The mantis problem: why do people clasp their hands when praying?

The thoughts of a praying mantis may not be beyond all conjecture and we may not even completely exclude that when the creature stays in this position it is really praying to an all-powerful Mantis God. However, it may be safer to assume that in defining this insect as "praying" we simply engaged in an exercise of anthropomorphization. If mantises were to give a name to praying humans, they might fall into the same mistake ("mantimorphization") and they would call us "Insect Hunting Apes" noting how we, sometimes, clasp our hands together.  But why do humans pray in that way (at least in the West)?

In the West, we are so used to the concept that praying means joining one's hands together that we project this idea over other cultures, and even to non-human creatures such as the "praying mantis". But are we sure that this is the standard way to pray?

Do a test: exclude Western Christianity and search all over the Web for images of people praying. Look at Hinduism, Islam, Orthodox Christian, Jews, whatever you can think of in terms of religions. I did it, and I couldn't find images of people praying in that way, except occasionally. Outside Western Christianity, people face their God(s) in a variety of postures, kneeling, prostrating, with their hands raised up, or down; but rarely, if ever, joining them together.

Now, try to go back in time. Look at ancient images: Byzantine Christian art; for instance. You'll find that they were not praying by joining their hands together. Look at the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy, one of the earliest examples of Christian art in Europe: you won't find anyone in its mosaics who is praying in this way. In Byzantine art, people were mostly praying in the "Orans" posture, hands raised up, well separated. They still do that in the Orthodox religion. Here is a classic example from Ravenna:

Now go all the way back to the earliest times for which we have images. Look at Sumerian art: you do find people who are often described as "praying" with clasped hands:

But are we sure that these people are "praying"? If you ask me, I'd rather say that they are singing and that we are doing the same mistake with them that we do when we talk of a "praying mantis." Besides, these people are not joining their hands in the same way as modern Christians do. When Sumerians were addressing their Gods in what we could call "prayer", they were using a completely different gesture; more similar to the "Orans" one, but normally with only one hand raised. Here you see a typical example, from an ancient Sumerian cylinder seal:

In the end, the result of this exploration is that praying by joining hands kept in front of one's body is very rare in history. Not that it is completely non-existent, it may be seen as a generic gesture of submission, but it is common only in one culture: Western Christianity from the Middle Ages onward. If you look at the images in miniated codices, you find plenty of examples. Not everyone prays in this way, but the classic image of joining hands is common. Here is an example from the 14th century (from Wikimedia)

By perusing art over the centuries, you get the impression that this way of praying becomes more and more common until it has become the standard way of praying for Christians in the West, spilling over also to other faiths that had not practiced it so far. So, we know now where this posture came from; the next question is why. Why did people start praying in this way in the early Middle Ages in Europe and what does it mean?

It is, of course, difficult to provide a definitive answer, but I think I can propose something as food for thought. Let's start with a well-known Christian symbol, the fish. Here it is:

We are often told that ancient Christians used this image as a symbol; the result of acronym the Greek letters standing for Ichthys, Iesus Christ, son of God, savior. Now, turn the fish on its tail, and here is what you get.

So, what does it look like? Well, doesn't it look like so much like......?

Could it be that the joined praying hands are a representation of the ancient fish symbol? Let's assume that it was used as we are told it was, as a sort of "secret symbol" for the secret sect that Christianity was at the beginning. Then, joining the hands together in this way could have been a sign of one's belonging to the Christian faith.

There may be something in this interpretation, although with many caveats. One is that the ancient Christians may have used the acrostic Ichthys, but there is little archaeological evidence (if any) that they used as a symbol a fish as it is drawn today. And there is zero evidence that they would pray with joined hands. So, it is unlikely that the medieval way of praying is a direct consequence of a symbol that was in fashion - if ever - about one thousand years before.

