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In any other year, hundreds of thousands of Russians would have marched with portraits of family members who fought in World War II at a monument called the Immortal Regiment.
But on Saturday, images of Soviet veterans and their families floated on Russian television, a public vigil adapted for the era of social isolation.
The coronavirus outbreak transformed the May 9 Victory Day celebrations in Russia, a holiday usually marked by family gatherings, monuments, and an elaborate military parade on Red Square.
“Of course it’s difficult, it’s a real shame,” said Svetlana Fomina, an elementary school teacher who is returning from a shopping trip. “But I see no choice but to stay home. It would be ridiculous to dial [Victory Day] for everyone to get sick. “
Things looked very different in neighboring Belarus, where elderly veterans and thousands of other spectators flocked to the stands for the usual military parade. Few wore masks.
“This year, make the military parade in Minsk the only one in the post-Soviet space,” said Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s president, who has publicly downplayed the dangers of the pandemic. The country has more than 22,000 cases of the disease and has registered 126 deaths.
He seemed to delight in holding the Moscow celebrations.
“In this crazy and disoriented world, there will be people who will condemn us for the time and place of this sacred act,” he said defiantly. “Do not rush to conclusions or condemn us, descendants of the Belarusian victory. We could not have acted differently. We had no choice. And even if we had one, we would have done the same.”
However, in Russia, where the count of coronavirus infections on Saturday approached 200,000, and the capital exceeded 100,000, they decided to do it differently.
Moscow city authorities were desperate for people to stay home, and the police arrested several activists with flags marking the holiday in Pushkin Square.
Vladimir Putin appeared in a cloudy Moscow for the first time in over a month to deposit a bouquet of red roses in the Eternal Flame and promised to celebrate the parade as soon as possible. “As usual, we will celebrate the anniversary broadly and solemnly, and we will do so with dignity, as is our duty to those who suffered and achieved this victory,” he said. He was accompanied by an honor guard and observed an aerial takeoff by the air force, the only element of the military parade preserved this year.
Elsewhere, some of the most committed became creative. Volunteers in Novosibirsk climbed onto cherry pickers to sing war ballads to veterans on their balconies. News shows urged families to mount pictures of veterans on their windows and participate in a national moment of silence at 7pm, followed by a performance of the song Victory Day from their balconies. Authorities hope that a series of online concerts, visits to digital museums and popular war movies on television will keep Russians busy and off the streets.
When all else fails, there are always repetitions. Sports channels played replays of Russia’s victories in a recent hockey tournament. And as soon as Putin finished his short visit to the Eternal Flame, the state television channel went on to see images of troops, tanks, and other military equipment rolling down Red Square to commemorate the holiday in years past.
