New celebration practices of Victory Day: Macrosociological explanation

Abstract

New Victory Day’s celebration practices, mostly St. George’s ribbons and The Immortal Regiment marches, are explained by dynamics of macrosociological variances. Main structural elements of Victory Day celebrations during Soviet period were: (1) distinctive role of veterans as the «carrier group» for festive scenario and values; (2) combination of public rituals and family memory, patriotic solidarity and commemoration of tragedy. Generational dynamics, as well as difficulties in transmission of family history, leads to decline of veterans’ active role in festive scenario. Another effect of generational shift, that is important for understanding new Victory Day rituals, is growing popularity of patriotic performative practices (flag-bearing, car stickers, state symbols printed on clothing, etc.) mostly supported by young and middle generations. Article examines new celebration practices in connection with emerging structural problems: (a) sustaining the festive scenario in the absence of the «carrier group»; (b) reconciling the desire to be involved in festive action with normative views on veterans as «the only ones worthy» of playing active role in celebration: (c) combining public celebration with commemoration of tragic «truth about war» in family memory. New festive rituals are presented as a vernacular attempt to symbolically solve such structural collisions and to reconcile public festive with family memory, emotional involvement in celebration with moral constraints for «unworthy» younger generations. Public controversies over new celebration practices and opinion poll data are used to estimate how well they solve structural problems. Opinion polls conducted by leading Russian polling companies WCIOM, Levada Center and FOM in 2006-2018 have provided the empirical basis for the research.