May 9th 1945: Russia celebrates the end of the Great Patriotic War
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=636832
With 30 million dead, cities in ruins, its economy wrecked, the day the
war ended has a special meaning for Russia. This is the most sacred
public holiday, but its meaning changes with each generation, says
Andrew Osborn in Moscow
09 May 2005
In London they danced in the fountains but in Moscow they were too
shell-shocked, too exhausted and too battle-weary to manage such high
jinks. Up to 30 million soldiers and civilians were dead, the Soviet
Union had lost a third of its national wealth, cities such as
Stalingrad had been reduced to lunar landscapes, and an entire
generation of men had been decimated.
That is not to say there was not euphoria though. Sixty years ago
today, searchlights illuminated a city that a few years earlier had
almost fallen to the Germans, cannon-fire and fireworks exploded over
the Kremlin and relieved citizens crowded into Red Square to share
their enormous collective relief.
Russia
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/cd3eb1840b43f444
.
|
