliberately and uniquely inhuman that this in itself puts a clear and definitive moral evaluation. But the Second world was exactly the case.
Here the moral balance of the long-announced, fixed in the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal and obvious to the world. And if someone isn’t obvious — so it’s not because he has a unique, special situation, and because he’s in his office busy with the ideological self-satisfaction.
Remember a landmark speech one local owner luxury real estate of the cemetery, saying that expanding the Caspian roach on a newspaper, they will celebrate the occupation of Latvia? We celebrate not the occupation of Latvia. We celebrate the fact that the rotten fascist scum drove a bullet in the forehead, and scum of humanity cobble together a strong coffin. That from the mouths of prisoners ceased to pull gold crowns, the fact that prisoners ceased to be frozen alive in bathrooms with ice, that people stopped millions to veer into the “showers” and burned in industrial scale crematoria. The fact that in the camp of ten year old children have ceased to pump blood. What SS-obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, who invented the method of disposal of the human material called “can of sardines” (when the new shoot was forced to lie on the bodies of the slain), was publicly hanged near the place where we gather every year on may 9.
We have something to celebrate.
Want to protest? Protest. Care.
