Vladimir Putin (left) decorates a second world war veteran with a jubilee medal at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow on Friday

In the autumn of 1941, when German tanks sped towards Moscow, Soviet radio would daily blast out a song that encapsulated the country’s titanic struggle against its Nazi invaders.

“Arise, great country, arise to fight to the death with the dark fascist forces, with the infernal hordes,” sang an army choir to the melody of a military march.

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The song, “Sacred War”, boosted the morale of an embattled nation. From next week, it could ring out again, from mobile phones all over Russia. On Monday, the country’s main mobile operators are launching free downloads of war songs as cellphone ringtones.

The government-led drive, named “Hurray for Victory!” comes as Moscow enters the home stretch in an impassioned and increasingly shrill campaign to commemorate the end of the second world war.

Second world war victory celebrations have been a staple of Russia’s political calendar for many years. The war song ringtone downloads were part of the show once before: in 2010, for the 65th anniversary of the war’s end.

But this year is different. Russia is now facing a recession brought on by low oil prices and the collapse in the rouble, while its relations with the west have slumped to a new low over the war in Ukraine. The government of president Vladimir Putin is whipping up a patriotic fervour as it seeks to steel the population against economic hardship and growing isolation, and the war celebrations are a key part of that narrative of national pride.

Meanwhile, the evidence of hardship is mounting. Data published this week showed that retail sales shrank 4.4 per cent in January compared with the same period last year, a signal that the recession is now about to hit.

“It’s different this time because of the Ukraine crisis,” says Mariusz Sielski, a Polish sociologist in Moscow who specialises in historical memory studies.

What is most striking this year is the sheer ubiquity of the war theme. More than 100 war-linked festivals, exhibitions, concerts, conferences, competitions and ceremonies have been organised since March last year, under a plan that was first presented to the cabinet in January 2014. They will run until May, to be capped with an official celebration hosted by Mr Putin on May 9, Victory Day itself, that will include a military parade.

Then there are the government-sponsored films, book launches and television specials that will run alongside the official events. “There have never been so many Victory-themed programmes as this year,” says a journalist at Rossiya Segodnya, the state news group that owns Ria Novosti.

But the most palpable difference between 2015 and previous years is how the boundaries between the historic events on the one hand and the war in Ukraine and Moscow’s stand-off with the west on the other have become increasingly blurred.

The war song downloads will be launched on February 23, Defenders of the Fatherland day, a key date in the Russian calendar, which commemorates the founding of the Red Army in 1919.

But it was also in late February last year that Russians in Crimea started protesting about the change of government in Kiev, triggering the events that led to Moscow’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory in March last year.

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The Russia-installed authorities will now also mark February 23 as the day of “popular protests against fascism in Ukraine”, “the re-establishment of historical justice” and the “third defence of Sevastopol”, a reference to earlier sieges of the Crimean port cities in the second world war and the 19th century Crimean war, which pitted Russia against Great Britain, France and Turkey.

While many European countries have used the anniversary of the end of the second world war to appeal for peace and an end to conflict, Russia under Mr Putin has tended to use it to underscore the Red Army’s role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and to inflate the national myth of Russia’s strength.

The Great Patriotic War, Mr Putin said in July 2013 when kicking off planning for this year’s anniversary, was the root of the country’s heroic history and the common memory of the valour and courage of its ancestors. “Their selfless love for the Fatherland sets an example for all postwar generations. It is our duty to follow it, preserve and hand down to our descendants the truth about the war, its facts and heroes, including the worthy celebration of anniversaries, of the most important events in our history.”

Moscow has invited political leaders from all over the world to the ceremony. But so far, Kim Jong Un, North Korean dictator, Xi Jinping, China’s president, and Tomislav Nikolic, Serbian president, are among the few who have confirmed. According to European diplomats, EU leaders are still consulting over whether any of them should attend.

