WWII VICTORY STILL FRESH MEMORY, NOT THING OF PAST TO MOST RUSSIANS, SURVEYS SHOW

MOSCOW, May 11 (RIA Novosti's Nikolai Zherebtsov) - To three-quarters of the Russian people-76 percent-the nation's victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War is a fresh memory rather than a thing of the past, indicates a survey conducted by the Russian pollster VTSIOM ahead of V-E Day.

Only 22 percent of those surveyed associate WWII with Russia's distant past, just as WWI or the Napoleonic campaign of 1812.

For this survey, the VTSIOM interviewed a representative sample of 1,600 adult Russians from 100 urban and rural communities in 39 regions across the nation.

WWII memories live on in Russia thanks primarily to family accounts and archives. Half of all Russians know about that war from their older relatives. A vast majority (91 percent) of the Russian population have at least one family member who fought against the Nazi invaders in WWII; every tenth person has lost relatives to it.

At the same time, 31 percent of the pollees admit they do not know much about the wartime biographies of those of their relatives who took part in WWII. Among younger people (falling into the 18-to-34 age group), the percentage is as high as 43 percent.