MOSCOW, March 31, 2005. (RIA Novosti correspondent Yuri Bogomolov) - More state leaders have refused to come to the 60th celebrations of VE-Day in Moscow. President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko have joined the Lithuanian and Estonian "refuseniks."
Their reasons for refusing to come to Moscow can differ. Some thinks there is no reason for such a high-level meeting - there was a victory, but it was not that great. Others think the date is so important that he (Yushchenko) as the leader of the nation must celebrate it with his nation. But all of them refuse to come and so demonstrably keep a distance from their former boss.
It appears that the "small brother" syndrome is as difficult to cure as the "big brother" one. Our politicians have complexes, and the politicians of the former Soviet countries have their phobias too. The latter remind me of truant schoolboys: the reasons can vary but the essence is the same - they do not know the subject.
In our case, this lack of knowledge is compounded by an unwillingness to learn.
There are two types of cold war: information and semantic. In the former, propaganda journalists exchanged the strikes, whereas antagonist politicians take up the battle in the latter.
Here are a few examples of semantic confrontation. A foreign minister goes on a visit and refuses to lay flowers at a certain monument under a suitable pretext, thus making a certain sign. In reply, the host country lowers the status of his visit, which is a strike in response that has a certain meaning.
The Warsaw city authorities decided to name a street after Dzhokhar Dudayev. The Moscow Duma is discussing a symmetrical reply: to name a street after General Mikhail Muravyov, nicknamed the "hangman" for his ruthless suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863. These are local semantic battles.
Some former Soviet countries would like to forget Russian for the sole reason that it is the language of Lenin and hence, for them, a symbol of Russia's imperial ambitions. Getting rid of it as they got rid of monuments to the leaders of the October 1917 revolution is a way of national self-identification and state sovereignty, their politicians argue. On the other hand, granting Russian the status of a state language would be a signal of neighborliness.
There are many people in Russia who would like to fight a linguistic battle; the most radical of them demand cleansing the great and strong Russian language of foreign words.
Signal wars are becoming grotesque, here and there. After "conquering" Adzharia, Mikhail Saakashvili hurried to the beach in order to wash his face in seawater in front of cameras. He was not dirty but did it as a symbol.
Or take the sausage scandal in Lithuania, where producers sold sausage under the brand name Sovetskaya for market considerations. The scandal immediately assumed a political proportion, and though the sausage sold very well, the producers had to change the name. The market in a market-economy Lithuania ceded positions to ideology.
Worse still, Russia tends to pay back its former brothers in the same cash - some people call for boycotting the Baltic canned sprats. Not because they are not tasty or are a health-hazard, but as a sign of protest.
Some went as far as advocating a boycott of U.S.-made jeans in protest against U.S. policy, and of McDonald's and Coca-Cola in protest against the policy of globalism and the sway of multinationals.
Sports have become another field of semantic battles with a clear-cut political lining. We have seen this before, during the era of confrontation of the two superpowers. When the Soviet Union lost a battle, it lost not a cow but ideology. When it won, it proved not its superiority in a sport but its ideological superiority over the world of capital and exploitation.
Estonia played Russia in a World Cup qualifier recently. Those who monitor the Estonian media noticed the fuss that was kicked up over his soccer match. It was as if they could lose something much bigger and more important, such as national dignity, rather than a match.
Such ambitions are nearly always accompanied by the humiliation of the national dignity of the other side (and not only at the semantic level). Russian tourists who went to Tallinn to help their team received, together with the visa and a ticket, a reminder that people with firearms, alcohol, drugs, psychotropic substances and slogans popularizing all kinds of discrimination (from ethnic to sexual) would not be permitted to the stadium. Imagine coming to a house only to be warned at the entrance that you should not spit in your neighbor's plate, blow your nose in your hand, or pee past the toilet.
On the other hand, the "hospitable" gesture of the Estonian officials does not seem too offensive after the Latvian president said Russian veterans "on May 9 will put vobla [dried fish] on a newspaper, drink vodka and sing chastushkas."
The semantic battles, though bloodless, can be very painful. After them, the fighters will spend much time licking their moral wounds.
It is indicative that the Latvian diplomats tried to smooth over the faux pas made by Mrs. Vaira Vike-Freiberga. They announced that Latvians denounce fascism but cannot forgive Russians for the crimes committed by the Soviet regime in their country, which is why on May 9 they will celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany but not the victory of the Soviet Union.
One can smile at these verbal somersaults, but they camouflage also our own drama. To us, the victory is a joy mixed with pain and suffering, because we cannot forget the crimes of the Soviet regime either.
Like the other former Soviet republics, Russia experienced numerous problems with the Soviet Union. And it is waging a cold semantic war with it, but it is a civil war, which is even more painful and abhorrent. There are many pretexts for it, such as the anthem, the national flag, Lenin's mausoleum, old songs and films, the monuments to the former leaders, Soviet holidays, history textbooks, and myths about the heroes and villains of the recent past. They are the barricades, trenches and fire emplacements, the unexploded shells and bridgeheads for offensives and counteroffensives.
Stalin is one of the bridgeheads. A sculptor, Zurab Tsereteli, has sent a sculpture of the notorious Soviet leader to Volgograd. There was a time when we thought that we had won our victory from the Generalissimo, once and for all. But no, some people want to put him on the pedestal again. In 1943, we defended the city on the Volga from Hitler; today, in 2005 we have to defend him from Comrade Stalin - some people want Volgograd to be renamed Stalingrad. This is a semantic Battle of Volgograd.
It is extremely sad that a holiday that had united and reconciled us in the past can split society now. May 9 is not simply a day marking the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany; it is the day of victory of civilization over lack of it. There is no other such common and unifying holiday on the planet.
The "refuseniks" should recall the famous speech by Winston Churchill on June 22, 1941. "No one has been a more consistent opponent of communism than I have for the last twenty-five years," he said. "I will unsay no words that I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies and its tragedies, flashes away. ...The cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe."
If the past could be made to "fade away" before that great disaster, why not do it again today, if only for one day, the day of commemoration of the dead and of hope for a common future?
We needed victory, one for all, and now we have a holiday, one for all.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.
