The leaders of the Şor Party and the PSRM – Ilan Şor and Igor Dodon announced yesterday that they will organize, on May 9, the Victory March and the Immortal Regiment. If we hoped that the war in Ukraine and the context it created would motivate us to revisit the history of the Second World War, we will have to admit that we did nothing.
Our past and its memory have become tools of propaganda and division. From this battle of symbols, the winner is the one who owns the story and never the one who is silent. Around Victory Day, the most vocal are those who believe they are the rightful heirs to the memory of the Second World War. In recent years, they have been the PSRM. But because the cake of historical symbols is sweet, the Shore Party decided to pull it closer for a few extra political dividends.
The Russian Federation narrative of World War II continues to dominate our memory. “(…)for us the memory of the Great Victory was and remains sacred,” said the former president, Igor Dodon, only that this sanctity was built and maintained by the USSR, then by Russia. For example, the Immortal Regiment was invented by a few journalists from the city of Tomsk (Russia) in 2012 and has become, over the years, another promotional platform for politicians, successfully used here as well.
Unfortunately, in Moldova there is no equally strong alternative voice. A voice that will tell us about another side of the Second World War – about its local side, about the price that every Moldovan family paid, why it was chosen among us, how it influenced us identity and how it dug into us, leaving us with deep trauma for generations to come.
How do we honor our past when the present is so confusing and difficult to digest? Which part of the past is to be honored and which is to be revisited? How do we work with our memory to pick the wheat from the tares and make peace with what we can’t change but can’t forget either? Homework remains for next time…
