Order 0100 on the fight against hazing. Do not cover hazing with paper

Essays on hazing (in the broadest sense)

* This article was not included in the printed collection

The sun beats against the clouds
over my head
I'm probably lucky
once still alive.
Boris Grebenshchikov

Glory turns your head
The power of the heart tickles, -
Worthless to those who become
Over another wants.
Bulat Okudzhava

In our country, the army still enjoys the respect of most people, despite the fact that these same people speak bitterly about the theft of generals and inhuman inter-army relations. There is a myth about the army and the army itself. The Russian army itself is the center of the daily most common criminal offenses, disorder and humiliation, which are hard to even imagine in a civilian, far from idyllic. But the myth is surprisingly tenacious. He is supported by an army uniform with caps a la Stirlitz and clear, easy-to-understand and incorrect proposals by the military to restore order in society. Our army is first of all a mess, first of all a mess. But the myth systematically promotes the cancer of military relations to the highest echelons of power, spreading to civilians. Military men like to repeat: "What is the people, such is the army." Like, we call on criminals, people with low education, and this makes the army what it is. Not true. The army is much worse than its people. It is the ideas that have developed there that are pulling the country back. It is there that people with higher education are driven into the bosom of hazing, they become its conductors, and criminals are literally no different from other soldiers. This material is an attempt to look behind the scenes of the army, an inside look at the real, not fictional army.

Unknown Land or Conspiracy of Silence

In the history of modern Russia there is no such unexplored area as the army, and especially the relationship in the army. I specifically did not write hazing or hazing, since literally all relations between soldiers, sergeants and officers in the modern army are hazing, all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, are hazing. Hazing is not just a mass phenomenon in the Soviet army and the armies of the post-Soviet countries. Hazing is the main type of relationship between military personnel. Why do we call this area practically unexplored, because millions of people passed and are still passing through the Soviet (Russian) army? This is not a rhetorical question. It is enough to compare the number of scientific publications on political repressions and hazing to really be surprised. On the one hand, there are hundreds of volumes, a detailed analysis, if not of all aspects of the phenomenon, then certainly of all the main ones. On the other hand, there are only a few publications and almost the only monograph, and then of a staged nature, rather a sociological description of the phenomenon on a modest basis than an analysis. Numerous testimonies and publications of committees of soldiers' mothers, with all the deep respect for their work, cannot be attributed to scientific work, this is human rights activity.

The first reason is the complete closedness of the army judicial system and the strong dependence (if not just direct subordination) of military prosecutors and courts on the command. A person will be sentenced to a real term of imprisonment for real crimes (beating, theft, even murder) or will get off with a few days in the "lip" (guardroom) depends entirely on the command. Probably, there are intra-army studies of "hazing", but all of them are still secret. Even if they were open, then even then it would be impossible to trust this source, because reports of "offenses" are reports of a lack of combat readiness, and combat readiness - according to papers - is "always on top." in military statistics It's good if a thousandth part of offenses gets into military statistics (the latency of crime here is orders of magnitude greater than "civilian"). Without exaggeration: almost every soldier is a criminal. During the service, absolutely everyone committed either crimes against the person (beatings, often with bodily harm, up to murders), or theft, but more often both together (it is impossible to remember at least one officer or soldier who would not steal military equipment). property or did not rob those dependent on it, sometimes in the form of bribes). As far as we know, not even once after 1945 were even these army, extremely incomplete statistics on crime in the army, including crimes related to hazing, published. This source is tightly closed.

Hazing in the narrow sense of the word

Hazing in the narrow sense is hazing (and in fact - slavery in the truest sense of the word) between soldiers and sergeants of the first and second years of service. They give rise to the second reason for the "conspiracy of silence" - psychological stress, shame, unwillingness to remember the humiliation suffered by those who completed military service by conscription. Again, the vast majority of soldiers and sergeants, even those who initially resist hazing, "break down", that is, in the first year of service, they turn into a slave, who is daily and hourly humiliated to the very last degree (and below). He sleeps a couple of hours a day, eats very little, does all the current army work and waits, pleases the old-timers (scrubs the corner of his unit in the barracks with bottle glass, makes beds, washes clothes, hems collars, cleans boots, runs for cigarettes and booze, moreover he must do all this every day many times and "very quickly"). During the day, he gets poked and cuffed, he is whipped with a belt, and sometimes he gets a heavy blow with a boot until his ribs are broken. But the worst thing is the night. After the evening verification, the officers leave the barracks, and the old-timers in the supply room for a glass of moonshine, a can of stew with buckwheat and condensed milk begin methodical, hours-long, sophisticated bullying. To the question "for what?" the answer follows: "It would be for something - they killed, but we just teach." (A few examples. “We are watching the demobilization”: the young one climbs a pyramid of three bedside tables and looks at how much grandfather is left before the demobilization, at this moment the lower bedside table is knocked out with a strong blow of the boot. cotton wool soaked in cologne or alcohol is inserted between the toes and set on fire, sometimes, if a person is exceptionally fast asleep, his genitals are tied with a thread. "Measurement": a barracks is measured with a matchbox, naturally with pokes and slaps in the face, etc.) I really don’t want to remember this, and even more so to study and describe it - it hurts and is ashamed. And they do not describe, and do not study. In addition, conscripts from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities who are inclined to research work rarely get into the army. Almost everywhere in metropolitan universities there are military departments, after which, in the worst case, they serve as two-year officers, but this is a completely different story that cannot be compared with the soldier's service. So the topic of hazing has remained undescribed and unexplored so far. Not only does she not have her Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn, she doesn't even have her Razgon and Rybakov.

