“Happy is the nation that has no heroes.” These words of Bertolt Brecht must be taken as a sad irony. Such a nation, then, has known no tragedy, but by the same token, such a nation has known no glory.
On 22nd June, 1941, a terrible tragedy befell the Soviet nation. Hitler’s Germany attacked the USSR. It was not something totally unexpected. Having read Mein Kampf (see my entry Stalin Reads Mein Kampf, posted on February 13, 2011), Stalin had been preparing the nation for war for more than a decade, putting her life and development on the military track, and making rearmament of the armed forces with superior weapons the highest priority of the nation. In order to ensure that the goal be met, he had been playing for time, and, although when the hour had struck the weapons had not yet entered mass production, the country responded to Hitler’s attack with mass heroic self-sacrifice, which stopped Hitler’s push by the sheer national effort.
That terrible war, like the War of 1812 against Napoleon, became known as the Great Patriotic (Fatherland) War, and in that war every Soviet citizen with few exceptions was a hero of the Fatherland.
Like every Soviet family, my family had a great many dead and wounded, close relatives and dear friends. My father was a military soldier of that war fighting at the front. My mother was a civilian soldier of that war, sacrificing all for victory. I was named after St. Alexander Nevsky, Russia’s warrior patron saint, the greatest Russian of all time, according to recent national polls. I was born, baptized, and raised with that sacred memory of war, the memory of tragedy and glory that every true Russian proudly carries in his and her genes, whether born a century ago or today.
This day, 22nd of June 1941, was not only the start of Russia’s war against Hitler. It was also the day when Russia started winning World War II for the whole world.
(Also see my entry June Of War, posted on June 22, 2011.)
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