· Day 1418 of 1418
VICTORY!
Moscow and the whole country
- days and nights of war
- 1418
- days and nights of war
- Soviet people lost their lives
- ≈ 27 million
- Soviet people lost their lives
Late on 8 May, Germany’s unconditional surrender was signed in Berlin; in Moscow it was already 9 May. Radio announcer Yuri Levitan declared: the war is over! People ran into the streets, hugging strangers and soldiers. That evening the Victory salute thundered over Moscow: 30 salvos from a thousand guns.
Levitan read the news of the surrender at 2:10 at night. People did not go to bed until morning, and during the day hundreds of thousands came to Red Square. Strangers embraced, tossed soldiers into the air, sang and wept.
But that same day every family remembered those who did not come back. That is why Victory Day is called “a holiday with tears in our eyes”. On 24 June 1945 the Victory Parade marched across Red Square, and the enemy's banners were thrown down at the foot of the Mausoleum.
This Victory Day smells of gunpowder, it is a holiday with grey hair at the temples, it is joy with tears in our eyes.