From a military point of view

Hazing is the last stage in the disintegration of the army. Why so categorically? Because we must clearly understand that our hazing is a unique phenomenon in the entire history of regular armies. Recall that the modern army (and the doctrine of its organization) were created for the first time in Holland by Moritz, Prince of Orange (1567-1625). Since then, in terms of intra-army relations, it has changed little. Moritz introduced, in particular, a uniform, drill, but his main achievement was army discipline, that is, extremely strict, hierarchical subordination of junior officers (and rank, then these concepts coincided) to senior soldiers - from soldier to general and marshal. Disobedience was punished inevitably, cruelly and quickly. Orders are first strictly carried out, and then discussed, in the form of a report to higher authorities. So, hazing is a direct destruction of the Moritz doctrine. After "training" (training units, where recruits get), having studied there for six months, "fighters" with the rank of junior sergeants and sergeants come to the troops. This is 2-3 ranks higher than a soldier. But for another six months, these sergeants not only do not lead the soldiers directly subordinate to them, but are subjected to the same humiliation and bullying as soldiers of the same conscription with them (in the army, the terms of service are counted from conscription to conscription, a person who was taken away in April and at the end of June is counted as one call). Moreover, having become "scoops" ("candidates" - candidates for grandfathers, that is, having served a year, or rather two conscriptions), they also do not command the soldiers of their conscription. The role of sergeants of all normal regular armies of other countries in the Russian (formerly Soviet) army is performed by old-timers, regardless of positions and ranks. There is a direct flagrant violation of the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Statutory, regulated relations are being replaced by a surrogate - hazing, which is understood differently by old-timers in different parts. This can be called corruption because hazing is supported and preserved with the direct encouragement of officers. That is, those who, according to their status, must defend the army principles, deliberately destroy them. Therefore, the Soviet (Russian) army cannot now be called regular in the full sense of the word. By the way, a significant normalization of relations in the Russian army is possible with a fairly simple solution, which for some reason is practically not discussed even in the circles of liberal non-army experts. If it is impossible to introduce an entire contract army, then - if army generals sincerely consider themselves military personnel - it is simply necessary to introduce contract service for sergeants and foremen. There are certainly funds for this. This will correct the glaring situation, not even from a civilian point of view, but from a classical military one. Professionalism will be largely restored at the lowest, weakest level of training of the Russian army, continuity and minimum combat readiness will be ensured.

The beginning of hazing. Hypothesis.

Hazing appeared, apparently, after the Second World War, when military conscripts, often with extensive combat experience, injuries and government awards, were not transferred to the reserve after the end of the war (this statement is based on several testimonies that were collected from officers, who served during this period, it is given in, since historical studies of hazing are not known to us). The service life of some of them reached 6-8 years, they were called "old-timers". From here, most likely, the concept arose, "old man", "grandfather". At the same time, recruits came to the troops who "did not sniff gunpowder." On their shoulders lay the main burden of carrying out official military duties. Old-timers were largely removed from their current work. At that time, such a redistribution of the load did not look unfair either in the eyes of the recruits themselves, or in the eyes of the officers, comrades of the old-timers - after all, these soldiers bore all the hardships of war and victory on their shoulders. They had the moral right, if not to demobilization, then to rest.

It is now impossible to trace the spread of this phenomenon to the entire structure of the armed forces of the USSR over time due to the little knowledge of the issue. But we can say with confidence from a lot of evidence that this system has existed for the past 35 years, having passed without changes from the Soviet Army to the armies of the countries of the post-Soviet space (it would be interesting to follow the Baltic countries). If at the beginning hazing manifested itself in rather "soft" forms and concerned mostly the performance of official duties by "young" for "grandfathers", then by the end of the sixties the position of recruits deteriorated sharply.

The result of this was both a massive and systematic violation of most elementary human rights in the first year of service, and a sharp decline in the quality of maintenance of equipment and the combat readiness of the army. Among the thousands of servicemen who annually die and are injured in peacetime in the Russian army (not counting the events in Chechnya), the majority are victims of hazing.

Who is guilty?

In our opinion, the main reasons for "hazing" are not "bad financial situation", not "conscription of previously convicted", not "the state of social processes" (like the people, like the army), to which military prosecutors and sociologists like to refer so much. The main role in maintaining hazing lies in the minds and military practice of the Soviet (Russian) officers. It is they who shift the organizational work in squads and platoons onto the shoulders of twenty-year-old "grandfathers". It is from the grandfathers that they ask for combat and park and economic training. Grandfathers functionally perform the role of junior officers - sergeants and foremen, but this activity is in no way regulated by either the charter or the hierarchy and therefore degenerated into such ugly forms. The well-known military argument about the conscription of those with previous convictions does not stand up to scrutiny. In the absence of other data, I will give my own observations. Working on the design of books of penalties (among many other design and printed works) at the headquarters of both the training division in Chernivtsi and the line division in Vladimir-Volynsky, I specially, out of curiosity, got acquainted with the personal files of previously convicted. There are about 40 cases in total. In no case was there a single serious penalty for hazing during the service. I made detailed inquiries about eight people, and four served in the same unit with me. Three people had serious criminal articles (robbery and burglary). If I did not know that these people were judged, then I would never pay attention to them. Their behavior was normal. They were neither the most cruel nor the most authoritative. I asked eight convicted people how different is the army from the prison? Two said: "the same." Six answered that it was better in prison, because there are "concepts", that is, they can hit for nothing, just like that they can only "lowered", "cock" - a passive homosexual. It turns out that the "hazing subculture" in the army is primary, it crushes all other subcultures, including the criminal one. These two subcultures are similar only in their mythology - the absolute superiority of traditional, established behavior over logically and morally justified, reasonable. If we take any constants of the criminal subculture - "you can't eat, pick up what has fallen to the ground", the thieves' code, disrespect for a woman, the caste of "roosters", a ban on stealing from one's own, then this is not a constant in the hazing subculture. No matter how vile and pitiful a person behaves when he is young, when he moves to the Candeda caste, he enjoys all the benefits of this group, which is not in the criminal subculture. A rooster will remain a rooster for ten years in a row.

Army pedagogy - through the legs, not through the head

Many officers (probably the majority), even the best, form with their grandfathers and support "pedagogical" methods of exclusively "physical" education and training of soldiers in the first year of service.

Army "pedagogy" in the troops is formulated daily on divorces with one phrase: "It comes through the legs better than through the head" (a literal quote). This applies not only to line units, but also to training units, where the main military training skill that recruits receive day after day is the “coup-up” on the gymnastic crossbar. (From the Chernivtsi training camp of military unit 82648, sergeants, commanders of M-100 "mountain mortars", left for Afghanistan in 1981, having fired one (!) training shot by a group). The consequence of such an officer’s attitude was squats and push-ups hundreds of times for any minor offense or mistake in training, long runs in gas masks and, of course, constant beatings. Not only "grandfathers", but also senior officers vaguely imagine how many training sessions are needed to obtain standard results in a particular skill or ability, and such methods simply do not exist in the troops. Therefore, from the first lesson, the student finds himself under the pressure of "permanent guilt" as a "goat", "cretin", "idiot" (the mildest definitions), etc. Therefore, the mere introduction of the institution of contract sergeants is clearly not enough; it is necessary to radically change army pedagogy. Her level should reach elementary civil.

