By Fariha Aqib
Victory Day, observed on 9 May, is more than a ceremonial date marked in calendars or a fixed ritual of state remembrance. It functions instead as a sustained act of historical memory, one that insists on returning the present to the moral and material reality of the past. It is a day shaped by absence as much as presence, by silence as much as sound, and by the uneasy weight of what was endured in order for a future to exist at all. At its core, Victory Day commemorates the defeat of fascism in the Second World War, a conflict that did not merely redraw borders but ruptured the very idea of human security. It was a war that absorbed entire societies into its machinery, leaving behind landscapes of devastation and generations marked by loss.
The language often used to describe it can feel insufficient, because the scale of suffering resists neat summary. Yet within that vastness, the day endures as a point of collective reckoning. The memory it carries is not abstract. It is rooted in the lived experiences of millions who confronted the extremities of war with limited certainty and even less protection. Soldiers moved through frozen fronts and shattered cities with a combination of discipline and desperation. Civilians, meanwhile, held together fragments of everyday life under conditions that continually threatened to undo them. Mothers waited in uncertainty that often resolved into grief rather than reunion. Children grew up too quickly in environments where survival itself became an achievement.
For Russia and several other former Soviet states, this day carries a particularly profound resonance. The Second World War, often referred to in this context as the Great Patriotic War, was experienced not only as a geopolitical struggle but as an existential one. Entire towns were erased, industries dismantled, and communities fractured beyond recognition. The war demanded not only military resistance but a sustained collective endurance that blurred the boundaries between civilian and combatant life. Victory, when it finally came, was therefore not simply a strategic outcome but a survival of society itself. This is why the commemorations are marked by a tone that is closer to reverence than celebration.
Parades and public ceremonies, with their carefully ordered displays and ceremonial precision, are not designed solely to glorify military achievement. They are structured acts of remembrance, intended to hold open a space between past and present. Medals worn by veterans are not ornamental objects but physical markers of lived experience, carrying within them stories that are often too heavy for words. And yet, beneath the formal rituals, there remains something more fragile and human. The veterans who still attend these events, often in advanced age, embody a living connection to a world that is rapidly moving from memory into history. Their presence introduces a quiet urgency to the proceedings. Each step they take is a reminder that the past is not entirely past, that it continues to exist in bodies that once moved through the uncertainties of war.
However, Victory Day is not only about looking backward. It inevitably raises questions about the present and the future. The act of remembering large-scale conflict carries with it an implicit warning: that the conditions which made such devastation possible must never be allowed to return unexamined. In a world that continues to experience armed conflict, displacement and political fracture, the lessons of the Second World War remain uncomfortably relevant. There is also a deeper ethical dimension to the day. It asks not only that we remember victory, but that we understand its cost. The idea of triumph can sometimes obscure the human reality that made it possible. Every strategic success was accompanied by personal loss; every liberated territory was marked by those who did not live to see it.
In this sense, Victory Day is less a conclusion than a reminder of unfinished moral responsibility. To remember, then, is not a passive act. It requires attention, and a willingness to sit with discomfort. It requires acknowledging that the freedoms and stability enjoyed in the present are built upon foundations shaped by extraordinary sacrifice. Moreover, it requires resisting the temptation to simplify history into uncomplicated narratives of heroism alone. As time moves further away from 1945, the challenge of remembrance becomes more complex. Fewer living witnesses remain, and the transmission of memory increasingly depends on institutions, education and cultural practice. This shift makes the tone of commemoration even more significant.
It is not enough for Victory Day to function as ritual; it must also continue to serve as reflection. In that sense, the day carries a quiet but persistent demand. It asks societies not only to honor the dead, but to consider the living implications of what they endured. It insists that peace is neither automatic nor guaranteed, but something that must be actively preserved, often against the same forces of division that once made war possible. Victory Day, ultimately, is not simply about a past war. It is about the responsibility of memory itself. It is about ensuring that the silence left by the fallen is not empty, but instructive. In addition, it is about recognizing that history, once lived at such cost, cannot be reduced to ceremony alone.
(The writer is member of diplomatic circle, having serious knowledge of politics and geopolitics of the region. She can be reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
