Commemoration of Victory Day

Abstract

Abstract The commemoration of Victory-Europe Day highlights the persistence of three distinctive strands of memory. While Western and Eastern Europeans and Russians agree that VE marked the end of military conflict, there remains strong disagreement about whether the date marks the liberation from fascism and the beginning of democratic renewal or the colonization of Eastern Europe and another prolonged period of oppression. Should the event be commemorated as heroic or tragic? Efforts to deflect from the complexities of the war and to defend either a purely heroic or tragic narrative have provoked reactions from domestic actors and, especially, from other countries, serving to further divide the European mnemonic space. The Russian president’s invocation of his country’s heroic fight against Nazism to justify “doing it again” in Ukraine has further troubled the mnemonic landscape.