There are moments when memory is not attacked, but captured.

This is the central problem with the “Immortal Regiment” as it is increasingly presented today. The issue is not whether families have the right to remember their dead. Of course they do. A photograph of a grandfather, a grandmother, a father, a mother, a soldier, a partisan, a nurse, a survivor — these are not propaganda by themselves. They are fragments of family history.

The problem begins when private grief is absorbed into a state ritual, surrounded by aggressive symbols, military slogans and the political mythology of a country that is waging a new war.

What once looked like a grassroots act of remembrance has, over the years, become something very different: a coordinated instrument of Russian state influence. In Russia and abroad, “Immortal Regiment” events are often supported or framed by official and semi-official structures: embassies, “Russian Houses,” military-historical organizations, pro-Kremlin cultural networks and diaspora groups loyal to Moscow’s narrative. These networks may include structures such as “Volunteers of Victory,” whose activities help standardize the symbols, language and emotional framing of the commemoration.

Abroad, such marches also serve another purpose: they produce images of supposed international support, later used by Russian media for domestic and external audiences.

That does not mean every participant is a propagandist. Many people come sincerely. They carry a family photograph. They remember a real person. They feel pain, pride, loss, gratitude.

But sincerity of motive does not erase the political use of the event.

One person may come with memory. The state machine leaves with a propaganda image.

From Remembrance to Ritual

The transformation of the “Immortal Regiment” is not only organizational. It is visual and emotional. The portraits are now often surrounded by Soviet and Russian symbols, red flags, St. George ribbons, military uniforms, portraits of Stalin, children dressed as soldiers, and slogans such as “We can repeat it.”

This phrase alone changes everything.

If the subject is the Second World War — the Holocaust, the mass graves, the destroyed cities, deportations, hunger, occupation, concentration camps and millions of dead — then the moral lesson cannot be “We can repeat it.” The only moral lesson is: we must not repeat it.

When portraits of Stalin appear in this space, the distortion becomes even sharper: a dictator responsible for mass terror is placed inside a ritual supposedly dedicated to human dignity and liberation.

For Jewish memory, this distinction is fundamental.

The language of “Never Again” is not the language of military triumph. It is the language of warning. It means that the memory of catastrophe must restrain us from dehumanization, imperial lies, mass violence and the transformation of human beings into material for the ambitions of the state.

When a war tragedy is turned into a cult of force, something essential is lost. The dead are no longer remembered as human beings. They become symbols in a political performance.

Russia’s Monopoly on Victory

The Second World War was not won by today’s Russian Federation. It was fought and won by many peoples and allied nations at an unbearable cost. Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Armenians, Georgians, peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as Americans, Britons, Europeans and many others fought, suffered and died. Millions were victims of Nazism. Millions were also victims of Stalinism.

Yet the Kremlin’s narrative........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)