It is not impossible, however, that the fish and the joined hands were the results of the medieval interest in the relation of the fish symbol and Christianity. Consider, for instance, the figure of the "Fisher King"; which is a typical Medieval legend. It seems that there was, indeed, a wave of interest in how Christianity was related to fish concepts and symbols. Of course, the fish as a symbol is a complex set of interlaced elements, and it would take a lot of work (assuming that it were possible) to deconstruct this ancient medieval story. Yet, I do think that there is something in this idea; at least as an illustration of the fascinating history of symbolism.

Then, there is another problem: why do people kneel down with their joined hands in front of non-existent beings? Who knows? Maybe mantises know better than us about this. (Below, a sculpture by Anne Shingleton)

The liminal barrier of literacy: peering into the neolithic abyss

One of the lizard-woman statuettes found in the Al Ubaid archaeological site in Iraq. They date to about 7000 years ago and their meaning remains unknown. 

With her novel "Memoirs of Hadrian,"  the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar tried to bring back to life the mind and the personality of a Roman Emperor who had lived nearly two thousand years before her. She succeeded, within some limits, and reading her book we have the sensation to be there, to be talking with the ancient emperor, to see the world around him with his eyes.

But Hadrian, as ancient as he was, is still comfortably on this side of the liminal border of literacy, the barrier that separates the section of history for which we have written documents and the other side, the illiterate one, that vast span of time that goes from the earliest written documents all the way to the great barrier of ice of the Pleistocene. The ice melted down some 10,000 years ago, to leave our ancestors to gaze on a new world, appearing in front of their eyes: a fertile land that had emerged from under the great glaciers.

That was the start of the period we call the Holocene, and it meant at least six thousand years of human life on earth without any written records having arrived to us. Thousands of years of life, of songs, of poems, of myths, of loves, of hates, of battles and more. All disappeared, collapsed in that mythologized universe of Gods and Heroes that the Australian natives call "dreamtime". Of these thousands of years, there remain for us only dreams. 

But perhaps the task of interpreting that ancient dream is not beyond our means. The song that Sirens sang, it is said, it is not beyond all conjecture. The same is true for the attempt to reconstruct at least something of those ancient times, the times before literature.

One way to peer into those far away times is to look at the  earliest literature we have. Back to the third millennium BCE, we can see the slow development of cuneiform writing in the valley that we call Mesopotamia. Starting with lists of items defined by simple ideograms, cuneiform slowly developed into a fully fledged writing system; a way to record human thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams. And able to write down the poems that, once, were only sung and recited.

The earliest "modern" literature we have are probably the poems written by the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna, going back to some moment in the second half of the third millennium BCE. It is a curious quirk of history that not only her name and many of her poems have survived all the way to our time. But we even have a portrait of her; perhaps a realistic one.

From what she wrote on clay so many centuries ago, Enheduanna comes forth to us; a human being like us. In the lines of her "Nin Me Sara" ("Lady of many virtues"), we recognize ourselves. We recognize our awe in front of the universe, the mystery that surrounds us and, at times, the desperation of being

nothing in front of it. When Enheduanna writes her prayer to her beloved Goddess, Inanna, she says, "If I am yours, why do you slay me?" It is like if we were seeing her in front of us, in flesh and bones, summoned by that mysterious spell we call "poetry".

If Enheduanna is still on our side, on the side of the literate world in which we comfortably stay, Inanna is a creature that has jumped over the barrier, but still carries with her plenty of baggage from an earlier age. From Enheduanna's poems, we can get glimpses of this earlier world, remote for her as it is for us. In the translation by Betty De Shong Meador, we read how Inanna wears "the robes of the old, old gods," before going forth to battle her enemies. This Inanna has nothing of the gentle bride of the shepherd Dumuzi, one of her later aspects. She is a terrible creature that destroys everything she faces, demolishing entire mountains with her mace. An elemental divinity, shrieking in the sky. How was she seen by those who worshipped the "old, old Gods?"

