by Stefano Caprio

June 12 June again this year marks the most important national holiday in post-Soviet Russia. But in order to avoid conflicting interpretations over its origins, Putin goes as far to refer to Prince Rjurik, the mythological Variegus chieftain who, according to ancient chronicles, started the history of Rus' in the year 862 in Novgorod, even before the foundation of Kiev

On 12 June, Den Rossii, the 'Day of Russia', the first national holiday of the post-Soviet era, was celebrated, with large demonstrations of collective jubilation in the streets and squares, the so-called guljanja or 'walks' between concerts, games and fireworks 'from Kaliningrad to Kamčatka', except for the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, where fighting rages from one side of the border to the other.

To make Moscow's skies clearer, since the time of Mayor Jurij Lužkov, special substances have been fired into the sky to disperse the clouds, although this year the manoeuvre was only partially successful, with a sunny morning and extensive afternoon showers.

In reality, the holiday was established even before the collapse of the USSR, on 12 June 1990, with the approval of the 'Declaration of Sovereignty' of the Russian Soviet republic Rsfsr, then led by the local party secretary, Boris Yeltsin, who was elected president on that same date the following year, and only in December 1991 did he put an end to the Soviet Union.

It is therefore a date reminiscent of the convulsive and dramatic phases of the empire's collapse, with Gorbachev's desperate attempt to transform it into a Union of independent states; before Russia, the Baltic States, Azerbaijan, Georgia and, in May, Ukraine had declared themselves such.

In fact, the title of the anniversary remained 'Russia's Independence Day' for a long time, and it was only in 2002 that it was finally freed from the concept of 'independence', which colonised countries usually attribute to themselves when they free themselves from external domination, whereas it is rather grotesque for a colonising country when it loses its colonies.

In order not to lose the worn-out Soviet link altogether, shortly before the end of the USSR, the 'Commonwealth of Independent States' was therefore established on 8 December 1991, a nostalgic structure that still exists (at least on paper), bringing together nine of the Union's fifteen former republics, except for the Baltics and Turkmenistan, which remained an 'external associate' as Ašgabat used to do in any kind of alliance or cooperation.

Therefore, 12 June remains the de facto celebration of the fall of the Soviet Union, the "most tragic event in all of contemporary history" in the words of Vladimir Putin, and at the same time the pride of Russia, which from a Republic becomes a State and Federation, dragging along all the contradictions inherited from the decades of "salvific" Communism, and which today are pushing it to create a new world order, putting itself back at the centre of history by dint of bombs and atomic threats.

In order to avoid getting tangled up with the conflicting interpretations on the origin of the holiday, while handing out the Heroes of Russia honours to veterans of war and labour, Putin thought it best to refer to Prince Rjurik, the mythological Varygo chief who, according to ancient chronicles, started the history of Rus' in the year 862 in Novgorod, thus before the foundation of Kiev and a century before Vladimir's baptism.

Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, in the euphoria of not only the occasion, triumphantly displayed a new 'interactive' map of Russia that includes the entire territory of Ukraine, whose name is replaced by the appellation Malorossija, the Little Russia of centuries past.

Instead, Russian bloggers and independent media held a marathon in support of political prisoners, titled 'You are not alone', a tradition in recent years of a return to totalitarianism. Around 30 million roubles were collected, less than last year's 40, as anyone giving money from Russia today would automatically be arrested and persecuted, so it was limited to collection among emigrants fleeing dictatorship.

To support Putin's proclamations, the inhabitants of Novgorod were gathered from early morning on the shores of nearby Lake Ilmen' to sing the national anthem, the very place where Prince Rajurik lived in what was called Il'menskaja Rus', the first name of the nascent state that the Vargargas initially called Gardariki, the region of the Gard, the 'settlements'. Hence the title of the first capital Nov-Gorod, the 'new city', Nea-Polis.

The decision to reread Russian history from its earliest roots was strongly desired by Putin, who has lately been turning more and more towards 'the ancestors' in order not to get caught up in Soviet and Tsarist stereotypes, going back to the origins of the whole of Europe.

Moreover this is employed to show how true Russian patriotism is an energy of universal scope, transcending all times, all borders and all latitudes: the ancestors of the great North project themselves onto today's global South, the civilisation of the medieval West merges with that of the contemporary East, Russia is the true Mother Earth from which all peoples must draw their lifeblood.

After two hours of the president's solemn lecture on ancient and universal history, on behalf of all military and labour awardees, scientists and even 'defenders of human rights', the director of the Kurčatovsky Institute, physics hero Mikhail Kovalčuk, thanked Putin: 'Thank you Vladimir Vladimirovič, without you none of this would have been possible', as if he himself had come down from the Scandinavian empyrean to create Russia in the time of Charlemagne. On behalf of the women, Julia Belekhova, founder of the Committee of Families of Fighters for the Fatherland, the militant answer to the 'Mothers and Wives for Homecoming' who demand to be able to re-embrace their loved ones chained at the Ukrainian front, at least those still alive. All credit to Belekhova, awarded as a humanitarian activist, lies in the daily publication on the social site VKontakte of videos of soldiers celebrating the conquest of a few kilometres of Ukrainian territory. As explained, Julia 'talks to the president every day', to confide in him the deep patriotic feelings of the women of Russia.

As sociologist Igor Ejdman comments, these solemn prize-giving ceremonies serve to 'give a pendant to all sisters' (razdat vsem sestram po sergam), a Russian saying to indicate the satisfaction of all social categories, showing their loyalty to the established power, whatever their status or occupation, a custom typical of Soviet times.

The prize-winners are also carefully chosen on an individual level (Putin is extremely suspicious in this) so as to show a complete display of an 'immaculate' people, immune to any kind of 'outside influence', the infection from which only Russians are able to heal other peoples.

For the rest, the celebrations throughout the country appeared rather repetitive and unnecessarily emphatic, after all it is difficult to go beyond the super-patriotic fanaticism of the singer Šaman and his song Ja russkij, by now another national anthem. The population is tired of the war and always fears new mobilisations, and appeals to the rjurikid dynasty or bogus award ceremonies fail to warm the spirits much.

The celebration of Russia that goes back to mythological times is also a way to revive an increasingly faded and depressing image of the 'Federation', the product of the contradictions of the 1990s that the date of 12 June reminds us of.

If Rus' goes back to the primitive 'Way from the Varyghi to the Greeks' whereby the Scandinavian tribes were united with the Eastern Slavs, then this memory should make us realise how Russians cannot live any other way than by aggregating other peoples and the larger territories, projecting themselves into the eternal and universal dimension of Eurasia and the 'Russian World', and all separatist drives of the Finns and Northerners, Caucasians and Asians are silenced and summed up in a new epic of conquest and sobornost, of purifying reunion.

President Putin wished Patriarch Kirill well for this, recalling that Russia and the Church are two overlapping concepts: one does not exist without the other, but even the 'true faith' can only express itself in the vision of a higher, state-federal-cosmic entity, Russia being Orthodoxy incarnate.

As Viktoria Artemeva notes in Novaja Gazeta Evropa, the Federation is merely 'the ghost of a country that does not exist, and has never existed', described as 'an unfinished love story, typical of the most banal romance novels'.

The man, the powerful one, seeks out the woman, Russia, claiming that he cannot live without her, then rejects her and takes her back several times, fears that she might return and undermine him from the throne, then represses her and locks her up in deepest darkness.

Federalism' is a concept hated by the current Kremlin power, which celebrates the origins of its lineage in order to avoid looking its descendants in the eye, and realising that no man and no people are capable of writing the entire history of the world on their own.

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