U.S. Envoy Boycotts Massive Military Parade : Soviets Celebrate Date of German Defeat

The Soviet Union today celebrated the 40th anniversary of its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II with a massive military parade through Red Square.

A dazzling array of military hardware, from World War II tanks to modern ballistic missiles displayed in public for the first time, rolled past Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other Politburo members on the reviewing stand atop the red granite mausoleum of the Soviet state’s founder, Vladimir I. Lenin.

Hundreds of bemedaled World War II veterans, partisan fighters and contingents from Poland and Czechoslovakia led the parade.

Moscow marks the victory over Nazism a day later than its Western wartime allies because it did not consider the war over until Prague was liberated May 9.

In an opening speech broadcast across East Europe, Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov said the West is trying to belittle the wartime role of the Soviet Union and justify Hitler.

“The whole world knows that it was the Soviet Union that made the decisive contribution to victory . . . to saving world civilization,” he said.

Sokolov also warned that any attack against the Soviet Union will be met with swift retribution.

U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman boycotted the parade, but the British, French and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization envoys attended their first military show here since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in late 1979.

Elite parachute troops, some in air-transportable tanks and personnel carriers, and units of other regiments that have seen action in the Afghan campaign took part today.

The Soviets displayed three items in their modern military arsenal for first time: the T-64 tank, a 152-millimeter towed gun and the SS-21 short-range nuclear-capable tactical missile. The SS-21s have been deployed in East Germany over the last year in what the Kremlin says is a response to the stationing of U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Western Europe.

Among the World War II weaponry displayed were T-34 tanks and Katyusha rockets, instrumental in defeating the Nazis.