It's late May, which in the U.S. means that we are in the midst of Memorial Day Weekend. Like many holidays, and many American holidays, there is a political and nationalistic cast to this holiday: on Memorial Day, the last Monday of May, we are supposed to think of our dead, especially our war dead. When I was a child we had a Memorial Day Parade, and we always ended up at the cemetery.
Often it was hot, really hot, and we would stand around the Union Memorial at Evergreen Cemetery. There were actual veterans in the parade, of course, and an honor salute. My most vivid memory was when a fellow member of the trombone section fainted on me from heat and dehydration in about the eighth grade or so. I knew how important the holiday was, really I did. It's just that it can be awfully hot at the end of May.
That sense of patriotism is missing in a lot of holiday celebrations these days. For most Americans, Memorial Day weekend is the official beginning of summer. The community pool opens, and people get together for backyard barbecues. It's too soon for corn on the cob or watermelon, but you get the picture.
In Russia, of course, the May holidays -- as they are now called -- happen in the beginning of the month. May 1 is International Labor Day -- not our Labor Day, which marks the end of summer in early September, but the Socialist one. And May 9 is about veterans -- the USSR waited an extra day to end World War II so that they could have their very own Victory Day. May 1 is about demonstrations -- in 1987 my fellow students and I marched through the city of Leningrad carrying balloons and placards celebrating workers across the world -- and May 9 is about honoring veterans and the dead. Instead of picnicking in the backyard, a Russian family might head to the cemetery to picnic, bringing cookies and vodka and coins to lay on the graves of their relatives or on mass graves such as the ones at Piskarevskoe Cemetery, now in St. Petersburg, where many of those who perished in the 900-day Nazi blockade are laid to rest.
Honoring the dead, especially those who died tragically in wartime. In that sense, the Russians are not that different than we are. Or as Sting famously sang:
The Russians Love Their Children Too
I'm thinking about death, and family, because Memorial Day will mark the third anniversary of my mother's death.
But I'm thinking about war, and the cold war in particular, because I'm reviewing a new biography of Mikhail Gorbachev by William Taubman. Taubman writes with great feeling and expertise of Gorbachev's rise to power and the country he tried to reform. And it feels personal to me -- I was getting to know the USSR myself just as Gorbachev was struggling with the question of how to save socialism while bringing his countrymen into the 20th century.
It seems that when Gorbachev enrolled in the law faculty at Moscow State University, he wondered the same thing I did in 1987 when reading his book Perestroika and New Thinking while studying at Leningrad State University: how can you have law at all if you don't have the rule of law?
The USSR was not the only country to struggle with this problem. But with our president's personal lawyer on the front page every day, I don't mind heading back to the 1980s to try to understand what happened as the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart. I wonder -- what year did they decide to stop playing the Soviet national anthem at sporting events? Was it after 1991?
All patriotic feeling aside, it would be nice to have football without the Star Spangled Banner.
But that is a fight for another day. In the meantime, Happy Memorial Day. Happy Summer.
 |
| Union Memorial, Evergreen Cemetery, Barrington, IL |
That sense of patriotism is missing in a lot of holiday celebrations these days. For most Americans, Memorial Day weekend is the official beginning of summer. The community pool opens, and people get together for backyard barbecues. It's too soon for corn on the cob or watermelon, but you get the picture.
 |
| A Mass Grave from 1942 at Piskarevskoe Cemetery |
Honoring the dead, especially those who died tragically in wartime. In that sense, the Russians are not that different than we are. Or as Sting famously sang:
The Russians Love Their Children Too
I'm thinking about death, and family, because Memorial Day will mark the third anniversary of my mother's death.
 |
| Gorbachev's book: Perestroika and New Thinking for our Country and the Rest of the World |
It seems that when Gorbachev enrolled in the law faculty at Moscow State University, he wondered the same thing I did in 1987 when reading his book Perestroika and New Thinking while studying at Leningrad State University: how can you have law at all if you don't have the rule of law?
The USSR was not the only country to struggle with this problem. But with our president's personal lawyer on the front page every day, I don't mind heading back to the 1980s to try to understand what happened as the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart. I wonder -- what year did they decide to stop playing the Soviet national anthem at sporting events? Was it after 1991?
All patriotic feeling aside, it would be nice to have football without the Star Spangled Banner.
But that is a fight for another day. In the meantime, Happy Memorial Day. Happy Summer.
Comments
Post a Comment