Today is the Day of Memory and Mourning in Russia

80 years ago, on June 22, 1941, began the Great Patriotic War.
It was the most terrible and bloody war that affected almost every family in the Soviet Union, every home, every life. And now, for many generations, time is forever divided into “before” and “after” the war.
This date was always remembered. All those who survived and won, and all those who were born and raised after the war.
But, for a time, all these memories were deeply personal: everyone then remembered and recalled their own War. And only over the years, when the pain – no, was not gone – was dulled, when generations were born who had not seen all of it with their own eyes, who had not experienced it all, did the mournful date begin to be commemorated a little more grandly.
Today, flowers and wreaths will be laid at memorials and at the foot of monuments. Today, everyone will be remembered. All the people of what was then one big country, for whom there will never be an “after.” All those who died in battles and from their wounds, all those who starved in besieged Leningrad, all those who were bombed to death in thousands of Soviet cities, all those tortured and killed in concentration camps, all those burned alive in the villages of the occupied territory. Everyone will be remembered today.
You may recall that since 1992, by a decree of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, the Day of Memory and Mourning had been called the Day of Remembering the Defenders of the Fatherland. Only a few years later, on June 8, 1996, June 22 has officially been declared the Day of Memory and Mourning in the Russian Federation.
On this day, memorials and various patriotic events are held across the country, national flags are lowered to half-mast and wreaths are laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Eternal Flame in Moscow, at the Piskarevsky Memorial in St Petersburg and thousands of other Russian towns and villages.