Beyond Enheduanna, crossing the liminal literacy barrier, we have only what archaeology has been able to dig out of lost cities and villages. And it is a strange world. A world of images that look alien to us. Think of the snake-women of Ubaid; think of the curious "eye idols" found in Mesopotamia. What should we think of the mouth-less "Urfa Man", perhaps the oldest human shaped piece of statuary ever found? Think of the Neolithic city of Catal Huyuk; a city where the dead were buried right under the floor of dwellings, sometimes under the beds of the living.

What kind of world was that? How did these people think? What did they think? According to Marija Gimbutas they were a peaceful and egalitarian society, dedicated to the cult of the Mother Goddess. Julian Jaynes has seen not completely conscious, hallucinated people who were really "hearing" the voices of the gods in the form of their statuary. Lewis Williams and Pearce see Neolithic art as the result of "Altered States of Consciousness."

Many others have tried to project themselves into the mind of persons living before the liminal barrier of literacy. Did they succeed? Most likely, we will never know. And, yet, these thoughts tell us of at least one thing: the infinite variety and fascination of the human mind, in history and all over the world. In a sense, they are all an enlarged exploration of Terence's line that "nothing human is alien to me."

I believe it because it is absurd

Reposted from "Resource Crisis", where it had appeared in 2011

Climate scientist Hans Schellnhuber is threatened with a noose while giving a lecture. (link to the video).  Are scientists our new enemies, the target of a new crusade? 

At the beginning of the third century A.D., Tertullianus, champion of Christianity against Paganism, gave us a startling revelation of the breakdown between the old and the new cultural vision. He wrote something that we remember today as, "Credo quia absurdum" that is, "I believe it because it is absurd." These are not exactly Tertullian's words, but this sentence nicely summarizes his thought. Tertullian was using absurdity as a weapon against the old paradigm. He was an apostate, a revolutionary, a subversive.

Rethinking about those ancient times, it is impressive to note how similar they are to the paradigm breakdown of our times which is often expressed in terms of what we call "conspiracy theories". Up to no long ago, the breakdown against the old cultural vision was expressed in complex and structured ideological forms: communism or socialism for instance. But what we are seeing now is nothing structured or complex. It is simply  the denial of everything that could give the impression of being "scientifically demonstrated". From chemtrails to climategate, we see the spreading of an attitude based on the concept that "if it is science, then it is a hoax." If Tertullian were alive today, his search for the creative absurdity would be expresses,  perhaps, maintaining that the planes flying above us are spreading terrible poisons over the atmosphere or that the idea of that human produced CO2 is warming the planet is an elaborate hoax designed to frighten us.

It is weird; sure. But for everything that exists, there is a reason for it to exist. That is true also for conspiracy theories, now and in old times. At the time of Tertullian, the material prosperity of Rome and of the Romans was often seen as the result of the favor of the Pagan Gods. When this prosperity disappeared, it was a shock: the old Gods didn't favor Rome any more. The result was a movement of ideas that saw the ancient gods as "evil," just as those people who kept worshiping them. We remember the story of the pagan philosopher, Hypatia, killed and dismembered by an angry mob. That happened a couple of centuries after Tertullian, when the break between the new and the old paradigm was not any more the domain of isolated subversives; it had become a wave of rage - a true tsunami.

Today, we find symptoms of exactly this kind of breakdown; of a tsunami of rage mounting in our society. Think of our prosperity: we tend to attribute it not to Pagan Gods, but to our technological prowess. We worship the ability of scientists to create new and better machinery. We tell each other that any and every problem can be solved by scientists inventing a clever way out. Not enough oil? Let's drill deeper, invent better biofuels, create nuclear fusion in a bottle. Not enough food? Let's invent new fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, new pesticides. Pollution? Let's have new and better filters for car exhausts and incinerator smokestacks. Cancer? Soon we'll have the magic pill that cures it.

But now something different is happening, something unheard before. The scientists are telling us that there are no quick fixes for problems such as resource depletion and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That the more we grow, the more the problem gets serious. That we risk wiping out humankind from the planet by doing exactly the same things that we have been so proud of being able to do, so far. That we need to change our ways before it is too late.

