For the umpteenth time, and with the flame of patriotism igniting like never before in recent decades, voices are once again rising in Russia calling for the city of Volgograd, in the south of the country, to be renamed Stalingrad. February 2 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of a battle that changed history, when the army of the Soviet Union forced the Nazi German troops to turn around. Historical anniversaries like this one are used today by the Kremlin to justify its intervention in Ukraine at a time when the conflict has lasted almost a year.
Volgograd is preparing to celebrate this week a decisive victory in the Great Patriotic War, as its part of World War II is called here.
As usual, the Kremlin has not announced any visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin in advance. But state television has given clues. The presenter of the Moscow program. Kremlin. Putin, from First Channel, claimed over the weekend that the Russian leader will visit Volgograd sometime between January 30 and February 5.
The battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest in modern history, lasted almost 200 days, and between three and four million people died, soldiers from both sides and civilians.
The Wehrmacht launched a full-scale offensive, Operation Fall Blau, in April 1942 in southern Russia to reach the Caucasus and seize the Baku, Grozny and Maikop oil wells. In the first few months the Germans were successful and on August 23 the German Sixth Army, with Friedrich Paulus in command, reached Stalingrad. That day the first bombs fell and the battle to take over the city began.
Soviet troops resisted like lions the various enemy offensives. Stalin had ordered Marshal Georgy Zhukov, head of the army, not to surrender. His order was “Not a step back,” which punished deserting Soviet soldiers with death.
Although some 4,000 Soviet soldiers were dying every day in the first months, they held out long enough to prepare a counteroffensive, Operation Uranus, in November 1942. With it they engulfed the German troops, who were trapped in Stalingrad. More than Soviet bullets, many German soldiers that winter were killed by cold, disease, and starvation.
Promoted to marshal by Hitler at the last minute so he wouldn't surrender, Paulus went against those wishes and capitulated on February 2, 1943. Coupled with the Allied landings in the west, thus began the end of Nazi imperialist madness in Europe.
Another historic war moment for Moscow was the siege of Leningrad, in which the Nazis tried to starve the city into submission with an 872-day siege. Last week marked the 79th anniversary of the end of that nightmare.
Taking advantage of his visit to Saint Petersburg, as the city is called today, Putin assured that the war in Ukraine began eight years ago, in 2014, and that what Russia is doing now is trying to stop it. "Everything we do today is an attempt to stop this war, including the special military operation," he said, referring to the Russian intervention by the name officially used in Moscow.
In previous years, Moscow has equated the heroism of the Red Army with the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The battle of Stalingrad is part of the feelings of Russian society. It is very difficult for this country to stop remembering a past that grandparents continue to tell their grandchildren through tears.
Victory always has enormous propaganda value. That is why victory against the Nazis has become the highest expression of patriotism in the Putin era. In this imaginary, Stalin's role as the great victor of World War II weighs more than the purges of the 1930s, the Ukrainian Holodomor or the gulag.
And it is that Stalingrad is not only history. "For me it is our life, our country," former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin asserted a week ago at a round table. The politician advocated returning to Volgograd the “historical name” of Stalingrad and thus preserving the memory of the victory. “If even Paris has Stalingrad Square, it would be wrong for us not to have the city of Stalingrad in my country,” he argued.
The reply was given yesterday by columnist Vladimir Diuzhi from the Life.ru news portal, who wondered: "Is it a case of historical memory or a political decision dictated by the current political situation?" If it were historical memory, "then it would be logical to talk about Tsaritsyn", the name the city bore for 336 years before it was renamed in 1925 to please the Soviet dictator. After the de-Stalinization process, Nikita Khrushchev managed in 1961 to remove Stalin's name and give it the current one.
Stepashin's proposal is not new. It was already done after the end of the USSR. Boris Yeltsin and Putin have received similar requests, but they referred to a future referendum in the region.
In 2013, on the 70th anniversary, the Volgograd council council approved that the city can be called the Hero City of Stalingrad in official announcements nine days a year, emblematic dates for Russia, which includes this February 2 and also on May 9, the day of the final Victory against Nazi Germany.
