Loudspeakers blared Soviet-era music and
thousands, young and old, trooped to a war monument as Russians in the Baltic
nation of Latvia honoured Red Army soldiers who fell in World War II.
For most Latvians, it was an ordinary Friday in a country freed from Soviet
occupation in 1991. But for most of the Russian minority in the Baltics,
Victory Day still carries emotional weight.
"I don't want my daughter to forget sacrifices her great- grandfather made
fighting for his fatherland," says a woman identified as Irina, who
brought along her five-year-old daughter, Sveta.
Little Sveta - a diminutive of the Russian name Svetlana - carried a bouquet of
red tulips to lay at the monument, constructed in 1985.
Many veterans also carried bouquets as the crowd flooded the square in Riga under the watchful eye of police.
Fireworks were scheduled for the evening, capping the May 9 celebrations of the
Red Army's role in defeating Nazi Germany in 1945.
"This holiday for me is about peace. I suffered through a massive bombing
when my father and I were evacuated from our home town. I don't want anything
like that to be repeated," says Viktor Shelyaev, a computer science
teacher, who came to the monument.
Last century, the Baltics were pawns in the big game between Adolf Hitler and
Joseph Stalin. Torn by the war and without their own countries, Estonians,
Latvians and Lithuanians fought either on both sides of the front, or formed
their own guerrilla units.
As a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, the Baltics changed hands from
Stalin to Hitler then to Stalin again in 1944.
Soviet troops rolled through the Baltics fighting the German armies and stayed
until the Baltics declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
In Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, vandals overnight splashed red paint on a
Soviet-era statue on a bridge over the river Nemunas.
In Estonia, some 1,000 Russians laid flowers at a military cemetery that is the
new home for the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet-era monument relocated from the Tallinn city centre last year.
Some Russians laid flowers at the Tonismagi hill where the monument used to
stand until April 2007.
Estonia's decision to relocate the monument prompted riots by local Russians
and clashes with police. Russians view the monument as a symbol of their
victory over Nazism, while Estonians consider it a reminder of the 50 years of
the Soviet occupation after the war.
V-E Day, or Victory in Europe Day, was celebrated in the Soviet Union on May 9
as the Nazi Germany protocol of surrender came into force at 11 pm European
time on May 8, 1945, which was already May 9 in Moscow.
Neither day is an official holiday in the Baltics.
A day earlier, high-ranking Latvian officials laid wreaths at a military
cemetery, making a subdued gesture of commemorating lives of soldiers who died
during the war that killed millions of people throughout Europe, dpa reported.
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