This likely snub, and the blame that continues to be piled on Moscow by western governments for its role in the Ukraine war, have fuelled an increasingly angry tone in Moscow’s preparations for Victory day. After Grzegorz Schetyna, Poland’s foreign minister, said last month that it would not be appropriate to mark the end of the war in the country where it began, alluding to the fact that the Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany in invading Poland in 1939, Russian state television aired a mock invasion of European countries by Russian tanks.

Says Mr Sielski: “The underlying message is that they are fighting against the west, fighting against America.”

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4d020554-b8db-11e4-b8e6-00144feab7de.html#axzz3W2zxn2qL

COMMENTS (60)

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cilshafe Feb 25, 2015

Just ssk yourself how many comments have been placed below by FSB personnel and others working for the Russian propaganda machine.

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ThoughtProvoker Feb 24, 2015

To the sound of that ‘war song’ tens of millions of USSR soldiers have given their lives to bring piece to the world,  A war is a murder?  Of course.  Has Stalin betrayed Poland in 1936/38?  Yes.  Has he had any opt out?  Even if he didn’t, that was still inexcusable   Yet, does that diminish the USSR’s leading role in WWII?  No.  Could fascism have been defeated with bunches of flowers?  Hmmmm… Would have the Western nations succeeded in that war if it wasn’t for the USSR sacrifice?  Make your own judgement.  Those nations have every reason to be proud.  Let’s respect that.

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warnomore Feb 22, 2015

A fact is that about 30% of the Russian TV stations are glorifying the second world war  which was in fact an ugly war in which many millions of Russians died. It reminds me of the history written about the beginning of the 20th century when the same kind of glorifying started in Europe. We all know what happened afterwards.

War is  murder .. One should not forget that.

Before the second world war Western Europe was as  pacifistic as Europe is now  . Even now the USA is pacifistic.

Imperialism is something of the past for both.

There is no need for anybody to change the world order.  Let’s leave it like that.

Mr stainless_steel you become a little rusty.

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Stainless_steel Feb 22, 2015

Come on FT!! this is the most ridiculous and low quality article i have read so far in the last 3 months from you.. what a shame? i was bewildered how you linked the current incidents with the song as if saying, “Putin prepares the country for the real war”. Is that what you try to “say”?

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GMC Feb 22, 2015

Wow!  Breaking News!  A free ring-tone available in Russia.

Do FT journalists have a  weekly quota of sabre-rattling, anti-Russia articles that they must submit.

I can assure you, there is far more genuinely interesting and important information to be reported from Russia.

 

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paddy Feb 22, 2015

@GMC Considering that these mid-20th century war songs rightly articulate the anti-fascist sentiment of the day and that today the Kremlin’s propaganda machine inaccurately portrays the current Ukrainian government as fascist, I think reporting on the government-led drive “Hurray for Victory!” and it’s free ringtones is particularly relevant in understanding the Russian psyche.

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Good European Feb 22, 2015

@paddy @GMC Quite. And there are other ways of trying to get yourself through a recession than quantitative easing. Anybody who believes Putin is not up to giving NATO more than just palpitations doesn’t know much about the Russian mindset, which is being carefully groomed by sophisticated people who know it well.

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paddy Feb 22, 2015

@Good European @paddy @GMC  And for the people of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia 1945 means the anniversary of switching from living under one totalitarian dictatorship to another for the next 46 years until 1991.

 

Putin is on the record as saying “demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century”. I’ve never heard him apologising for how the Soviet Union treated the people of Eastern Europe.

 

If only the Soviet Union had let the people of Eastern Europe free in 1945! So you must understand how they feel about “Hurray for Victory!”