Officers - serfs-slave owners

Relationships are even worse. The "young" are kept in a slavish state and are ready for any work to "serve" the old-timers and officers, "so long as they don't beat."

This position is beneficial to the officers, since there is a large circle of heavy, round-the-clock duties that arise suddenly. And it's good to have absolutely meek subordinates who are ready to fulfill them. In addition, the downtrodden "young" work with pleasure when they are used by officers for personal purposes. As a reward, they are usually fed, and for several hours the soldier leaves the hated barracks.

What to do with hazing in the narrow sense

Hazing in the speeches of high-ranking military men seems to be a kind of natural disaster, bleak, but inevitable. We have considered the argument about the conscription of the convicted, the argument "what kind of people, such and the army" is another departure from the essence of the matter. Indeed, is it possible to quickly change the people? No. So hazing is invincible. This argument seems so strong that it is usually not discussed. I had to witness how literally in two months, after the release in the summer of 1982 of order N 0100 "On the fight against hazing", hazing was practically nullified simply by the concerted efforts of senior and junior officers. This is detailed in. As soon as the higher authorities intensified the fight against hazing and the senior officers of the units began to really fight it (first: to spend the night in the barracks, second: to observe what was happening in the park), within two months everything changed - hazing turned into extremely mild forms, although those convicted did not managed to "demobilize", society has not changed during this time, and the people have not improved.

From top to bottom

Disrespect for the charter, for army discipline permeates the Russian (Soviet) army from top to bottom, again from the soldier to the commander of the military district. There are many examples, but I will give one very typical one.

Ukrainian SSR, 1983. Carpathian military district, the city of Vladimir-Volynsky. April sunny morning. Along the road around the garrison football field lined up the division and the command of the army. They are waiting for the commander of the district, Colonel-General Belikov. His helicopter is landing in the center of the field. The blades are still slowly spinning, a small ladder is pulled out, and Belikov goes down. The commander of our army, a huge stout man loudly gives the order. A dozen generals and almost a hundred colonels are drawn to attention along with the entire personnel of the division, saluting. And - oh horror! Belikov, going down, stumbles over an empty bottle of vodka, which lay right next to the ladder. A later investigation showed that the bottle lay strictly on a path that diagonally crossed the football field. The left part of the path was removed by the missile battalion, the right part - by the artillery regiment. The soldiers argued for a long time about who should take away who knows whose bottle, and so they left, relying on each other. Worried Belikov stomps to the troops, shooting with his eyes - why complain? - and right on the move, turning to the commander of the artillery regiment, he begins to yell in a breaking voice: "Which army soldiers are in front of me ?!" The hand at the visor of the regiment commander turned white from the tension: "Soviet army, Colonel General!" "But looking at their shoulder straps, you can't tell," Belikov hissed venomously. It was after the order, and according to tradition, the demobilization was cut off the letter "SA" from shoulder straps - this means that they already consider themselves civilians who accidentally stayed in the troops (by the way, another consequence of hazing). What started here! Belikov yelled furiously and thickly cursed the commander of the army and all his generals and colonels, he called them names and humiliated them, and then suddenly asked: "Why hasn't the asphalt been washed?" This question took even seasoned officers by surprise. Prior to that, for every insult and humiliation, the officers answered in a discordant chorus: "That's right, Colonel General! That's right, Colonel General!" And then dead silence. And then Belikov, with a malicious smile, hissed: "It was not necessary to wash the asphalt with rags, but with a watering machine, assholes!" It turned out that there was no such important combat unit as a watering machine in the garrison. This is a brilliant example of hazing, and what kind. According to the charter, which every officer knows, in no case should even a sergeant be reprimanded in the presence of his subordinates, not to mention an ensign or lieutenant. And then the colonels and generals, up to the commander of the lieutenant general, were wiped to powder and morally trampled and humiliated in front of the soldiers. Violation of the charter by 16 ranks up. The same thing, on a smaller scale, happened at almost every division of the units where I served. Only here they offended officers who were 10-12 ranks superior to soldiers.

I have the honor

In the training units where recruits go, honor is given to everyone, starting with the sergeant, often with a drill step (which again speaks in favor of contract sergeants). In line units, there is usually a secret rank, starting from which the soldiers salute the officer. In the garrison of Vladimir-Volynsky saluted, starting with the major (in some linear units, the threshold rank is captain). There was only one captain, Captain Frost, the head of the "lip", to whom everyone also saluted (he once killed a drunken soldier with a stool, who began to object to him after the arrest, however, he killed inadvertently, and he was detained for this next rank). There was also Captain Lebedev, political officer of an infantry regiment, a fighter for justice, who by age should already have been a lieutenant colonel. He, approaching a soldier or sergeant, was the first to throw out his hand to the visor and move on to the drill step. Even the most desperate grandfathers fearfully saluted him. Lebedev, perhaps the only one in the garrison, never hit anyone or raised his voice to a soldier. These exceptions confirmed the rule: even in such a simple matter as saluting in the linear parts, hazing prevails with a range of 10 ranks.

Why? Castrated troops.

Before proceeding, I would like to briefly answer the question why? The fault, in our opinion, is the outdated structure of the Russian (Soviet) army, designed for a big war with the conscription of a huge number of reservists. Therefore, ordinary line troops were (and remain) the so-called cropped units. They are also called castrated in the army. For example, in a deployed infantry regiment, about 10 thousand people should serve according to the staffing table, and when it is in a cropped state, then a hundred officers and ensigns and a hundred soldiers and sergeants serve there. These two hundred people must protect and keep equipment and weapons for 10 thousand people in combat readiness. This almost unrealistic task requires squeezing everything possible and impossible out of the soldiers and sergeants. Only a slave who is ready to do anything around the clock can be forced to fulfill this circle of duties without a murmur: "Elephant, I am an elephant, just don't kick!" The cropped nature of most military units inside the country is the main hotbed of bullying. It is impossible in principle to complete the task with such a number of people, therefore the two main words in the Russian army are a mess and a madhouse.

