VICTORY DAY
in the
GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
May 9, 1945
USSR VICTORY STAR
Photographed in 1984
May 9, 2011: In Red Square today, the USSR's successor state, Russia, celebrated the sixty-sixth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. There either was, or was not, a particularly impressive display of military might, depending on who was looking, and who was telling the story. The Telegraph called it "a display reminiscent of Russia's Soviet-era might." It did provide a video. The BBC had its own correspondent in its video. The Washington Post got the main facts in print: Twenty-six million Soviet citizens were killed in the war -- the Great Patriotic War, aka World War II. "Nearly" twenty thousand members of the military forces marched by the Tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Military musicians and be-medaled veterans were part of the spectacle, and then, in, the final image, "a 4-year-old boy, the latest generation, so far removed from the Soviet Union ... touched his hand to his hat, a baseball cap from the Gap."
A handy hat with which to crown the story, or at least, to end it. But to what end, or ends? What symbolism for the cap from the Gap?
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