It is the complete breakdown of the old paradigm. For most of us, it is totally disorienting to hear that we did everything wrong, and to hear it told by the very people, the scientists, who had shown us how to do what we have been doing. That can only be seen as a betrayal and there is no wonder that the rage mounts against those treacherous, unfaithful, evil scientists. Such stories as the "Climategate" are signs of this rage. It is a terrible rage, something that cannot be explained except by the loss of a common frame of thought. It is a society that is losing the master-pupil relation. That is, losing wisdom, sapience, auctoritas.

When people lose wisdom, the easiest way out appears to them to find an enemy, Our new enemies seem to be the scientists. We haven't seen yet climatologists being lynched by angry mobs, as it happened to Hypatia long ago - but we seem to be getting close to something like that.  The rage of those people whom we call "conspiracy theorists" is still at the formless stage of denial of everything, but it may well develop in forms that we might describe as some sort of a new crusade where, this time, the enemies are the scientists. It would not be the first time that scientists become the target of political movements, from the times of McCarthyism in the US to the "Cultural Revolution" in China. Those movements eventually subsided, but maybe we haven't seen the anti-science rage appearing in full force, yet.

The transformation of the Roman Society from paganism to Christianity took centuries and involved all sorts of violent struggles until it settled into a new paradigm and a new sapience. A thousand years after Tertullian, the world saw that flowering of thought that we call scholastic philosophy; which involved rediscovering the old sapience and merging it with the new. We are seeing today the start of a new cycle and, in time, we will have to rediscover a new sapience and a new auctoritas. What we see today obscurely, as in a mirror, then we'll see face to face.

The future of human sex: gorilla, gibbon, or bonobo?

Sex at Dawn, a 2010 book published by HarperCollins

I stumbled into this book almost by chance and, at first, I hated it. The authors start with creating a true army of straw men and then proceed to attack almost everyone who has been saying something on the topics of human sexuality. They start with Darwin, poor guy, he was always faithful to his wife, what could he know about sex? Then, they take a wide sweep to people like Dawkins, Gould, Diamond, and many others, including a remarkable sneer at Richard Wrangham who studied chimps for his whole career, but they know so much more than him about chimps. Truly, that put me off to the point that I was seriously tempted to throw the book out of the window.

But, eventually, I didn't throw the book away and I can say that it is worthy reading despite its many defects. It is biased, preposterous, prolix, and poorly organized; yet, the authors managed to put together a remarkable assessment of the current knowledge on the sexuality of primates.

So, what is the thesis of the book? It takes some work to disentangle it from the mass of the text, but, eventually, it comes out loud and clear. I could summarize it starting from a rough classification of the three sexual strategies used by apes.

1. Gibbons: male-female pair bonding (monogamy)

2. Gorillas: alpha males and large harems of females

3. Bonobos: complete male-female promiscuity

Of the remaining ape species, Chimps behave similarly to bonobos, but they are more aggressive and more hierarchical. Humans, then, are supposed to tend to pair bonding, but that's only theoretical and they can adopt also, in various degrees, the other two strategies.

The thesis of Ryan and Jethà, the authors of the book, is that the "original" human strategy, widely adopted in pre-historical times, is the bonobo strategy, that is male-female promiscuity. Not only that, but they maintain that bonobo strategy is the "natural" sexual strategy of humans and also the optimal one for various reasons.

All that is, of course, not completely new, but it had not been discussed, so far, in a popular book. Then, it is clearly also very questionable, but the authors do manage to show elements in support for their thesis.