A day later on the belt, in two to the kitchen

A hundred people for such a quantity of equipment is very few. But even these soldiers are not always in the unit. Some are "sold" ("rented out", and this is a very common practice) to neighboring plants and factories in order to receive building materials, stationery, etc. in exchange. to decorate the barracks or for yourself personally. For everyone, regardless of the length of service, who breaks out of the unit to work (usually this is the so-called demobilization chord) - this is a reward. In addition, part of the soldiers participate in the sowing campaign, leave in army vehicles to help national economic construction projects for several months, or even six months. Someone smarter is taken to the headquarters to draw up numerous documents and mobilization orders (this is a huge piece of paperwork). The rest live bright and interesting lives. The saying "in a day on a belt, in two to the kitchen" is an unrealizable dream for them. Some, especially in summer, do not change from guard for several days, and it is not uncommon for people to be on guard for two weeks without a break. This is hard to believe, especially if you know that, again, according to the charter, you can go on guard every other day at most. Can something similar happen in any other professional army, and what is it if not the most real hazing? A huge amount of work in the cadre troops forms the ethics of communication between people. The favorite formula of relations between officers, which they constantly repeat: push the neighbor - shit on the bottom one. Another: do not rush to carry out the order, the order will soon be set aside.

They steal everything, they steal everything

Maybe theft is not a hazing, it is a criminal offense, but it is one of the main occupations in the army. Theft is indeed universal, but the reasons for it are different. The “young”, under fear of beatings, which still cannot be avoided (let me remind you: “Why are you beating me, I didn’t do anything?” - “If I did, they would be killed”) steal everything they can when they are sent “for a bottle” , because at the same time they, of course, do not give money. Therefore, raincoats and boots from chemical protection kits - on all the shepherds of the surrounding villages, blankets, pillows, overcoats, hats and boots - in all the surrounding houses. The “young” also suffer from this theft, who often remain without a hat or overcoat in winter. Grandfathers and scoops steal from b about more intelligibility, because you need to prepare for demobilization, and this is not a joke. Firstly, they steal (this is the norm and is not discussed) new overcoats, hats, "paradka" (full dress) from young people, leaving behind their worn ones in return. Secondly, they steal from the young from the nightstands everything that is possible, it is more difficult and more dangerous to steal for the young. In general, household theft from each other in the barracks is a common, ordinary phenomenon (“don’t click on the flop in a friendly family”). Great luck if you have a place where you can hide food, money, a demobilization album - for example, in a supply room, a park (where military equipment is located), in a warehouse or at headquarters, where you are attracted from time to time to work. Part of the property is taken away by officers, referring to various orders. They also steal during loading and unloading and while guarding. This is food, things from the warehouse, sometimes ammunition (theft during shooting), but this is quite dangerous. They mainly rely on the negligence of ensigns - they did not seal the doors of some storage rooms, the bars were poorly made, the windows were broken. They often break windows and use special hooks to pull out what is in the warehouse through the bars, especially by agreement with the guards. But all this is trifles compared with the theft of ensigns and officers. The ensign is a despised figure in the army. Characteristic nicknames are "collar", "piece". Usually they are responsible for warehouses, allowances, delivery of goods. At the same time, a very large part is "lost" during transportation and storage, "written off" and so on. A wide field for theft - exercises (of any scale), business trips, the issuance of uniforms.

An important feature of the army theft of officers and ensigns is that no one hides it. This is done in broad daylight. One example. Our missile battalion consisted of four launchers, on which "products" were installed, each installation weighed about thirty tons. The cars were outdated, they ran on gasoline, not diesel fuel. All this economy leaves for the surrounding forest literally a kilometer from the town, but it is recorded that the column is deployed after 20 kilometers. Naturally, a fuel truck is fueled, which follows the launchers. Deployment is carried out, short training sessions, and then at lunch they bring the kitchen and feed everyone. At this time, the fuel truck drives off about a hundred meters from the clearing, where everyone is eating, and after a while cars and trucks begin to drive up to it along the forest road, up to a dozen of them line up. Everyone has several canisters, and there are barrels of gasoline on the trucks. In full view of the entire division, unhurried refueling begins. Fill full tanks, canisters, barrels. Visitors pay not only with money (there is not enough money), but also with those who have what they have - boxes with new telephones, dry sausage, boards, nails and even several bags of potatoes, cabbage, carrots are taken into account. Refueling lasts about two hours, some cars leave, others arrive, the process goes on. Commander Chakhon directs everything, he is dissatisfied, they failed to sell everything. He takes the money for himself (then shares it with some officers), and the trophies are added to the staff car. Chakhon is the commander, he is the master in the unit. And the officers do this: the captain asks a soldier from his unit to decant gasoline into a canister from the gas tank of the car, and then the soldier carries the canister to him to a hole in the fence (there is a hole in almost every part). After the officer picks up the canister and carries it on himself. Now no one will say that he dragged her away. But not everything is stolen for profit. A lot of things are hidden in order to smooth out interruptions in supplies, and then remain unissued, stashed away, for example, a set of new uniforms and boots (they need to be changed every six months, and sometimes they do not change for a year). Or such an example: Major Tolstikov, the deputy chief technical officer of our unit, regularly took strong guys, carts and made raids on the garrison. If he saw that something was lying badly - a wheel from a car, shovels, a rake that people from other parts left when they left for lunch - he took it all into his hands with the words: "Left, then it's not necessary." When we were drawing up a book of party penalties at headquarters, even we, accustomed to total army theft, were surprised by the text of one penalty. It was written there: "Communist Gololobov, deputy head of the rear of an artillery regiment, is being punished by the party and entered into the registration card for the systematic theft of products from the regiment's warehouse." Think for systematic theft of products a person is not imprisoned, not removed from office, but a penalty is announced.

Naturally, everything in the army is stolen "from losses", and not "from profits", so it is not surprising that warehouses are burning here and there, ammunition is exploding - try to understand what exploded and what was stolen before.

