Vake Park in the suburbs of Tbilisi is a lush sea of green. Yesterday, hundreds assembled here as Georgia’s capital celebrated Victory Day. After all, 9 May is the most cherished of all commemorations in the (post)-Soviet calendar. Vake may not be in the heart of the city, but the occasion has always been marked here, in the lengthening shadow of the Glory Monument, one of many mourning, late-Soviet mothers.
The Wehrmacht never made it this far. Yet Georgia lost up to 300,000 of its citizens during the Great Patriotic War, as it’s known in most post-Soviet states. The loss amounted to over eight percent of its 1940 population, and the country’s surviving veterans are few. Only 1,245 still live in Georgia, some 600 of them in Tbilisi. A handful of veterans made it to Vake Park this year, though memories of later conflicts will take their place. Following the wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia has veterans in ample supply.
Victory Day commemorates a great victory over fascism, at the unimaginable cost of tens of millions of Soviet lives. The event is also a sacralisation of state power, even if that state dissolved 25 years ago. Victory Day may be a time for mourning, but there’s a sense not only of triumph, but of triumphalism. As I found out, it’s a distinction with depth.
