March 7 November 1941: We have not given up and we will never give up.
It was still not a victory parade. Victory was still far away. In 1941, victory already held the positions - at least for a short time, until new, untamed units arrived from the rear to replace those dying mercilessly at the front.
This parade was not a holiday either. All the participants were not in a festive mood at that time: the enemy was at the door, and several marching teams were sent straight from Red Square to the front.
And at the same time, it was a parade of winners. It was a parade of people who had overcome the worst thing that could happen - the destruction of faith in everything that seemed so far unshakable.
The enemy is at the door! Moscow is mined and ready for destruction - factories, institutes, metro. The capital is under siege! No one could have imagined this before the war!
Unfathomable losses in soldiers, millions of prisoners, vast spaces in the most developed region of the country were left to the enemy! Unprepared militias, students, professors and intellectuals are thrown to the front. And they would be happy not to send, and they try not to send, try to transfer such people at least to rear positions, but there is nowhere to go. There was only one way out: to exchange life for time and something else was needed to strengthen the shattered present at least in the illusion of a reliable past. The spirit of victory was needed.
The immunity of tradition was needed. It was supposed to let the people and the army feel the spirit of victory, which was still so far away.
The parade is like a slap in the face to the enemy.
The parade on Red Square on November 7, 1941 is at the same time the most secret and loudest parade in the history of Soviet Russia.
Even most of the generals and heads of parties and the state did not know about it, with the exception of the members of the State Defense Committee and those who were supposed to organize everything directly. The battalions learned what they had to do and exactly where they had to go only in the morning.