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paddy Feb 22, 2015

@Good European @GMC  And while we’re talking about fascism, I don’t deny there are some fascist elements in the Kiev government, but to have a government which is itself fascist (that’s Putin’s government) crow on so much about it … well, it’s completely nauseating.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/02/15/political-analyst-putins-russia-already-classic-fascist-state/

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GMC Feb 22, 2015

@paddy @GMC This year also happens to be the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, i which 26 million Soviet citizens died.  No everything that happens in Russia is about Ukraine.   Russia may celebrate the end of that conflict.  Remember all the fuss and hullaballoo (call it propaganda if you wish) that we made in 2014 about the anniversary of the Normandy landings.  (US losses in WWII were 340,000 and UK 365,000)

Since you bring it up, there are indeed some elements of those fighting on behalf of the Kiev regime that are self proclaimed neo Nazis.  The Kiev government decline to distance themselves from these militias.

Why is it that anything that the Russian government says is portrayed as propaganda in the FT, whereas the equally biased (but less obviously so) proclamations  from western governments’ “public diplomacy” departments are accepted without question.

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Ealing Feb 21, 2015

So Kathrin Hille, who I don’t think has had a single piece in the last 12 months which doesn’t attack Russia directly or indirectly, is now reduced to an article about patriotic ring tones on the 70th anniversary of the greatest (and most deadly) struggle for survival that the Russian people had to endure since Napoleon. Do we not celebrate the heroism and mark the sacrifices our people had to make in WW2?

But it’s the pettiness of the subject matter which is most illuminating here. The article says “free downloads” of a patriotic song will be made available and then extrapolates a warlike posture and a triumphalist outlook from that single fact.

Consider, free downloads (or any downloads for that matter) tend in the main to be the exclusive province of those under the age of 40. Free downloads exist for lots of stuff which most people over the age of 40 haven’t the slightest interest in. Anyone who actually experienced the war or were children during those years won’t have the slightest idea what a download is, never mind actually use the facility. I’d be amazed if more than a tiny proportion of people ever download this song, and those will because there’s always someone who will take advantage of a freebie, if the song is any good at all. (I have no idea what the song sounds like)

I’d guess this will have roughly the same appeal as would be the case in Britain if “We’ll meet again” was offered as a free download next November. And if that happened, it would be nostalgic, not a question of “whipping up a patriotic fervour”. Ye gods! It’s a ring tone!!!

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3p Feb 21, 2015

I like Russia and Russians. It is a shame that they are allowing Putin to flush the country down the toilet

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L53 Feb 21, 2015

The company that will show up says a lot about Russia.   Autocratic, warmongering, several kleptocrats and unsavoury characters.

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Postjudice Feb 21, 2015

It’s a sad-looking club indeed – Mr Putin, Mr Kim and Mr Xi.  But at least Mr Putin won’t suffer a lonely lunch, as he did in Brisbane.

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Jesus’s John Feb 21, 2015

The wilson administration funded Lenin with 100 million dollars when it was clear that they were going to topple the czar – and so they chose a side with the newly formed proletariat of the worker party – lenin was running low on cash and the u.s. helped out.

 

The u.s. just loves helping out, don’t they?

 

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@Jesus’s John And everyone except the US can see the future, can’t they?

Look, we didn’t know it would turn out like this.

Plus, would you rather have the czar in there?

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LostForWords Feb 21, 2015

More Russians died through barbaric oppression, whether from invading Germans or by Stalinist purges and vicious Bolshevik ideological suppression, than any other European nationals. In global terms, only the Chinese have suffered more.  If they are feeling a bit paranoid about NATO intentions, it is to be understood.

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@LostForWords This is counterintuitive.  If Russian governments have purged the people there, then one could infer that they would want NATO to liberate them.
But we readers of the FT know some history.  Russia has been invaded for many ages and therefore developed paranoia.

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Schwarzhund Feb 22, 2015

@carryon @LostForWords  paranoia cuts both ways of course, the Soviet Union carved up the Baltic States and Poland in cahoots with Nazi Germany in 1939, invaded Afghanistan, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and interfered in numerous other states under the guise of ideological solidarity, established a series of client states in eastern Europe and Asia after 1945. The victim mind set might be a bit more understandable if Russia did not have such form itself, but then I guess victim hood is the new currency of strident nationalism.