Let's start from the beginning: it cannot be proven that our hunting/gathering ancestors would practice the bonobo sexual strategy. However, in some conditions, promiscuity makes a lot of sense in evolutionary terms. In ancient times, one of the main existential threats for a human female was the death of her male companion and we have sufficient evidence that even today human stepfathers do not behave very kindly toward their stepchildren (to say nothing of how lion stepfathers behave). In this view, for a human female, mating with several males is the equivalent of a life insurance for her and her children. If there is a reasonable possibility that her children could have been fathered by a male other than her husband, then, that male has an interest in helping her and her children. Even a husband has some interest in not stopping his wife from mating with other males (or at least for not making too much fuss about that), for the sake of his (probable or possible) children. Extrapolated to its logical conclusion, this leads to the bonobo strategy: complete promiscuity.

This strategy still exists today in some small and isolated tribes and, in modern society, we call it "swinging" (also "wife swapping"). Ryan and Jethà report that it was a fashionable game in the 1940s with American military pilots, whose job carried high risks. As a consequence, it made sense for them to share their wives in order to help them to survive in case their husbands would die in battle.

Up to here, we are on a relatively firm ground; these matters are known in anthropological studies, although not so often popularized. The problem comes if we try to follow the authors in their more audacious propositions, that is, that the bonobo strategy is not just natural but, rather, something that should be widely adopted worldwide by humans. This idea may be appealing under some respects. Bonobos are peaceful creatures because their promiscuous sexual habits remove the need for males to fight for females. If we could develop something like that it in our society, then many of our current problems with wars and violence would disappear.

Here, unfortunately, we have moved to a very, very slippery ground. It is possible that the bonobo strategy is optimal for a small tribe of hunters/gatherers, but things change a lot when we move to the more complex and hierarchical societies that appeared in the past 10,000 years or so. A certain degree of hidden promiscuity persists in all human societies, but the full bonobo strategy is very rare and not exactly praised or considered to be morally acceptable.

There are many possible reasons for the disappearance of the bonobo style sexuality in humans - assuming that it existed. One could be the effect of sexually transmitted diseases, others, simply, the diffusion of alternative sexual strategies. In a complex society ruled by laws and tradition, a human female may not need promiscuity to gain support in an emergency situation. Rather, she can rely on a network of relatives, or - in modern times - on the state. That may be one of the reasons for the diffusion, in relatively modern times, of strict monogamy and of strictly regulated polygamy, both linked to the diffusion of monotheistic religions. At the same time, the increasing complexity and the increasing hierarchical structure of modern society led to the appearance of "super-alpha males" such as Gengis Khan and Ismail Ibn Sharif, who can muster harems that not even the strongest silverback gorilla could dream of. In some cases, these super-alpha males are the very embodiment of the concept of "demonic males" described by Wrangham.

Given this situation, it is naive, to say the least, to think that the bonobo-style sexuality will return with humans simply because we would like to live in a happier and more peaceful world. Evolution is not here to make people (or any creature) happy. Evolution simply moves forward and changes keep occurring as the result of adaptation. We are evolving fast, as a species, and we'll keep evolving. And this evolution is surely affecting also our sexual behavior. So, what is the future of human sex?

In principle, humans could evolve toward any of the three known primate sexual strategies (gorilla, gibbon, and bonobo). A move to bonobo-like promiscuity seems to be improbable, but it may not be excluded if we manage to build a relatively peaceful and stable society. More likely, monogamous pair bonding  could remain the (theoretical) rule for some time. On the other hand, the monstrous "super-alpha" male could expand their role and become the widespread rule, forcing most other males to be unable to reproduce. Finally, humans could evolve in completely different ways, including the possibility of developing a completely "eusocial" society in which sex and reproduction would be reserved for a small group of specialized individuals, as it is the case for some insect and mammal species.

As usual, we cannot tell what the future has in store for us; but one thing is certain: the future is never the same as the past.

Remembering the Eastern Front, 70 years ago

In this scene of "White Tiger" a 2012 movie by Karen Shakhnazarov, tankist' Naydenov (right) tells Lieutenant Sharipov (left) that the crews of German tanks are "Fascists, of course, but all the same.... people"

A few days ago, I published a guest post by Tatiana Yugay on the march of the "Immortal Regiment" in Moscow, in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the victory against the Nazis. I published it somewhat in a hurry on the "Russia Day" of June 12, and I had no time to comment on it, but now I can do it.

