Airborne Forces Day is celebrated annually on August 2. It so happened that a mandatory component of the holiday is bathing in the fountains of the heroes of the occasion. The question of where this tradition came from interests many people watching the merry fun of blue berets.
The exact origin of the tradition of bathing paratroopers in fountains is unknown. There is a widespread story on the Internet that about fifteen years ago, several drunken blue berets accidentally fell into the fountain. Their friends, who were also under degrees, rushed to get the paratroopers, the police joined them. A casual passer-by with a camera walked past this cheerful scene and hastened to perpetuate it, laying the foundation for an established tradition.
On the basis of these bathing, blue berets systematically clashes with law enforcement agencies. The leadership of the Moscow OMON has repeatedly announced that it will stop the paratroopers from swimming in the fountains on August 2. The authorities also believe that there are specially designated reservoirs for such bathing, and the fountains serve completely different purposes.
In 2012, on the Day of the Airborne Forces, the authorities gave an order to specifically turn off the fountains in different cities of Russia in order to prevent mass bathing of blue berets in them. Thus, blackouts occurred in Krasnodar, Yaroslavl, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk and a number of other cities. But, nevertheless, in Moscow, in Gorky Park, which is a traditional gathering place for paratroopers on their holiday, the fountains worked on the second of August. On this day, over a thousand blue berets gathered in the park, and many of them remained true to tradition. They swam in the fountains with their children, and neither one nor the other was embarrassed by such a neighborhood.
A public opinion poll conducted by Sergei Sibiryakov on the Hydepark social network showed that the majority of respondents (55%) do not object to the paratroopers bathing in fountains, believing that they have every right to do so. 32% of those surveyed spoke out against such a tradition, saying that such behavior of drunken defenders of the Fatherland disgraces the Russian army. The remaining 13% refrained from any answer, citing a lack of personal interest in this issue.