Everyone drinks, everyone drinks

Giving a description of the active army, one cannot avoid the topic of drunkenness. In totality, it can compete with theft. Everyone drinks. Soldiers drink less often when they send money to someone, buy vodka or cheap ports, mostly sergeants drink low-quality moonshine. It is produced by local "entrepreneurs" from among the smart "grandmothers" and "grandfathers". Manufacturers are usually concerned not with the quality of the product, but with its strength. The demand is great, "businessmen" do not have time to distill the moonshine normally, so they add something there, "to hit the balls." The soldiers seriously claim that they add carbide, so this drink was called "carbide". Many drink colognes, lotions, which are sold in a soldier's store, and it's not so scary (but the smell!), They don't die from it. Terrible are the "chemists" who extract alcohol from various varnishes, paints, or, most dangerously, "convert" methyl alcohol into ethyl alcohol. More than once at divorces, orders were read out for our army or district, which spoke of groups of soldiers and sergeants poisoned to death.

Officers drink systematically, almost daily. In each unit, officers have access to technical alcohol, and we, in the data preparation units, to medical (duty joke: take alcohol, you need to "wipe the clearance", and the clearance is the distance from ground level to the lowest located element of the vehicle structure ). However, the officers are very vigilantly watching the soldiers and, at the slightest suspicion, the "messenger" is searched. Surprisingly, having access to alcohol, having taken away the “carbide” from the soldier, they often drank it themselves, which I witnessed. To the question: "muck, why are you drinking?" - the reasonable answer followed: "the gold reserve of alcohol needs to be spent wisely". There are practically no non-drinking officers. The same captain Lebedev did not drink, the eternal lieutenant, a tall handsome man and sportsman Gordeev, who every morning on the horizontal bar under admiring glances, “twisted the sun” did not drink. He then tried for the third year to retire from the army, but to no avail. A non-drinking officer, like Lebedev or Gordeev, is an outcast, crazy, he will not be able to move up the career ladder, if only because "how to wash shoulder straps with him"?

combat training

It is clear what kind of combat training such a "regular" army provides. The combat readiness of the framed units is usually assessed during deployment, that is, when reservists arrive in the unit and it becomes almost fully equipped. In this case, all equipment should be withdrawn from the park, and some should be located somewhere in the surrounding fields. The picture of such a deployment is etched in memory forever. Each truck drags one or even two trucks on a trailer, and behind some trucks (if not all are in good order) two or even three guns. Casual observers watch with admiration what miracles of skill the driver of such a tractor shows on bends and in narrow places, when the barrels of cannons hit roadside trees. After such a departure, the gates at the checkpoint are usually repaired, which become unusable from the blows of passing vehicles, especially when the tank is dragging another tank, armored personnel carrier or Shilka behind it. Why doesn't each car drive itself? Because spare parts do not arrive in time for the troops, and the military vehicles themselves are barbarously exploited by "boys" who have just received their rights. (Again, an argument in favor of the professionalization of at least the narrowest places, because equipment is ruined catastrophically. Even in Soviet times, when military equipment was baked like pies, there was a shortage of working equipment, mainly due to problems of logistics and training of personnel, and in the Russian period with an abundance of "scrap metal" working equipment is generally worth its weight in gold). Therefore, usually spare parts are taken from one machine and put on another, as a result, in half of the equipment there are simply no maintainable engines. And it is imperative to take the equipment out of the park, because the inspectors evaluate the quality of the deployment by how much equipment they did not have time to take out.

The level of combat training of officers, especially those coming from military schools, is also extremely low. They do not know not only the basics of physical chemistry of their specialty, but also the direct skills of combat work, for example, topographical positioning, the order of formation during a march on the ground, they fulfill combat standards for deuces, etc. Ignorance of the basics of the specialty comes to a curiosity. Not only trainee cadets, but also rocket officers could not answer the question of how a rocket is fundamentally different from an airplane and why an airplane cannot fly to the Moon (the "Shuttle" is just like an airplane).

Magic words of the charter

This is perhaps the most repeated charter formula in army practice, which is given by the authorities to justify all the theft, stupidity and all miscalculations that affect personnel: a soldier must endure all the hardships of service. In everyday life, there is another version: so that the service does not seem like honey .

Everything is justified by these magical words: poor food, torn boots, old overcoats, the current roof of the barracks and the lack of heating in winter, when the temperature does not rise above 8 degrees, and people sleep, covered not only with blankets, but also with mattresses from the beds of those who are now in on guard or on combat duty. Not only soldiers, but also officers must endure.

Behind the scenes

The army is an endless topic. We will leave behind the scenes the really huge difference between people of different education, we will not talk about secrecy (which they often spit on), about the role of uniforms, features of life, food, daily routine, political training, national politics and footcloths. Let's just talk about window dressing and the meaning of all army life - "demobilization".

window dressing

A natural consequence of the structure of the Russian (Soviet) army is total window dressing. All the jokes that tell about painting grass are true. Decorating the parade ground where the reviews are held is a difficult and most responsible job. The parade ground is the most well paved place in the part. Sod cut into squares is brought from the surrounding fields. If there is yellowness, then paint with green paint. Every six months, the shields around the parade ground are updated and tinted, where drill techniques, maps, slogans are depicted. Aerobatics is the decoration of the territory of the unit with sculptures and high-quality visual propaganda. Therefore, artists and sculptors are so valued in the army, although they are also loaded 14 hours a day.

Every autumn, with the use of cranes and towers, the leaves are stripped from the trees on the territory of the unit (leaf collection), so that every day they do not pick up the fallen ones, which greatly annoy the authorities. The beds in the barracks are aligned with a long thread across the entire span, the blankets are "beaten off" with the help of stools, the unpainted floors of the cockpits are scrubbed with glass, etc. But the main window dressing occurs during inspections. They take place every six months. Usually only one subdivision of the unit is subjected to verification. It is being prepared. Despite this, of course, it is very difficult to meet the standards, since combat training, with the exception of some units, is carried out extremely poorly. Therefore, a variety of sophisticated forms of offerings, bribes are practiced, and each test ends with a grandiose booze. At the end, the soldiers and sergeants carry out from the headquarters of the unit (from the regiment to the army) most of the checking officers in an insensible state (with all the consequences that follow in the literal sense). Thus, both the inspectors and the verifiable "flood" the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. This is a mechanism of mutual responsibility that hides the real state of affairs.

