MAY 9: rethinking by Ukrainian

May 8, Ukrainians will celebrate the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, and on May 9 will celebrate veterans. Historians believe that the situation around the Crimea and the Ukraine-Russia’s War have contributed to a change in emphasis.

Victory Day for the Ukrainians still remains a great holiday. May 9 - the day off. On this day, traditionally the official will lay flowers, decorations and medals, orations, and soldier's porridge and one hundred grams for those who did not return.

Not like in Russia

However, despite this, the attitude to the events of 70 years ago significantly changed: instead of chanting the bravura role of the USSR, people are talking more about what price is paid for the Ukrainians. According to the Institute of History of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to the victims of the war amounted to between 8 and 10 million people. That is why for the first time in Ukraine by presidential decree (Poroshenko) officially established Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation. As in Europe, Ukraine will celebrate its May 8th.

"The spirit that is in Ukraine, May 8 and 9, will be very different from what is in Russia, where trying to create a cult of war. We will not have militarism. We want to remember all those who died and who survived" - says the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, the historian Vladimir Vyatrovich. According to him, Ukraine today feels not like country the winner but victim country too. Ukrainians are only now beginning to realize that in 1945, they defeated Nazism, but for a long time struggled with other totalitarian regimes after that.

Motivation to rethink

Contributed to rethink and last year's events, says Ivan Patrilyak, dean of the Faculty of History of Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. According to him, the process of rethinking the history of the country was before, but very slowly. "In Ukraine, there was a war memory. Historians have studied the documents showed that the USSR suppressed the truth about Ukraine's role in the Second World War and its victims, but the Ukrainian society did not accept it, because actually all lived in the Russian information field in which all is refuted, "- said the historian. He notes that the majority of Ukrainians previously perceived history as it was advantageous to Russia.

According Patrilyak, "Soviet interpretation of history, which was the first in Ukraine for 15 years of independence, no longer suited to the modern Ukrainian society. People want to look at that war is much deeper." But for a complete rethinking of the historical facts you need to a change of generation, sure historian.

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