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hedgehog Feb 21, 2015

Watching Russia is like watching a train crash in slow motion, awful.

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@hedgehog Autocracy is one of the worst forms of government.  Anarchy might be worse or not.

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Drake Feb 21, 2015

In Crimean War also participated Austrian Empire only a few years after Russian troops helped them crush the Hungarian revolution. It was considered a treachery in Russia since Austria and Russia were allies in wars against Napoleon and the Ottomans. The Russians also considered that they saved Britain by defeating Napoleon in 1812, just to be “thanked” by the intervention. Crimean War was a great humiliation for Russia at the time; not only that they lost territories and the whole fleet, but they were also clearly excluded from the European family and rendered to pariah status.

Only after the rise of Germany France and Britain reached to Russia again. The Russians were foolish enough to take the bait. They paid the prize in almost total annihilation of the country and nation in bolshevik revolution and 70 years of bloody and ruthless communist tyranny that ensued from the WWI.

It is amazing how much they want to be the part of Europe, and how much they are disappointed each time they are shown their place.

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@Drake Plz (please).   Do you believe that Russia would have fared better under a NAzi-Germany controlled planet?

That’s a leap of faith one can only be remanded with an equally dramatic — true — historical fact.  When the Germans surrendered in WWII, they had a choice:

1) surrender to the Russians

2) surrender to the Americans and the West.

The Nazi military ran to the American side.  They would not have received the fair treatment under Russians that they received under US surrender terms.

And so we are to believe that deep down, the Russians would have contently gone about their business under a Nazi-controlled planet?

 

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Mr Grumpy Feb 21, 2015

So Russia is at war ….

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BenFranklin Feb 21, 2015

Putin’s going over the top but let’s not forget the Americans comparing Saddam (and other “bad guys”) to Hitler. Many countries play this game to a degree.

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BTinSF Feb 21, 2015

@BenFranklin In what way did Saddam differ from Hitler?  He committed genocide against the Marsh Arabs and other Shia.  He attacked his neighbors (Kuwait, Iran).  Perhaps he didn’t have a German Shepherd dog or a blond girl friend?

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MM Feb 21, 2015

@BTinSF @BenFranklin Between Saddam and ISIS, I (and I am sure many Iraqis) would have chosen Saddam.. It was a mistake committed by Americans to  remove this small tyrant and pave eventually the way for a much much bigger evil – .ISIS..

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@MM @BTinSF @BenFranklin If Russia and China had voted on the UN security council to co-invade, then the Iraq territory could have and would have been administered by a neutral UN oversight.

Alas, Russia and China are never on board.

(True: we should have not invaded, therefore).

Can we just a get year when Russia and China help the US?

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Ealing Feb 21, 2015

@carryon @MM @BTinSF @BenFranklin Well, you’re right it would be wonderful to have Russia alongside in the fight against ISIL. As close friends of Syria and Iran, ISIL’s natural sworn enemies, Russia’s influence would be decisive.

There is the small issue of the US attempting to cripple Russia and hurt all Russians with sanctions, however. “Can we just get a year when Russia… helps the US?”. No, until the US recognises that the loss of Crimea to a fiercely anti Russian faction would have been an existential threat to Russia, and that the people of Crimea, where the vast majority are Russian, should be recognised for their wish to secede from Ukraine after an illegal a coup which overthrew the legitimate President whom they had elected.

The US will never do that, so will never lift sanctions, so Russia will never help. Would you, in their position?

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Paul Munton’s Potimarron Feb 21, 2015

One is reminded of the words of the poet who wrote:

 

And how one can imagine oneself among them

I do not know; it was all so unimaginably different

And all so long ago.