"Demobilization" - the philosophy of a soldier and an officer

One word runs like a red thread through the entire service - demobilization. Demobilization - the meaning and philosophy of military service. When I arrived from training in my unit, the entire garrison was buzzing with a terrible story. Literally it was said like this: "The soldiers went to the dance, had a fight and, can you imagine, 2(!) days before demobilization they killed a sergeant from an infantry regiment. "The emphasis was placed precisely on" 2 (!) Days before the demobilization. "The fact that a person was killed did not particularly excite anyone. Here is a rhyme that soldiers and sergeants repeat with hope from year to year :

Let your home dream
Baba with fat ... doy,
Let the vodka basin dream,
and Ustinov's order.
(The name of the minister of defense and some of the words in the verse change accordingly).

Everyone who served in the army understands why demobilization is so desirable. Time flows differently here. It seems to stop. At the beginning of the service, two weeks later, looking out of the window of the old Romanian barracks in Chernivtsi, I could not believe that I was serving only 14 days, and not several years. It was then that I understood why prisoners escape from prison without having spent half a year out of ten years, I understood why they shoot themselves, go crazy in the second year of service. In the army, time flows in a completely different way, it seems that demobilization will never come (the saying "demobilization is inevitable, like the collapse of imperialism" is little consolation). This feeling does not leave the soldier-sergeant all his life. That is why cunning officers spin demobilizations for a "demobilization chord", that is, for quite serious work, after which "you will immediately go to demobilization." That is why, again, demobilized people are recruited for some distant construction sites (recruiters negotiate with officers and pay them or "put up a bukhalovo") in order to quit just a few days (!) Earlier. Recruiters take the soldiers' books and immediately sign contracts with demobilized soldiers for several years (!) of work at construction sites in the north. But, of course, the main historical document that speaks most eloquently about the attitude of soldiers towards the army is the demobilization album. This is a wonderful and, again, completely unexplored document, which eloquently and accurately describes the whole essence of army service. It is not for nothing that officers chase demobilization albums, tearing them to pieces if they find compromising photographs there. And it should be noted that the demobilization album is made from six months to a year. There are masterpieces of folk art, upholstered in overcoats, chasing, with "tracing paper", which are sometimes painted by real artists (this is another source of respect for people of fine arts). The demobilization album is still waiting for its researcher. In addition, officers are looking for calendars in which soldiers cross out every day they live with a pen. Everyone has one like this at the beginning of the service. So that the calendars would not be taken away, the soldiers came up with another way - to pierce the past day with a needle. How many served can be seen "in the light." Soon such calendars began to be taken away.

Officers are also waiting for demobilization. I remember how we, the sergeants of the data preparation department, teased the cocky starley, commander of the headquarters: "We still suffer for half a year, and you are DMB-2001." He was terribly offended. Of course, officers are not served sweetly. They spend most of their time loitering about, toiling about, and maybe that's why they drink so much. Anxiety and irregular working hours, again the duty to "endure" the mess, stupidity and humiliation, the poverty of life and interests of a military town, in fact, a village, with its scandals, betrayals, careerism. The most ambitious dream of getting into the academy, only it allows you to jump over the barrier of a lieutenant colonel. It is very difficult. But they also sadly repeat another army wisdom: "Only the son of a general can become a general." Our commander Chakhon expressed a more modest dream: "I wish I could get a job as the head of the military registration and enlistment office, I would walk in boots every day!" In the army, officers wear boots only on holidays, and even then not always.

So what?

As a child, one of my favorite books was The Good Soldier Schweik. I laughed at how well Hasek built the story, how well he wrote his characters, endowing them with inhuman cruelty, stupidity, stupidity, greed and drunkenness, creating a magnificent satirical grotesque. Once in the army, I realized that Yaroslav Gashek did not write a satirical picture, his book is a photograph, a documentary story in the truest sense of the word. Many of his characters inhabited our unit and our garrison. Oberfeldkurat Katz was simply written off from our political officer Yukhnovich, who soberly claimed that the damned South African troops marched into Ethiopia, Lieutenant Lukash is our captain Ivanenko, who did not miss a single skirt, the hangman general is our General Kirpichev, who, having lined up at night on alarm, the division read the same notations to all personnel for several hours. For some reason, he did not like the landing battalion and forced them to stand alone for a whole hour with their legs raised in a marching step, while he himself walked along and yelled: "Comrade captain, higher, higher sergeant!"

To summarize from a sociological point of view, the army is a territory where there is no separation of powers, where all power is in the hands of the commander. This is an extreme case of social organization. What it leads to in practice during the period of decomposition, I tried to tell above.

Slavery is simple and convenient for slave owners, serfdom for feudal lords, and hazing is pure slavery, no matter how you define it. Hazing is reliably and firmly connected with our main tradition of serfdom, servility, reverence for superiors, and the tradition of humiliation. "Wan, what would you do if you became king?" "Tsar? Oh! I would sit on a mound, hustle seeds, and whoever walks by - in the face, in the face!"

Dangerous trend

And in Soviet times, army ideas were relayed to other power structures, because the main principle of recruitment was "we take after the army." But now a large number of people in uniform are increasingly entering the power echelons of the state. The army is the largest military structure and therefore it makes the greatest contribution to this process. As Samuel Huntington noted, during the Soviet era, the army elite was under strict party control (in developed countries, government officials also control the army). This restrained the influence of the army style of life and management on the entire state. However, recently in Russia the military has increasingly begun to control itself, they are replacing officials in large numbers (not angels at all). Remembering how much more criminal and corrupt the military environment is, and also how clearly built on the principle of rigid authoritarianism: I am the boss, you are a fool; you are the boss, I am a fool (one-man management), one can seriously fear that the already fragile and weak separation of powers in our country will be destroyed. It is this division that the army consciousness does not tolerate, preferring authoritarianism, clientele and corporatism.

Russian society trustingly looks at how the military occupy leadership positions, hoping to get the coveted "order", and will most likely get a drift to the most important realities of army life - chaos, redneck and theft, which are an order of magnitude superior to "civilian" samples.

Notes

Belanovsky S.A., Marzeeva S.N. Hazing in the army. M., Institute of National Economy. forecasting., 1991.

