MOSCOW (AP) -- Thousands of Russian cadets wearing World War II-era uniforms, including girls with giant white bows in their hair, paraded across Red Square on Sunday. (Scroll down for photos)
The annual parade officially honors the participants of the 1941 parade who afterward went directly to the front to defend Moscow from the approaching Nazi forces, although for decades Nov. 7 was a holiday commemorating the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and many older Russians still celebrate it as such.
Thousands of Communist Party supporters, many of them elderly, later upheld another Soviet-era tradition by marching down the wide avenue that leads to Red Square.
In the Red Square parade, cadets on horseback galloped across the cobblestones. Others charged on foot or marched, including female cadets whose white hair bows billowed out behind their hats.
Among the honored guests in the stands were 40 veterans who had taken part in the parade 69 years ago.
Moscow's new mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, paid tribute to the veterans and all those who had helped defend the city during the war.
"The parade on Red Square showed the whole world that Moscow was alive and ready to take on the enemy," Sobyanin said.
See photos of the celebrations below: