Insights public holidays (deadline May 10, 12pm noon)

What types of emotional discourse have you observed around the public holidays celebrated this time of the year in Israel (Memorial Day, Independence Day) and Russia (May Day, Victory Day)?  Was it surprising or different from what you expected or what you knew earlier? What are the emotional - cultural or ideological  - scripts that you have identified as active in the public domains around that time? Have you personally had any emotional experiences, already familiar or new? In your opinion, what are the relations between individual and collective emotions? Is it possible to disentangle them? Please write up to 300 words on this subject, answering some of these questions. Upload your post to the class forum until 12 pm noon on May 10.

For me, it was quite expected how they present May 9 in Russia now in connection with current events. Unfortunately, I dont know how in Israel people are celebrating Memorial Day, Independence Day and dont have a chance to compare it with russian example.
The only thing that surprised me was that there was a discourse of unification and unity among the peoples, which has not been the case for the last few years (especially when the heads of state who arrived at the parade in Moscow today were shown). Showing that other nations, like Belarusians, Armenians, etc. made a valuable contribution to the victory. When analyzing individual emotions and collective ones, it seems to me that in this case collective emotions are built on the basis of individual ones, making up something like a koleidoscope of emotions, however, the range of "permissible" emotions in this case is predetermined and everything that does not fall into the dominant idea of the collective about how "right" is excluded and ignored. That is, it is possible to partially separate individual and collective emotions. It also seemed to me that, compared to previous years, now more and more include a modern agenda during the celebration of May 9. Thereby creating a basis (a common collection experience) for discussing current events from the point of view needed by the state. Because in my experience, this is a special holiday that cannot be compared with any other holiday, but in recent years it seems to have been reinterpreted in a different way and for me it becomes incomprehensible and accepted. Such a rethinking is still becoming possible, as fewer and fewer veterans remain alive who could object, for example, or not support the current state policy.

As for me, I didn’t attend public places, so, my impressions are generally formed by either online space or by almost empty streets in Saint-Petersburg. So, in the framework of Victory Day in Russia, I have observed quite respectful approach of older population, when couples attached St. Georgian ribbon in the form of crossed loop. The same symbol is usually used by children, as for the youth, I haven’t seen such attributes. So, here my interpretation is more social, the emotions that are represented are basically in a range of so-called emotional regime when people got used to following the tradition of representation various signs in their looks, mostly for social or public purposes. The same works for children, they might be taught to getting used to the tradition of respectful and proud attitude to soldiers of the WWII.
Surprisingly for me, quite a lot of online topics are connected with the idea of too brutal and grandiose celebration of the event, and some sources very strongly highlight propagandist purpose of the Victory Day. Speaking about cultural and ideological dimension, I would divide the population on the two camps as I’ve already mentioned: youth (mostly people around 20-40 years old) and the other social groups, their basic attitude is quite different. For the second ones ideological component determines public demonstration of proud for the previous historical achievements. Maybe this is exactly the point of individual and collective dimension, that youth is more separated and prefers not to follow collective prescriptions.

The May weekend in Russia this year was celebrated on a smaller scale than usual. Parades have been canceled in many cities, perhaps because the authorities are afraid of the crowd, at least this explanatory model was chosen by many of my friends. Some of my friends went out of town to be "away from it all." We can say that people are divided into two camps in terms of celebrating the Victory Day, as well as into two camps in relation to the ongoing war. I noticed a huge difference in the emotions experienced by me and the patriots around. I went to Moscow for the May holidays, and accidentally got to the festive fireworks at VDNH. A lot of people gathered there, many people wore St. George ribbons and soldiers' caps from the Second World War. When the fireworks started, all the people turned to look at him, filmed the fireworks on camera and took pictures against his background, shouted approving phrases "for victory" and so on. At the same time, with each fireworks explosion, I thought how similar these explosions are to those that occur every day in combat zones, and how difficult it is to separate one "clap" from another. I was taken by endless anger towards the rejoicing crowd, I thought how they did not realize anything. Their joy turned into my anger, so I thought that these two emotions were mutually exclusive and denoting belonging to one of the camps.

I find it difficult to answer this question this year, because I worked during all the May holidays and did not watch any news, so I did not have the opportunity to note something special for myself.
From the experience of past years: the most memorable celebration of Victory Day for me was 2022, since this event was closely related to the context of current military events, and I was horrified to see how it would be carried out in terms of reproducing political emotions. I think that at that moment the emotions of the majority of the population were on the verge of hysterical: this is a mixture of some kind of thirst for revenge (which is always cultivated on Victory Day anyway), the nature of which they cannot explain to themselves. And also the most popular, in my opinion, the word that everyone around said and wrote is - pride. I think that through pride, people not only constructed the image of Soviet soldiers in their imagination, but could easily identify themselves with them, extending a piece of cultivated qualities (courage, and similar things) to themselves. This, in my opinion, may be the reason why they react aggressively to attempts to bring them back to reality: on this side of the discourse, they are not allowed to enjoy what they are helped to imagine about themselves.