Few readers will need reminding that tomorrow is the nintieth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. British Embassies and High Commissions around the world commemorate November 11th in a multitude of ways, and the Embassy in Moscow is no exception. Yesterday, on Remembrance Sunday, some 150 people - including representatives from 26 Embassies - gathered at St Andrew's Anglican Church in Moscow for a traditional remembrance service, followed by a reception at our Ambassador's Residence.
Remembrance in Russia, though, goes far beyond an annual church service. The older generation, in particular, are tremendously proud of what they see as a shared military history between the UK and Russia. And the UK is still seen as the ally which stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia during the 'Great Patriotic War' in which 27 million Russians died. When I arrived in St Petersburg on language training last Summer my host, Oleg, greeted me with the words "Спасибо за Спитфайры" - "thank you for the Spitfires". He was a blokadnik - born during the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), and I spent more than one evening hearing stories of boiling shoe-leather to make soup, or making bread by mixing sawdust into the dough to make the flour stretch further.
The present-day read-across of this shared history and mutual respect is huge. Take, for example, the Remembrance Tour by three members of our Defence Section last year - a gruelling 1,000-mile cycle marathon between St Petersburg and Volgograd, during which wreaths were laid at 11 war memorials en-route. Or the exhibiton of photographs taken by a Russian sailor aboard the Arctic supply convoys, which we staged here at the Embassy earlier this year to coincide with an event to commemorate (and save) HMS Belfast, the 'Last Witness' of the convoys.
Or the laying of a wreath at the Eternal Flame in the Kremlin wall, in October 2007, by a group of English football fans. Half-way through the ceremony a group of Russian fans turned up, singing and waving their Lokomotiv and Dynamo scarves. We, and the accompanying police presence, started to feel slightly nervous; were they looking for trouble? No, they just wanted to tell their English counterparts how much they appreciated the gesture, and to wish them well for the following day's Euro 2008 qualifier.
Posted at 15:15 10 November 2008 by James Barbour |
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