May 9 has become an ideological cult ritual of Putin's power
On May 9, Russia doesn't simply celebrate the end of World War II—it stages the victory over Nazi Germany as a sacred founding myth. What is a day of quiet remembrance in other countries has transformed under Vladimir Putin into a politically ritualistic high mass of authoritarian power. The so-called "Victory Day" has become a sacred cipher for an authoritarian regime that no longer finds legitimacy in the present—and therefore anchors it all the more vehemently in the past.
A death cult, not just a day of remembranceWhat was once a quiet, family-oriented commemoration—a "tearful holiday," as a famous Soviet wartime song calls it—was reinterpreted as the Kremlin's central instrument of power. The commemoration of 27 million dead became a celebration of self-congratulation: with tanks and nuclear missiles on Red Square, fighter bombers over Moscow, pop stars on stage, and an aesthetic more reminiscent of a triumphal march than a funeral. The original declaration of "Never again war" was transformed into the triumphalist slogan "We can do it again!"—a state-mandated slogan for years.
The political charge of this date began in 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the so-called "Great Patriotic War" (the Soviet Union's fight against Germany from 1941 to 1945), with the deliberate ideological redefinition of the holiday. The Kremlin recognized early on that the memory of the Second World War not only represents an important historical chapter for the collective memory of the peoples of the former Soviet Union, but can also be politically instrumentalized. In 2005, the Russian Federation was not yet 15 years old. Neither the Tsarist era nor the Soviet Union had been able to establish a consistent line of tradition in the present. Thus, only one collective memory remained truly alive: the "Great Patriotic War." The victory of 1945—morally unambiguous, emotionally charged, internationally recognized—became the only undisputed point of reference. And the anchor of identity for a new state ideology.
Vladimir Putin himself has repeatedly described May 9 as a "truly national holy holiday." This phrase is no empty phrase. The "Great Victory," as it is called in official discourse, is no longer a historical event—it has become a political sacrament. As in every secularized state religion, the central truth of faith is not only proclaimed but also safeguarded by steel altars, concrete rituals, and dogmas in parade uniform.
This religious component is particularly evident in the close intertwining of church and state. In 2020, for example, the Main Church of the Russian Armed Forces was inaugurated in the Moscow region – a monumental building in camouflage green, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory. The architecture speaks a highly symbolic language that leaves no doubt about the intentions: the main dome measures 19.45 meters in diameter (for the year 1945), the bell tower is 75 meters high (for the 75th anniversary), the small dome measures 14.18 meters (for the 1,418 days of the war), and the foundation consists of 435 piles, each 15 meters long – in honor of the 150th Rifle Division of the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Army of the Belarusian Front, which raised the flag over the Reichstag in 1945.
The church is surrounded by a 1,418-meter-long multimedia memorial and exhibition complex, the "Street of Remembrance," which stages the history of the war—not commemorates it. Inside, one finds numerous other strange symbols and strange pseudo-relics, such as Adolf Hitler's peaked cap and the burial soil of Soviet soldiers from various European cemeteries. The construction of the main church of the Russian Armed Forces thus marked an important milestone in the transformation of the silent commemoration of the Soviet victims of the Second World War into a pure death cult of the "Great Victory"—a state ritualization of the fallen for ideological purposes. For these reasons, many observers are reminded more of a pagan war temple than a Christian place of worship when they see the main church of the Russian Armed Forces. For what is venerated here is not peace, but victory. Not the sacrifices, but self-sacrifice for reasons of state. Not the end of the war, but its transfiguration as a national revival.
Although all peoples of the Soviet Union – including the Russian Germans, who were subjected to massive persecution by the Soviet repressive apparatus shortly after the outbreak of the war – contributed to the victory in the fight against the Third Reich, the Kremlin today claims the exclusivity of the victory almost exclusively for Russia and the Russians. The contributions of others – the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, in particular, suffered far above-average casualty rates – are nonexistent in the official narrative, with a few deliberate exceptions. In recent years, the "Great Victory" has been transformed into an identity-political claim of ownership by the Russian people. Criticism of this is viewed as an attack on national unity and rigorously pursued.
The historical plurality of the Soviet victory story is being erased in favor of an exclusively Russian heroic narrative. This form of national memory monopoly amounts to a symbolic act of dispossession against the former Soviet republics. Yet not only the Soviet Union, but also the new Russia had largely refrained from instrumentalizing remembrance for decades. The war was omnipresent in the collective consciousness, like an open, unhealed wound, but remembrance remained personal, familial, and often marked by silent mourning. Today, this familial character is being displaced by a state-orchestrated propaganda show that has become alien, even completely unbearable, to many former Soviet citizens. Quite a few feel robbed of an important part of their family history by Putin's memory policy and, trapped in the debilitating security of silence, sometimes refuse any kind of remembrance at all.
From the past to the presentLooking back no longer serves the purpose of remembrance – it serves to justify current violence. Since 2014 – and at the very latest since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine – the Kremlin has attempted to instrumentalize the memory of 1945 as a justification for its acts of violence. Those who are "fighting the fascists in Ukraine" today, according to the propaganda message, are "the direct heirs of those who defended Mother Russia against Hitler."
The war of aggression is rhetorically reinterpreted as a defensive struggle, and Ukraine is declared an enemy to be "de-Nazified" as part of the so-called "special military operation" in order to complete the "work of peace of 1945." The Russian army thus becomes a moral force on par with the Red Army in its fight for survival. However, the parallels are absurdly constructed and thus remain implausible.
The partial mobilization in autumn 2022 became a litmus test for the effectiveness of the state's history policy, which had been built up over the years – and exposed the propagandistic facade as a Potemkin village. Despite eight years of constant media hype, despite the constant demonization of Ukraine, despite the ideological equation of the "special military operation" with the "Great Patriotic War," the masses failed to turn out – hundreds of thousands of young men left the country.
Interestingly, the state responded to this development with sober disengagement – it continued to avoid speaking of "war" and refrained from patriotic rhetoric or historical references in its recruitment campaigns. Instead, pay levels, bonuses, and contract terms were advertised: the mobilization was presented not as a call to national defense, but as a simple job advertisement, with the posters bearing ruble amounts rather than heroic images. "Fight for the mortgage" replaced "Fight for the Fatherland." The ideological permeation of atomized Russian society proved to be an illusion – all that could be mobilized was economic calculation. The attempt to stage the present as a continuation of the past shattered into symbolic 1945 pieces and revealed the fundamental crisis of a state that can only secure its founding myth with money.
What will remain of the "Great Victory" in 2025? A politically exploited narrative, an empty myth, a ritualized state commemoration that neither mobilizes nor consoles. May 9, once a day of silent mourning, has become an ideological cult ritual of a power entrenched in the past because it has nothing to say to the future.
When memory becomes a staged performance, history becomes a backdrop, and commemoration becomes state doctrine, a people not only loses its memory—it also loses its moral compass. May 9th deserves quiet reverence, not staged subjugation. Those who abuse past greatness to legitimize new violence gamble both the present and the future.
Only a Russia that breaks away from the sacralized dogma of the 'Great Victory' can find the path to a post-imperial future—founded not on myths, but on responsibility. Memory must not be a weapon, but a moral obligation. Only when Russia faces up to its crimes can it begin to turn a different chapter: one called not victory, but freedom.
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Berliner-zeitung
