Thoughts on Victory Day

Today is Victory Day in the former USSR. That is the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. The Soviet victory over Nazi Germany was not a result of the efforts of Stalin or the CPSU. But, rather a victory brought about by the fighting men in the Red Army against Nazi aggression in defense of their various homelands in the USSR. As a result the victory does not belong to only Russians or even only the larger nationalities of the USSR. All of the Soviet nationalities including those wrongly accused of treason and collectively punished by the Stalin regime participated in the victory. Ethnic Germans, Koreans, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, and Balkars all received the Hero of the Soviet Union award (the highest honor possible) during the war in addition to thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of other non-Russians. Crimean Tatar pilot Ahmet-Khan Sultan was in fact twice decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union. Without the contribution of the non-Russian population of the USSR the Russians alone would not have been able to defeat Nazi Germany in 1945. Today there seem to be some elements of the Russian population who have forgotten this fact.