Victory Day
People are celebrating Victory Day today. Like others from the Soviet Union, members of my own family — from Belarus, from Ukraine, from Leningrad — were murdered, survived, and fought in that war. They were heroes. They had to be. And they helped stop a real genocidal war. But let’s be honest. In the long run, the war was lost. People are driving Mercs in Moscow, not Ladas in Berlin.
—Yasha Levine
PS: In Russia I constantly see Mercs, Audis, and BMWs flying Guards/Saint George Ribbons, which were introduced in 2005 to mark the anniversary of Victory Day. A winning combination. No sense of irony. Until recently, even Putin drove a Merc.
Related:
I just got a bunch of scanned documents from the Library of Congress just now and it says that my relatives, some were citizens of Leningrad. Supposedly another relative was Chekhov’s doctor