Never Again: Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism

In April 2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a decree by President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, declaring May 8 as "Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation" (in memory of the victims of World War II and reconciliation among the participating countries of World War II). This date, along with May 9, which was then still an official state holiday marking the Victory over Nazism in World War II (also celebrated in the former USSR and now in the Russian Federation), was commemorated in the following years until the full-scale invasion of Russian occupation forces in Ukraine. Since then, in May 2023, the Verkhovna Rada canceled May 9 as a state holiday, leaving only one holiday, as in the rest of Europe – May 8, Victory in Europe Day, commemorating the victory over Nazism in World War II from 1939-1945. In June of the same year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the corresponding law.

Let's discuss: where did May 9 come from in the USSR, why is Ukraine now paying such close attention to commemorative dates associated with events of World War II, and what does this have to do with the process of decommunization of contemporary Ukrainian society.

What May 8 Means for Europe

On the evening of April 29, 1945, during fierce battles for Berlin, Adolf Hitler heard the final report from Chief of Defense General Helmuth Weidling, stating that within a day, coalition forces would be at the entrance to the Reich Chancellery. The next day, April 30, 1945, the most infamous military dictator in human history took his own life by suicide.

During the night of May 2, on the Potsdam Bridge, German officers raised a white flag, and a few hours later, the same General Weidling, who commanded the Berlin garrison, signed an order calling on all German soldiers to surrender.

On May 7, 1945, in Reims, France, after hours of negotiations, the German Instrument of Surrender was signed. Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith accepted the surrender on behalf of the Anglo-American side, and Major General Ivan Susloparov represented the Soviet Union, with French Brigadier General François Sevez as a witness.

The Instrument came into effect on May 8 at 23:01. On this day, in many liberated cities across Europe, there were large celebratory demonstrations. However, in the USSR, Victory Day came only a day later.

How an Alternative Date of May 9 Emerged in the USSR

Despite the fact that on May 7, at 02:41 in the morning, in the presence of 17 journalists, General Colonel of the Wehrmacht Alfred Jodl signed the German Instrument of Surrender, the senior ranks of the United States and Great Britain agreed to postpone the public announcement of the surrender by 36 hours, as sworn by the press representatives. This was done to allow the Soviet Union to prepare a second capitulation ceremony in Berlin - this was Stalin's will.

Present at the signing of the first Instrument, Soviet General Susloparov signed at his own risk and peril. Before signing the Instrument, the general sent a request to the Stavka of the Supreme Commander of the Red Army, but did not receive a response by the time of signing the Instrument. The response only arrived a few hours after the capitulation was adopted, stating that Susloparov had no authority to sign the Instrument, but it was too late. Moreover, despite the promise given to journalists, information about the signing of the Instrument leaked first to German radio, and then to the printed press.

And only in the USSR was information about Germany's capitulation on May 7 kept secret. Stalin was extremely dissatisfied with the fact that the Western allies of the anti-Hitler coalition had supposedly put the final point on the war. In his opinion, this diminished the role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Initially, the Soviet Generalissimo did not want to acknowledge the Reims Instrument at all, but under pressure from the allies, he made concessions and proposed to consider this document as a preliminary protocol of surrender, scheduling its final ratification for May 8 in Berlin.

The re-signing took place a few hours before midnight in the suburbs of Berlin, where the Soviet military administration was located - Marshal Georgy Zhukov placed his signature on the second Instrument. The timing was not chosen by chance - considering the difference in time zones, by Moscow time, it was already the first hour of May 9 at the time of ratification, hence the start of the countdown of the capitulation in the USSR from this date. Thanks to this manipulation, Stalin managed not only to separate the USSR from the allies but also to emphasize the special role and contribution of the Soviet Union in World War II, while downplaying the role of Europe and the USA in the victory over Nazism.

This was reflected in Soviet history textbooks, where for decades World War II was referred to exclusively as the Great Patriotic War (with Soviet periodization from June 22, 1941, to May 9, 1945), and the contribution of the allies was given only a few paragraphs compared to entire chapters dedicated to "the feat of the Soviet people under the guidance of the wise leader Joseph Stalin." The fact that the USSR initially joined the war in 1939 on the side of Hitler's Germany was understandably not communicated to Soviet schoolchildren.

"Victory Obsession" in Putin's Russia

For a long time after the end of World War II, the main holiday in the USSR remained November 7, the day of the Bolshevik coup (or the so-called "day of the October Socialist Revolution"). Victory Day was practically not celebrated until the second half of the 1960s. A noticeable shift towards May 9 occurred in the 1970s, during the era of Brezhnev's "stagnation" - the aging Soviet leaders desperately needed military pathos to breathe life into the crumbling "Soviet project."

Soviet propaganda did everything to turn the victory in World War II into the greatest achievement of the USSR. Putin's Russia propaganda has turned this victory into an absolute, making it one of the main "spiritual ties" of Russian society and transforming the obsession with military strength and past victories into a real "Cult of Victory," also known as "pobedobesie" (derived from the words "pobeda" (victory) and "bes" (demons).

According to Sean Walker of The Guardian, by the efforts of dictator Putin, the Great Patriotic War has become a "central element of Russian identity" and now has all the features of a religious cult, alongside the equally radicalized Russian Orthodoxy.

"Across Russia, some families will quietly remember the ancestors who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism, or toast the few veterans still alive. Others will take a more bombastic approach in line with the official messaging, perhaps adding a papier-mâché turret to their child’s pushchair to make it look like a tank, or daubing 'To Berlin' on their cars. A more sinister slogan that has gained popularity on Victory Day in recent years is 'We can do it again.'"

This slightly differs from the commonly accepted "Never Again" in Europe, doesn't it?

The victory of the USSR over the Nazis has been used by Kremlin propagandists to justify the aggressive policies of territorial wars waged by modern Russia in sovereign countries like Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine.

What May 8 and 9 Mean for Modern Ukraine

After the start of the hybrid war in 2014, and especially after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Ukraine's exit from the paradigm of the "Russian world" became inevitable. Reinterpreting a shared, edited Soviet history is one of the important steps in this direction, as Ukraine was one of the most affected countries during World War II, both materially and demographically - but it was not accepted to talk about this in the USSR.

"One can say that the allies won the war, but Ukraine paid the price," wrote Edgar Snow, correspondent of The Saturday Evening Post on January 27, 1945, about the preliminary results of World War II. According to the most conservative estimates, Ukraine's cumulative human losses were:

• 8-10 million fatalities;

• Material losses - 40% of the total losses of the USSR in World War II;

• Ten million Ukrainians were left homeless;

• About 700 Ukrainian cities were destroyed;

• On the territory of modern Ukraine, 50% of the Wehrmacht divisions and half of the Soviet forces fought;

• About 1.5 million Holocaust victims out of approximately 6 million were killed in Ukraine.

Moreover, during and after World War II, several wars were practically fought in Ukraine, including German-Polish, German-Soviet, and Soviet-Ukrainian wars, which finally ended in the mid-1950s.

Remaining in the wake of dictatorial Russia and sharing its state holidays turned into a fascist bacchanalia, or honoring the memory of the victims of the most terrible war of the 20th century and reconciling with the mistakes and tragedies of the past - the choice is obvious.

And Ukraine, engulfed in a new war for survival, made this choice, saying together with the entire civilized world - Never again.