Podrabinek K.P. Barracks in Turkmenistan. Feature article. 1977, ibid.

Kostinsky A.Yu. "Hazing" and officers. For Peaceful Russia, N 5 (23) 1999, p.9.

Hantington S.P. The soldier and the state: the theory and politics civil-military relation s. Cambridge, 1981

Hazing is one of the main problems hindering the development and strengthening of the Russian army. Recently, several scandals related to manifestations of hazing in the army have received public outcry. On the night of January 1, 2006, cadet Andrei Sychev was beaten at the Chelyabinsk Tank Institute, and later his legs and genitals were amputated. The beating of an ordinary military unit in the Altai Territory, Alexander Semochnik, also received a wide response. He ended up in the hospital with a head injury after being beaten by a colleague. On Wednesday, February 8, it became known that the commanders of the Altai unit were punished - the unit commander was demoted, and the officer who was the immediate superior of the victim was fired.

These horrific events do not leave alone not only the command of the Russian army, but also many psychologists and military sociologists.

From the very beginning of the manifestation of the first signs of hazing, many programs and methods have been created to combat its various manifestations.

Historical documents testify that the anti-hazing campaign existed in the Soviet era as well.

In 1985-88, a powerful campaign against hazing took place in the Soviet press. One of its brightest manifestations was the publication of Y. Polyakov's story "One Hundred Days Before the Order". The author himself positioned his work as a story rather "for the army" than "against". So it actually was (it was not for nothing that General Volkogonov actively banned it). But the unscrupulous democrats used this story in the stream of their generally destructive campaign (Polyakov himself later admits this with bitterness). The film based on the story bears little resemblance to the original. Then other works about the army appeared, for example, S. Kaledin's story "Building Battalion" - this was already an outright libel, where the army was portrayed as a prison zone. But even before that, the press campaign did its job. Among the draft youth, there was simply a panicky fear of hazing, turning into psychosis. So, for example, some conscripts, in all seriousness, were going to ask for volunteers in Afghanistan, just not to encounter hazing (it was believed that it was not there). As a result, an interesting phenomenon seems to have emerged. The more time a generation of young people was subjected to such psychological brainwashing in civilian life, the more pliable it turned out to be hazing, that is, the draft of the 89th was more inclined to obey the grandfathers than the draft of the 87th. Although, perhaps, the general level of hazing under the pressure of the campaign in the press has nevertheless decreased.

Scientists have developed possible methods of dealing with hazing. Methods of combating hazing naturally follow from an analysis of the causes that give rise to it. For example, an alternative to reducing the solidarity of Soviet society would be to strengthen it. Hazing is largely connected with the weakening of official power structures and their replacement with unofficial ones, respectively, and one of the measures of struggle is to strengthen the official mechanism of control. However, it is clear that these problems are more complex than just the fight against bullying. As for the practical steps that could be taken regardless of the social structure, the following options are usually offered to combat hazing:

1. Keep the soldiers busy so that there is no time left for old-timers and young people to "frolic". In the absence of a war, it is difficult to pick up such a thing for the army (in order to avoid painting the grass, you must again change / re-educate the officer corps).

Problems that arise when implementing these actions:

• - where to get officers who will keep people busy
• - Will this be enough to eliminate hazing?
• 2. Allocate to each young soldier a personal mentor from the old-timers, who is responsible for any of his actions / condition. Allegedly, a similar practice exists in the United States and is called "buddy systems" (can be translated as a system of fighting partnership).

Problems:

• - the commander’s goal is the combat readiness of the unit, and not control over the condition of the soldiers’ faces, respectively, this is now the reason for the encouragement / connivance of officers for bullying (grandfathers ensure combat readiness and order),
• - who will control by what means the old-timer will exercise his mentoring,
• - will the officers be interested in such mentoring, or will they condone the presence of personal slaves among the old-timers,
• - there are always fewer grandfathers in the unit than young people of different service periods (a quarter of the personnel of grandfathers against three-quarters of scoops, laces, spirits, etc.) who will we assign to those who have served six months when their grandfather mentors quit? Or assign each grandfather to three or four young soldiers?
• 3. Increase the number of officers in parts (introduce the institute of sergeants / over-conscripts) (to increase control over soldiers)

Problems:

• - in the army and now 1 officer for 3 soldiers, more than in other armies (in which there are sergeants or non-commissioned officers)
• - high time costs
• - high financial costs
• - the main problem is where to get officers / sergeants who do not encourage hazing
• 4. Introduce supervisory bodies independent of unit commanders so that they can complain there (prosecutors, commissars, etc.)

Problems:

• - large financial costs, a new bureaucratic structure with its own investigators, staff, etc.
• - encouragement of "squealing"
• - structures independent of the army will artificially inflate cases of hazing, ignoring the requirements of combat training (when forcing a soldier to perform his duty (training muscles after lights out) by his grandfather will be regarded as a manifestation of hazing - with slander, slander, etc.)
• 5. Allow duels as a means to improve the health of the army, raise the prestige of military personnel, eliminate hazing, make the army unattractive to scum and careerists:

Problems:

• - Most conscripts are afraid to confront grandfathers, they will be afraid and challenge them to a duel. It is difficult to determine whether a young soldier, being cornered by bullying, is able to overcome his fear/non-resistance or not.
• - Greater physical/professional readiness of the old-timers will turn the duel into a banal murder
• - Duels, even if they are allowed among the officers, will only lead to the knocking out of qualified personnel and will be banned for the same reasons that Richelieu forbade the duels of the nobility
• - Who will control the fights and compliance with the rules of the call to a duel?
• 6. Formation of units from military personnel of the same service life. (Allegedly in Germany there was the same situation with hazing. They acted very simply: they began to form military units (let's say a platoon, company) from soldiers of the same conscription, and they were led by sergeants - "over-conscripts." And hazing went almost to "none" , although some elements remained, but very insignificant).

Problems:

• - a layer of over-conscripts must be made huge in order to ensure the continuity of specialists upon dismissal to the reserve of almost the entire part
• - it is possible to replace hazing with other analogues, for example, the community, which does not have the advantages of hazing, but has all its disadvantages, and even its negative sides, the community had enough. This experiment was carried out in the 70-80s in the army in some parts.
• 7. Transition to a fully professional mercenary army.