 

If the Russian government is putting the clock back to the Second World War there must be something seriously wrong with the Russian polity.  Why would any sane leader want to return to that hell of death and destruction either in imagination or reality?

 

*Louis MacNeice referring to the glory that was Greece in his poem  The Gloomy Acadamic

 

 

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DarkPull Feb 21, 2015

I understand the author’s point that Russia steps up its historic propaganda efforts for current political reasons. That much is clearly true. However, the same is inherently the case for any propaganda, anywhere.

It is not a coincidence that Germany systematically blurs its responsibility for the war, by supporting movements of the Germans who were relocated from the Eastern Europe (such as the Sudetenland or Eastern Prussia) and who now insist that they were victims of the war at par with the attacked nations. Or by making movies such as “Our fathers, our mothers,” suggesting that millions of ordinary, well-meaning Germans were led to madness by a small group of evil Nazis. It is likewise not a coincidence that the U.S. celebrates aniversaries of its Vietnam disaster by focusing on patriotism and alleged heroism of its soldiers, not on those on the receiving end of napalm and the Agent Orange. In similar vein, Israelis build their national identity by promoting the idea of Jewish resistance agains Nazism (the instances of which were few and far apart compared to acts of Jewish collaboration) and portraying early Zionist groups as brave go-getters rather that terrorists, which they clearly were by today’s standards.

Russia, in its turn, is slowly learning from the masters of nationalistic propaganda. It is a fact that the Soviet Union was the main geopolitical victor of the WW2, although the triumph came at an enormous human and social cost. Many a country in the West, notably the Nazi collaborating nations such as France, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, or Switzerland, were never ready to pay a similar price, and if not for the Red Army, the entire Europe would speak German today. Yet, should you ask regular Americans, most would tell you that it was the U.S. intervention that tipped the balance; that it was the lend lease act which saved the USSR; and that the Soviets merely stole their march to victory. In my view, the only surprising thing about Russians rallying their people around their version of history is that it did not happen earlier.

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lostinsweden Feb 21, 2015

@DarkPull Perhaps also the Arctic Convoys played a part? Russia was totally unprepared for war and by all accounts Stalin had to be dragged from his dacha to finally make decisions.

The Russians of course forget the sacrifice of the Belorussians or Ukrainians who lost a far greater percentage of their population, just as they forget the collaboration with the Nazi’s and mass murder of Polish in 1939 to 1940.

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Drake Feb 21, 2015

@DarkPull But it was the US intervention that tipped the balance. Only the Germans from America could defeat the Germans from Germany. OK, having an Austrian lunatic on the other side helped as well.

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@Drake

YOU: “Only the Germans from America could defeat the Germans from Germany”

ME: Why?    Language?

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Gjalt Huppes Feb 21, 2015

The battle of Stalingrad was indeed the turning point of the Second World War: Russian lives with US funded material support. However, translating this historic accomplishment  to current circumstances is lacking historical insight. Russia then was one of the world powers. Now their national income is roughly the same as that of Italy, and also its population is dwindling. Who is afraid of Italy, a county with safe boundaries? Siberia cannot be defended.

Investing in Russia’s  future might be a better option than glorifying a past gone for o ver half a century.

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carryon Feb 21, 2015

@Gjalt Huppes Part of the reason for the population decline may be a fact reported in the FT several years ago, perhaps in a blog: each year 700,000 Russians emigrate.

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nb Feb 21, 2015

The Western reaction to this Russian celebration is no different from the Western reaction to the Sochi Olympics –  Sour Grapes.

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RiskAdjustedReturn Feb 21, 2015

@nb

Dictators always seem to be able to manage enormous self-aggrandizing spectaculars.

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Econ 101 Feb 21, 2015

Russians can use whatever mobile songs and melodies they want, after all 27mn of them (not only Russians, of course, but mainly they) died in the fight aginst Nazism. Why should we belittle thier sacrifice and make fun of it its beyond my comprehension!

