Heirs of the Great Victory Marched Across Red Square in Honor of the 1941 Parade

The solemn marching dedicated to the seventy seventh anniversary of the historic wartime military parade of Nov. 7, 1941 was held at Moscow’s Red Square.

The event was accompanied by the Combined Military Band of the Moscow garrison conducted by Colonel Timofey Mayakin, Head of the Military Music Band Service of the Russian Armed Forces — Chief Military Conductor.

The combined group included several bands, some being participants of the Military Bands in the Parks by the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival featuring in particular the Band of the Combined Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Military Educational and Scientific Center of the Russian Ground Forces, Band of the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School and Band of the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

Held in Moscow with the Nazis right on the capital’s threshold, the Nov. 7 parade was the first of its kind in the history of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945).

As a matter of tradition the event featured presence of the veterans who followed the parade from the stands built on Red Square for the occasion. This time among others there were Evgeniy Anufriev, Vasiliy Lagodin, Ivan Babarykin, Boris Utkin and Pavel Kozlenkov who had taken part in that meaningful parade of 1941.

This year the audience had a chance to feel the genuine atmosphere of those wartime years given the large-scale theatrical re-enactment of the historical events preceding the marching part.

With the Spasskaya Tower chimes striking ten in the morning engines of the Soviet military vehicles that once had fought at the battlefields around Moscow started and the troops dressed in the WWII uniform consisting of military students and cadets as well as of the Cavalry Escort of the Presidential Regiment, permanent participant of the Spasskaya Tower Festival, lined up on Red Square. The loudspeaker commanded Get ready — on the left! And to the sounds of the Holy War march the parade unit of the 154^th Preobrazhensky Regiment solemnly stepped onto the cobblestone of the main square of the country carrying along Russia’s national flag and flag of Moscow the genuine copy of the Victory Banner, the symbol of the Soviet Union victory in the Great Patriotic War.

Soldiers dressed in grey heavy overcoats with Mosin’s rifles in their hands, T-34s groaning beneath the GUM and legendary tachankas positioned at some distance literally brought Red Square back to that dramatic year of 1941. Staging this impressive performance the reenactors vividly reminded their compatriots of firmness, self-sacrifice and bravery of the Soviet soldiers who had desperately fought for their Moscow.