What a terrible word “war” is and how often we hear it in everyday life: hybrid wars, economic wars, information wars, computer wars... Moreover, this word becomes ordinary, familiar and loses its monstrous meaning.

However, the genetic memory of people does not allow us to forget that war is death, destruction, grief. The memory of the black pages of the history of humankind teaches us to protect the peace, harmony, mutual understanding.

May 9 is a special holiday for our country. It combines the tears of sorrow and joy, the pain of loss and the great sacrifice of people. Behind the short word “Victory” is the courage and heroism of millions of people. Moreover, Uzbekistan has made a great contribution to this victory.

1.5 million out of 6.5 million people living in Uzbekistan went to the front. 420 thousand did not return home, 640 thousand were injured. During the war years, tens of thousands of Uzbekistan people were awarded orders and medals. Hundreds were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, 82 soldiers became full holders of the Order of Glory.

We know and remember the exploits of Kamoljon Turgunov, one of the defenders of the Pavlov House, Khait Khujmatov, the famous sniper of the Battle of Stalingrad, pilot Abdusamat Taymetov, who delivered on May 9, 1945 to Moscow the Act of unconditional surrender of Germany.

During the war years, Uzbekistan received more than 1.5 million evacuated people. Among them – almost 300 thousand orphaned children taken out of the besieged Leningrad, Belarus, Poland and Ukraine. Uzbek land has become a second home for hundreds of thousands of people.

The feat of our grandfathers and fathers will always serve for us as an example of valor, fraternity, great responsibility to future generations.

I know about the war firsthand. In 1941, my grandfather Pyotr Aleksandrovich Tikhonov went to the front as a twenty-year-old cadet with the early title of “junior lieutenant”. He was the commander of a machine-gun company, troop, battalion, authorized counterintelligence “Smersh” 34 army, 4th shock army, the Northwestern and 1st Baltic Front. Now, in memory of him, behind the glass in the sideboard there is a color photograph in a frame, on the backside in a large sweeping handwriting, grandfather wrote: “To children and grandchildren. I served in the Soviet Army from 1939 to 1978. Participant of the Patriotic War. Wounded: 25.10.1941 near Moscow, 16.02.1942 near Staraya Russa. The war ended on May 9, 1945 in the Baltic States”.

My grandfather did not like to talk about the war. He said that the war is scary. Moreover, we, then little grandchildren, examining the scars left from the wounds – bullet on the chest and shrapnel on the back –asked in bewilderment: “Grandfather, but you are a hero. You have so many medals and orders. How could you be scared?”

Now I regret that only fragmentary memories were preserved: how they took the “language”, how they mourned their comrades, how they marched in parade on the Red Square in 1941 and immediately went into battle. For the motherland! In the war, my grandfather met his love – my grandmother Tikhonova Antonina Dmitriyevna. She also fought. Awarded with medals and order. They got married in May 1945. The front command made the wedding gift luxurious for those times – a captured German yellow silk parachute. Moreover, grandmother sewed a yellow silk wedding dress one night before the wedding. The most beautiful dress in her life.

My grandfather is not alive.

In the last years of his life, illness and frontal wounds completely bent him.

Nevertheless, on May 9, the old soldier used to get up early, shaved, put on his full dress uniform, listened endlessly to the same song “Victory Day” and cried quietly.

Then he went to the khokimiyat for celebrations dedicated to honoring veterans.

This was a completely different person: a straightened back, a proudly raised head and a look of a winner.

My grandfather did not like to talk about the war.

However, his whole life revealed to me a truth that THERE IS NOTHING MORE PRECIOUS THAN THE HOMELAND AND PEACE.

This truth we must pass on to descendants. Because there is no and cannot be oblivion for the feat. Grateful humanity bow their head to the defenders of the motherland.

Yelena Babenko,

Deputy of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis,

Member of the faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan.