Address by the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiev, on the occasion of the 64th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War

Tatarstanians!

Veterans, front-line and home-front soldiers!

I heartily congratulate you on the 64th Anniversary of the Great Patriotic War!

Those distant and at the same time close events of the Great Patriotic War are forever engraved in our people's historical memory, having become a strong link of spiritual continuity of generations. No adventurer or falsifier of the past can break it. And the testimony to it is the nationwide scope of every year festivities in honour of the Day of the Great Victory.

The war spread through our long-suffering land as a devastating tornado destroying thousands of cities and towns, dozens of thousands of villages and settlements, it carried away more than twenty million lives. It ruined a huge number of factories and plants, destroyed invaluable cultural monuments, burnt down enormous areas of fields and woods. That war, the most terrible in the history of mankind, did not spare anybody - neither children and women, nor old people, having left a deep, never-healing scar in everyone's heart and in the heart of our entire multinational people.

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Only from Tatarstan more than seven hundred thousand people went to the front, almost half of them remained lying dead on boundless battle fields. Immortal names of heroes - Musa Jalil, Mikhail Devyataev, Maguba Syrtlanova, Petr Gavrilov, Ganya Safiullin, Nikolai Stolyarov, Gazi Zagitov and many others - will always be glorified for their heroic fates serve as a brilliant example for all after-war generations of Tatarstanians. The image of each of them is in our hearts, immortalized in numerous bronze and granite monuments, in names of settlements, streets and schools.

We shall always remember and honour our fearless soldiers and self-denying workers of the home front - all those whose efforts worked for the Great Victory. The unfading feat accomplished by our highly-respected veterans has become a symbol of invincible will, patriotism and true greatness of spirit. Deep gratitude to you for your courage, diligence, wisdom, inexhaustible vital optimism and active participation in the life of our home republic. Eternal memory to the fallen and long years of life to the heroes who are with us today!

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Happy Victory Day!