In March 2025 your former Novgorod village correspondent began keeping a journal that was checked for grammatical and orthographical errors by Irina as part of a short-lived attempt to improve our caveman Russian. The following text is our best attempt at a word-for-word translation of a journal entry written on May 11, 2025.
On May 9 I went to the village social club with Katya, Tanya, and Vera Mikhailovna. The party soon turned into farce. Within 10 minutes, everyone was drunk, yelling “Hooray!”, and taking pictures near the eternal flame (a light bulb). Then Sergei Petrovich, who was already drunk, fell in love with Tanya.
“She’s so beautiful. Does she have a husband?” — he asked. [Tanya was half his age and married with children, which he knew perfectly well.]
Then when everyone was really drunk and still yelling “Hooray”, an elderly woman arrived. I forget her name. She was the one that sold the house to Katya. In autumn, her son had died in Ukraine.
She gave a speech: “Yes, you can celebrate today, but there is still work to be done. There is still fascism in Ukraine. We have to defeat the vipers! If I were young I would go fight!” — she said to the roomful of drunk people.
The club got quiet. The drunk men had nothing to say. Then they ran up to her with a glass of cognac and invited her to drink.
Can you imagine? Her son died in a ditch in Kherson for nothing, and she wants others to do the same. Nobody in that room wanted to die in a trench in Ukraine. But everyone pretended that dying in a dirty hole in Ukraine was noble and honorable.
After that the woman left and everyone drank more.
Look! This is your Victory Day!
Optimal remembrance
Through no fault of your own, there is a high probability that you associate Victory Day with sausage-shaped weapons of mass destruction cruising down Red Square:
The only people who should be dying in a ditch in Ukraine are the war profiteers on "both sides" of the messy protracted meat grinder, the bankers, and all avarice multinational corporations that create wealth via death.
I understand and completely agree with your point that young men are always & everywhere sent off as cannon fodder to kill & die in wars for the benefit & profits of the ruling class oligarchy. However, in this context, I understand these people's perspective. My partner was Russian & Victory Day was almost sacred. He lived in Moscow & his brother came from St. Petersburg with photos of their grandfathers mounted on placards to march in the Immortal Regiment parade - something completely separate & different from the military parade on Red Square. The feeling of unity & solidarity was palpable & very powerful. Both of their grandfathers fought in the Great Patriotic War; one was killed in the Battle of Moscow and the other survived the war. That war was existential for Russia and unless you've experienced that kind of threat & devastation, it's impossible to comprehend. Indigenous people are inextricably tied to their land, going back countless generations; it's part of their identity. It's like the Palestinians in Gaza who, even in the face of a genocide that seeks to annihilate their very existence, refuse to leave. Serozha used to say that he was Russian to his bones which I think captures the essence of it.