Ukraine's parliamentary faction "Opposition Bloc" introduced a bill seeking to cancel punishment for making or wearing Saint George ribbons, a symbol of World War II victory popular in the former Soviet countries, according to the parliament's website.
The bill proposes an amendment to the law approved by the parliament on Tuesday, which, if signed by President Petro Poroshenko, would introduce fines or arrest for making or wearing of the ribbon in Ukraine, with an exception made for war veterans whose medals or orders incorporate elements of the ribbon.
During the latest celebrations of the anniversary of World War II victory in Ukraine, several people were reportedly taken into police custody for wearing communism-related symbols forbidden in Ukraine. The Saint George ribbon was not forbidden at the time.
The symbol first became associated with the Victory Day celebrations in Russia in 2005.
Ukraine’s ban on the St. George ribbon, a symbol of the 1945 victory in WWII, amounts to blasphemy and bigotry, and points to a crisis in values plaguing the Kiev regime, Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Committee for Constitutional Law and State Building Andrey Klishas told reporters.
According to him, the decision to ban the St. George ribbon, made by the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) on Tuesday, as well as other restrictions, will only spark a social crisis. "By banning the St. George ribbon, cultivating a culture of hate against Russia and denying their own history, they are openly celebrating bigotry," Klishas’ press service quoted him as saying.
The Russian senator also said that the hatred against everything Russian, encouraged by the Ukrainian authorities in order to solve domestic problems, was approaching its peak. "The use of force, lies and doubletalk to change society’s values can only lead to the state’s destruction. Attempts to present a symbol of the great victory as "a symbol of the enemy made up by Soviet propaganda," as Verkhovna Rada member Dmitry Linko said, are nothing more than an insult to society," Klishas added.
In the senator’s opinion, such laws and statements indicate that the Ukrainian ruling class has inherited its ideas from those who were convicted for war crimes at Nuremberg 70 years ago.
"A torchlight procession was held in Kiev to mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian "special battalions" use symbols reminiscent of those employed by the Nazi SS, participants in marches held ahead of the Victory Day carried portraits of Roman Shukhevich and Stepan Bandera, while arrests were carried out during the Immortal Regiment march in Kiev and veterans of the Great Patriotic War were bullied. All this highlights a deep crisis in values that the state has been facing," the Russian senator concluded.
How an unlikely PR campaign made a ribbon the symbol of Russian patriotism
The St. George ribbons are ubiquitous in Russia, particularly in the weeks before the Victory Day celebration on May 9, when they symbolize patriotism and the memory of the war. The ribbon is one of the most successful stories in Russia’s search for unifying symbols under President Vladimir Putin, tying modern support for the state to the country’s Soviet-era contribution to the defeat of fascism.
But until 2005, the ribbon was rarely used as a symbol tied to the war at all. The Order of St. George wasn’t awarded during what Russians call the Great Patriotic War, or World War II, because it was abolished after the Communist revolution and only revived in 2000. (Other awards, like the Order of Glory, pictured below, were minted during the war and did carry an orange-and-black ribbon, as did elite “guards” units beginning in 1942.)
But what brought back the orange-and-black ribbon was a 2005 PR campaign at Russia’s RIA Novosti state-run news agency, where the head of Internet projects, Natalya Loseva, was tasked with coming up with a souvenir to accompany the site’s online project collecting family memories about the war. The ribbons were “not made up from nothing,” she said in a 2014 interview. “We took a familiar combination of colors, a familiar context. ... These factors came together and it evoked quite a natural reaction in society.” The ribbons were first handed out by student volunteers in 2005 but quickly found support from the city and federal government, which distributed the ribbons widely both in Russia and abroad.
By 2014, more than 100 million ribbons had been distributed. Columnists at RIA Novosti claimed that its “grass-roots” campaign had succeeded where top-down efforts to create unifying symbols of Russian identity had failed.
“The ribbons that symbolized martial glory and remembrance succeeded where Independence Day and many other symbols failed — they united the Russian people,” RIA Novosti wrote in an op-ed in 2007, when 10 million ribbons had been distributed abroad.
The ribbons quickly adopted a political meaning, too.
Oleg Kashin, a liberal journalist, wrote that Russian nationalists were already wearing the ribbon during protests in Estonia in 2007, when the NATO-aligned government of the former Soviet republic announced it wanted to remove a Soviet war memorial from a central square.
“The participants of that spring also wore the ribbon and it was an important episode in the transformation of the ribbon into a symbol of a concrete political partiality and views, and not just memory,” Kashin wrote in 2014 after the ribbon became controversial because of its use in east Ukraine. “The ribbon was a symbol of memory, then almost immediately became a symbol of the state, and then a symbol of loyalty to the authorities.”
There were rumors that the ribbons were invented as a counterrevolutionary symbol to Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, although those seem untrue. Later, however, when a mix of Russian liberals, nationalists and other activists coalesced in a 100,000 person strong rallies under the symbol of a white ribbon, some presented the St. George ribbon as one of opposition. “St. George’s Ribbon stands against the White Ribbon," Dmitry Rogozin, a hawkish deputy prime minister, tweeted then.
Loseva, the inventor of the ribbon, said she was never comfortable with the ribbon’s use as a political symbol, particularly when separatists in Ukraine rallied around the colors orange and black as a symbol of their support for Moscow (and Moscow’s support for them).
“Now it’s suddenly and spontaneously being used against part of the Ukrainian people and the authorities of the Maidan,” the main square in Kiev where large protests are held, Loseva said in her 2014 interview. “I am not sure, that this kind of politicization of symbols and signs is good.”
This year the biggest issue is slightly more practical: how to properly wear the St. George ribbon. One group, Volunteers of the Victory, has declared that tying the ribbons to bags or car antennae (where they quickly become ragged) is no longer allowed. The ribbons can be tied in a bow, square or loop and attached to a jacket lapel or affixed elsewhere on one’s clothing, preferably “closer to the heart.” Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov, however, balked at these new rules: “I have been wearing the St. George ribbon for eight years on my bag,” he said. “And I don’t want someone to punish me for how I wear the St. George ribbon.”
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