Indolent Youth

A Blog covering the impassioned and soulful politics of youth in post-communist transitioning societies...

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Update on Dedovshchina Cases

The Moscow Times reported yesterday that a Chelyabinsk court has sentenced two soldiers found guilty of hazing at the city's tank academy to one year in a disciplinary battalion. This is the same academy where soldiers brutally beat Private Sychev in January. The case in question is different from Sychev's, which is still under investigation. According to the Times, prosecutors plan to appeal the sentences as too lenient.

posted by Schwirtz @ 12:23 PM

1 Comments:

At 7:23 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The fact is that military service in the Russian army is a hard unpleasant constitutional duty of Russian males, linked to hardships, humiliations, brutalities which is all about dedovschina. All these have substantially discredited Russian army in the eyes of public, making a conscription to the military service as an awful punishment to the young people, and even more suffering for their parents. Therefore Russian Army is considered by society not so as defending it, but more as threatening it. Actually, phenomenon of dedovschina is originated from two facts: 1) mandatory nature of Army, forcing a young man to stay there against his will, 2) severe living and working conditions in the Russian Army, putting violence as a method of control old soldiers (“dedi”)over the young ones (“duhi”). The crucially important thing about dedovshcina is that it provides the order inside the group by means of inner-group atrocities and thus help Army officers keep it under their control. If not it, I suppose, officers will be unable to control young people unwilling to stay there. Thus, unfortunately today dedavschina is a kind of vital element of Russian Army without which it will be degradating for sure. I think that phenomenon of dedavschina being a system-level problem, can’t be resolved in courts (it helps more to punish the one which guilty, but not to prevent such events from happenning). To resolve the problem of dedavschina the State should: 1) start putting army on contract basis (now this reform is suspended), 2) improve working and living conditions in the Army, 3) decrease the time of Army service - once the time is decreased devision between “dedi” and ”duhi” will disappear and so the grounds of dedovschina, 4) make it more liberal, get soldiers involved into other social groups, by permitting them to visit social events on a daily basis. Today situation in the Army is not improving, thus majority of young men prefer to avoid (“kosit”) the Army service - the bribes is an institutionalized procedure in enlistment offices (“voenkomati”). In such a case, Im recalling L. Shevtsova’s saying “Russian Army is an Army of children of the poor mothers”, well, both in terms of lacking finances for bribes as well as mothers’ sufferings.

 

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