С праздником!
Panopticon posted:
I WANT...TO TAKE...HIS FACE...OFF
COMRADES! Men and women compatriots!
The great day of victory over Germany has come. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has acknowledged herself defeated and declared unconditional surrender.
On May 7 the preliminary protocol on surrender was signed in the city of Rheims. On May 8 representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and the Supreme Command of the Soviet Troops, signed in Berlin the final act of surrender, the execution of which began at 24.00 hours on May 8.
Being aware of the wolfish habits of the German ringleaders, who regard treaties and agreements as empty scraps of paper, we have no reason to trust their words. However, this morning, in pursuance of the act of surrender, the German troops began to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops en masse. This is no longer an empty scrap of paper. This is actual surrender of Germany’s armed forces. True, one group of German troops in the area of Czechoslovakia is still evading surrender. But I trust that the Red Army will be able to bring it to its senses.
Now we can state with full justification that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of the great victory of our people over German imperialism has come.
The great sacrifices we made in the name of the freedom and independence of our Motherland, the incalculable privations and sufferings experienced by our people in the course of the war, the intense work in the rear and at the front, placed on the altar of the Motherland, have not been in vain, and have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The age-long struggle of the Slav peoples for their existence and their independence has ended in victory over the German invaders and German tyranny.
Henceforth the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace among peoples will fly over Europe.
Three years ago Hitler declared for all to hear that his aims included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the wresting from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic lands and other areas. He declared bluntly: “We will destroy Russia so that she will never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. However, Hitler’s crazy ideas were not fated to come true—the progress of the war scattered them to the winds. In actual fact the direct opposite of the Hitlerites’ ravings has taken place. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is celebrating Victory, although it does not intend either to dismember or to destroy Germany.
Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.
I congratulate you upon victory, my dear men and women compatriots!
Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our Motherland and won victory over the enemy!
Glory to our great people, the people victorious!
Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle against the enemy and gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!
*wipes tear f rom eye*
Dear friends, comrades, colleagues:
Today, May 9, is Victory Day, "Den' Pobedy," in Russia.
It was first inaugurated in the 16 republics of the Soviet Union following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945 (after midnight, thus on 9 May Moscow Time). The Soviet government announced the victory early on 9 May after the signing ceremony in Berlin.
Let us pause for a moment to remember the incredible heroism of the people of the Soviet Union, who defeated the Nazi Wehrmacht, the combined forces of all of German-occupied plus fascist volunteers from Spain, Italy, and France, and other non-occupied countries.
To help us understand this heroism, here are a few quotations from a recent book: Wendy Z. Goldman & Donald Filtzer (eds), /Hunger and War. Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union//
//during World War II/. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015.
For four years, the Soviet civilian population walked to work, shivered in rags and broken shoes, spent long hours in machines and freezing shops and turned out the armaments that beat the Fascist armies on the Eastern Front. By 1944, male defence workers, the country’s best-fed civilians, were beginning to die of starvation. The preciousness of the victory over Fascism lies not only in the defeat of the Nazis’ murderous colonial fantasies, or in the Red Army’s military achievements, but also in the daily actions of millions of hungry, even starving people. The truth does not cheapen the victory, it only makes it all the more remarkable. (p. 43)
In the book’s final conclusion, mirroring an earlier statement, the authors pay tribute to the ‘endurance’ of the millions of Soviet men and women of the time:
People on the Soviet home front labored and lived for nearly four years under impossible deprivation, enduring cold, filth, exhaustion, ill health and malnutrition
so acute that it cost many of them their lives. Yet somehow this workforce, as weak and ill as it manifestly was, managed to produce the weapons, the vehicles, the airplanes, and the ammunition needed to crush the Nazis and drive them out of Soviet territory. The motivations that drove the people to endure such sacrifices are still largely unknown, and not everyone was willing to make them. For the millions who did, their persistence and endurance were themselves acts of enormous heroism. (p. 332)
Fine statements! But I would like to disagree with one sentence: "The motivations that drove the people to endure such sacrifices are still largely
unknown..." For in fact we do know the motivations of a great many, probably the majority, of the Soviet workers who made these almost superhuman efforts.
Tens of millions of them were fighting not just to defend their homes and families, but to defend socialism.
They were fighting under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin.
Tens of millions of them, and hundreds of millions around the world, had faith in the worldwide communist movement.
History proved that they were correct! Today we know that the horror stories spread by anticommunists, by Leon Trotsky, by Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Gorbachev, are lies.
The communist movement of the 20th century did not build communism. Of course it is our duty to study this history, to discover what these millions of heroic communists and their supporters did that led to its collapse.
But today, let us remember some of the great many things that these valiant communists, and those who supported them, did that was *correct, *that was *right*, and *heroic.*
They beat the fascists.
We too, and our children, will one day have to beat the fascists again. We need to learn what the communists of the past, particularly of the USSR, did that was right, so we can do it when it is our turn.
Long live Victory Day, May 9!
In solidarity,
Grover Furr
Edited by swampman ()