Different countries have different views of their history, but it is impressive how the Russians found a good way to celebrate victory and maintain a loving memory of their  heroes. In the West, the gigantic struggle that was the Eastern Front is all but forgotten, but it may be instructive to examine how it was perceived in Italy at the time, and of how it is perceived now (if at all).

A good way to get a feeling of how the events of the war were described is to look at the newspapers of the time. As far as I could find, the only archive available on line for those years, is that of "La Stampa." As an archive, it is truly an example of how not to make an internet site, but, with some work, it can give to you a chance to watch in a few hours what Italians could read about the Russian campaign over a few years, while it was taking place.

You can imagine, probably, how the battles of the Eastern front are described in those old papers. Every battle is a victory for our troops who manage either to advance or to stop the evil Bolsheviks from advancing. It goes on like that throughout 1942, until, with November, you may note that something is happening; something big. You read of more and more battles, and of increasing bigger ones. All are victories, of course: the Bolsheviks keep attacking, but they are always repulsed with great losses.

As months go by, however, something changes: you still read of great battles on the Eastern front, but the chronicle ceases to mention Italian troops. By the spring of 1943, only German troops are described as fighting in Russia. But you have to discover that yourself: there is no mention in the newspaper of the defeat of the Italian troops, no news about the fate of the soldiers, no comment on what had happened to them. It is total silence; it is like if the Italian expeditionary corps, the 230,000 men of the "ARMIR"  had marched through a multi-dimensional gate, disappearing to another galaxy. For most of them, it was a one way trip. Those who managed to get back to Italy, were told to say nothing about what had happened. They were forgotten in their own country.

This story has to do with an immense form of evil. A pervasive, multi-layered evil that caused Italian soldiers to be sent to invade another country, to fight an impossible battle against overwhelmingly more powerful forces, to be forgotten by the very country they had served to the ultimate sacrifice.

I know that it is wrong to lump together the aggressor and the aggressed, the invader and the invaded, the injustice and the justice. Still, it seems to me that the last of these forms of evil may be no less monstrous than the other two. Some of the Italians who fought on the Eastern front were fascists, but not all of them and all were - all the same - people.

Perhaps evil lurks in the black ink of the printed page of a newspaper; perhaps for the Gods, our battles are not more important than those among ants. Perhaps, the universe just doesn't care about our struggles and suffering. Whatever the case, much time has passed from those terrible years, maybe it is time to remember them with love, and with a beautiful song like this one.

The cranes

Sometimes it seems to me that the soldiers,

Who haven't returned from blood's fields,
Haven't layed in our land, But have turned into white cranes.
From those distant times
They fly and we hear their voices.
Is it because so often and so sadly
We are falling silent and looking into heaven?
The tired crane flock flies, flies through the sky,
Flies in the mist at the end of the day.
And it is a small gap in this order -
Perhaps this place is for me.
The day will come, and in such crane flock
I'll swim in the same blue-gray haze.
Calling out like a bird from the heavens
All of you who are left on earth.
Sometimes it seems to me that the soldiers,
Who haven't returned from blood's fields,
Haven't layed in our land, But have turned into white cranes.

Taken from http://lyricstranslate.com/en/zhuravli-zhuravli-cranes.html#ixzz3d3THj1Vj

Zhuravli (Журавли)

Мне кажется порою, что солдаты
С кровавых не пришедшие полей,
Не в землю нашу полегли когда-то,
А превратились в белых журавлей.
Они до сей поры с времен тех дальних
Летят и подают нам голоса.
Не потому ль так часто и печально
Мы замолкаем глядя в небеса?
Летит, летит по небу клин усталый,
Летит в тумане на исходе дня.
И в том строю есть промежуток малый -
Быть может это место для меня.
Настанет день и журавлиной стаей
Я поплыву в такой же сизой мгле.
Из-под небес по-птичьи окликая
Всех вас, кого оставил на земле.
Мне кажется порою, что солдаты
С кровавых не пришедшие полей,
Не в землю нашу полегли когда-то,
А превратились в белых журавлей.