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motinow6700 Feb 21, 2015

@Econ 101

tell us what the Russians did to the Central Europeans geography placed between Germany and Russia.

the Russian “sacrifice” was just the self-interest of building a Russian empire over those peoples.

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Econ 101 Feb 21, 2015

@motinow6700 @Econ 101 So what exactly do you have against the ring tones the Russians want to use on their phones?

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MM Feb 21, 2015

@motinow6700 @Econ 101 It was a time of history when everybody was building or trying to defend its Empire, so this sort of behavior was not typical of Russians only. You must admit that even though these Central European states became the Soviets satellites, they were legally independent (with all the symbols of independent states), and that laid foundations for their “full” independence nowdays (i.e. ensured a smoother transition to full independence nowdays..). Had they stayed under German occupation, they would have not received even a status of autonomy under the German Reich..I doubt if they would be independent at all these days..

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motinow6700 Feb 21, 2015

The Great Patriotic War began in 1941 when the Russian national socialists fell out with the German national socialists over implementing their 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement to divide Europe between themselves.

It ended in 1945 when the Russian national socialists received from the Allies instead those parts of Europe promised them in 1939 by the German national socialists.

The Russians have never been held to account for their atrocities carried out against Central European civilians before, during and after 1941 – 1945.

Russian celebrations of the event are an obscenity.

There is not a cigarette paper between Germany under Hitler and Russia under Stalin and the various sons of Stalin.

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Econ 101 Feb 21, 2015

@motinow6700 Russia should be celebrated for eradicating the seed of Nazism 70 years ago. The efforts to diminish its great sacrifice (27mn lost their lives, 16mn of them civilians) are a travesty.  Comments like the above are a sheer madness and blasphemy! Those writing them may not have even existed to had it not been for the bravery of the Soviet Union. I feel sorry for you, mitonow, you dont know what you are doing.

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motinow6700 Feb 21, 2015

@Econ 101 @motinow6700

So why is Russia not loved by those peoples resident between it and Germany ?

 

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Charles in petersham Feb 21, 2015

One must wonder who killed the most Russians….German forses or Stalins purges of the 1930s.

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Pseudonym Feb 21, 2015

@Charles in petersham I don’t think there’s much of a debate there at all really.

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Judge Barbier Feb 21, 2015

@Econ 101 @motinow6700 Its a pity those sacrifices against Nazism did not help the people the Soviet Union forced under its yoke such as Poland and the Baltic Republics, who hate you with a passion.

Wonder why that is ?

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motinow6700 Feb 21, 2015

@Econ 101 @motinow6700

i know how many unarmed civilian relatives – including a babe in arms – were killed by Russian Nazis when they were best pals with the German Nazis.

Poland and Ukraine know full well what the Russians were like before and after “the Great Patriotic War”.

…and are to this day because there has never been a Nuremburg to hold them to account.

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Michael McPhillips Feb 21, 2015

@motinow6700

But both Hitler and Stalin had their Gestapo and OGPU/NKVD respectively to terrorise their populations, the latter with its system of Gulags in the Arctic that used prison labour for various projects. The White Sea Canal for instance cost the lives of an estimated 25,000 prisoners from exhaustion, accidents, and the cold, so don’t blame terrorised civilians for the atrocities in the war. Those who argued with such organisations had no rights and were eliminated or imprisoned.

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Pseudonym Feb 21, 2015

@Michael McPhillips @motinow6700 The 25,000 claimed by the Belomorsk Canal project is saved from being a footnote only because it turned out to be a total waste. The shipping it was designed to take couldn’t use it from day one.

That number is paltry compared to, for example, the mines of Kolyma, or even the establishment of Magadan. 25,000 is likely less than a tenth of one percent of the victims, and let’s not pretend that it started or finished with Uncle Joe.

Financial Times February 20, 2015

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4d020554-b8db-11e4-b8e6-00144feab7de.html#axzz3VSW0BcY7