 

The Immortal Regiment Marches in Moscow

A guest post by Tatiana Yugay, faculty member of the state university of Moscow. Published here in occasion of the "Russia day" on June 12

by TatianaYugay

On May 9, 2015, my friends and I participated in the grand manifestation “The Immortal Regiment” in order to commemorate known and unknown heroes of the World War II and the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory.

I arrived at the Belorusskaya metro station at 14 p.m. It was already boozing with hundreds of people carrying portraits of their parents and grandparents. I was afraid that I'd lose my friends in the crowd. Fortunately, we met after some minutes of waiting. Meanwhile, I climbed at the bench and made some shots. Already then, in the closed space of metro, I felt a strong positive energy of participants. Unlike the aggressive metro crowds in the rush hour, they were very kind, polite and … smiling. 

  

When we went out to the Belorusskaya Square, the column had already started to move in the direction of the Tverskaya Street. The organizers were unveiling a huge St. George ribbon. We walked for a while holding it on both sides but there were too many people willing to hold it, so we were driven out.

I was very busy making photos and my friends suggested me more and more interesting personages. There were people of all ways and ages. WWII veterans with “iconostasis” of awards and medals and babies sleeping in buggies. Many people were very well prepared to the event and wore war time attributes, such as helmets, soldier's blouses, all-weather raincoats. We saw a whole families with kids dressed in the military uniform. 

 

Some participants not only carried portraits but had printed them on their T-shirts.

Almost all demonstrators wore forage caps. We bought field caps, too, and they appeared to be very helpful because the sun was rather hot.

I liked very much a boy, wearing war awards of his great grandfather. When I asked him to pose, he straightened his chest. It was obvious that he was very proud of his mission to represent his great grandfather.

The most amazing thing was very high and positive spirit of people. Almost half of million walked in a calm, cheerful and benevolent mood. There weren't any political appeals or slogans, only grateful commemoration of heroes and beautiful nostalgic singing of wartime songs.

One woman began singing “The Cranes” and dozens of young voices picked up a sad motif. 

 

“It seems to me, sometimes, that soldiers

Who didn't come back from bloody battlefields,

They didn't perish once in our earth,

But turned into white cranes”. 

 

When I looked back and saw an ocean of people carrying portraits of their kinsfolk, it seemed to me that all those known and unknown heroes were marching in the same ranks with us. Soldiers of the Great Patriotic War won't die and will stay immortal until their descendants and their country remember them. 
 

While marching, we didn't know how many people participated in the manifestation, but it was clear that there were hundreds of thousands. All the broad Tverskaya Street was full of people. On the whole route from the Belorusskaya railway station to the Red Square, thousands of people with portraits were standing on the sidewalks. So when I heard in the evening news that there were nearly half of a million in Moscow, it wasn't at all a surprise for me. Though, we didn't know that Vladimir Putin participated in the march with the portrait of his father, we felt that he was with us.

This year, the Immortal Regiment was marching in the Red Square for the first time. When we reached the square, everybody was busy making photos and selfies. 

 

It took us two hours and a half to make 2.4 km from Belorusskaya Square to the Red Square along Tverskaya Street. However, the final destination wasn't the end in itself. The main thing was the process of walking, communicating with each other, feeling the unity and solidarity of those around us. It was one of the greatest experience of my life. I've understood some simple and crucial things. 

A well-fed and prosperous life relaxes and separates us from each other, but difficulties and dangers drive us together. People of good will prevail in the society but they are worse organized than evil ones. 

 

I'd wish that those politicians who nourish illusions to defeat Russia would watch not only the military parade but the march of the Immortal Regiment, as well. The parade demonstrates the revived military power of Russia and the march shows the great spiritual strength of Russian people. These two components render our country invincible.