Problems:

• - high financial costs
• - whether such an army will be combat-ready in conditions of real danger.

The presented methods have encountered many problems that hinder their implementation. Let's assume that the discussion of the problems of the mercenary army is a separate topic and is beyond the scope of these studies. A common disadvantage of the proposed methods is that the main stabilizing factor of hazing is not taken into account - support by officers.

In many military districts of our country, these methods are used to resolve the problems of hazing. One can give an example of how the command of the Siberian Military District (SibVO) takes measures to combat hazing in the army.

In the troops of the Siberian Military District, doctors and psychologists conduct additional examinations of conscript soldiers. Based on the results of the checks, the soldiers will be provided with the necessary treatment, they can be transferred to serve in other units and even dismissed from the army. "The work of the leadership of the Siberian Military District units in preventing incidents and crimes related to hazing will also be personally assessed on a monthly basis," says Valery Shcheblanin, head of the press service of the Siberian Military District. He also noted that monthly "weeks of educational and legal events" will be held in the district, special commissions of the armies will check all units in which there have been violations of military discipline. Court hearings directly in military garrisons with the invitation of servicemen will be returned to the practice of preventive measures.

One of the key negative factors in the existence of hazing as a phenomenon is that this army subculture seriously undermines the authority of the army among draft-age youth and is one of the main reasons for evading military service.

A similar phenomenon, although not as pronounced as in the army, is also observed in some schools, boarding schools and other educational and social institutions. The victims are usually physically weak, insecure or simply younger. Hazing is not typical for the system of higher education, not a single fact of phenomena has been recorded, although in some ways they resemble hazing in civil higher educational institutions. This is due to the lack of an economic basis (basis) for hazing in universities and other civilian higher education institutions.

2. Responsibility

Violation of statutory relationships according to the degree of public danger are divided into:

• disciplinary offence;
• criminal offenses.

The latter category includes violations that, from the objective side, fall under the disposition of the current articles of the Criminal Code (beating, torture, actions that grossly insult human dignity, robbery, etc.). Responsibility comes in a general criminal order. The actions of a serviceman who has committed hazing that do not fall under the concept of a crime should be regarded as a disciplinary offense (violation of the procedure for joining a shift in an outfit, coercion to perform household work (if not related to physical violence), coercion to perform hazing rituals ( also without physical violence), etc.). In this case, liability arises in accordance with the requirements of the Disciplinary Charter of the Armed Forces.

3. History

The socialization of boys is always carried out not only vertically (adult men socialize boys), but also horizontally, through belonging to a peer group. In these groups, informal rules and customs are often formed, the observance of which is so important for young people, they are primarily guided by them, and not by written laws and charters.

Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin described the manners that prevailed in the middle of the 19th century in the most privileged military educational institution of the Russian Empire - the Corps of Pages. The older pupils, chamber-pages, "gathered newcomers into one room at night and drove them in nightgowns in a circle, like horses in a circus. Some chamber-pages stood in a circle, others outside it and mercilessly whipped the boys with gutta-percha whips."

At the beginning of the 20th century, in the Nikolaev Cavalry School, the younger ones were called "beasts", the older ones - "Cornet", and the repeaters - "majors".

Markov A.L. "Cadets and Junkers":

The techniques of this children's "tsukau" were striking in their diversity and originality and were obviously produced by entire generations of predecessors. Severe "majors" of the first class forced newcomers as a punishment and simply "eat flies", they made "virguly" and "lubricant" on short-haired Golovenko, and simply zaushala for every occasion and even without it.

"Zuk" was a frank mockery of the elders over the younger ones: they demanded from the younger that what is not considered to be the junkers of the senior classes of salutation; they were forced to do squats, howl at the moon, they were given offensive nicknames, they were repeatedly woken up at night, etc. Officers-educators of military educational institutions not only knew about bullying, many of them were sure that "a pull-up gives the younger class discipline and drill , and to the elder - the practice of using power.

It should be noted that participation in such customs was relatively voluntary: when yesterday's cadet, gymnasium student or student got into the walls of the school, the elders first asked him how he wanted to live - or "according to the glorious tradition of the school or the legal charter" ?. Those who expressed a desire to live "according to the charter" got rid of the "tsukau", but they did not consider him "one of their own", they called him "red" and treated him with disdain. The lower-level commanders - platoon junkers and sergeant-major - clung to the "red" with particular meticulousness, and most importantly, after graduating from college, one guards regiment did not accept him into his officer environment. Therefore, the vast majority of the junkers preferred to live according to tradition, "the expenses of which were written off as comradely rations.

The first case of hazing in the Red Army was recorded in the year. Three old-timers of the 1st regiment of the 30th division beat to death their colleague - the Red Army soldier Kupriyanov, a native of the Balakovo district of the Saratov region, due to the fact that the young soldier refused to do their work for the "grandfathers". According to the laws of wartime, those responsible for the death of a soldier were shot.

According to one version, the appearance of hazing in the army was due to a reduction in the term of service per year from three years to two. In time, this coincided with the first wave of shortage of conscripts. It was found that the five millionth Soviet army could be short of a whole third in terms of numbers - the demographic consequences of the Patriotic War affected.

The issue was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo, and a solution was found. People with a criminal record were conscripted into the army, which had previously been completely excluded. Ideologically, it looked like the correction of fellow citizens, they stumbled. However, in reality, everything happens differently: the internal life of the army is changing for the worse. Together with the criminal element, criminal orders come to the barracks, the thieves' jargon penetrates into the soldier's language. Copying prison rules, former criminals introduce ritual humiliation and bullying.

In addition, according to other sources, when the term of service was reduced from three to two years, for a certain time in the same military unit there were both those who had completed their third year of service, and those who had entered the service, who were supposed to serve one year less. The latter circumstance drained those who had already served two years, but still had to serve before their term. The servicemen of the third year of service and drove their anger at the recruits.

However, there are reasons to doubt this version. According to the candidate of sociological sciences A. Yu. Solnyshkov, already in 1964 the first and most works of Soviet scientists dealing with hazing issues appeared. In addition, according to him, over the forty years of studying the phenomenon of hazing, domestic scientists have not been able to make significant progress compared to the productive work of A. D. Glotochkin and his students, carried out in the beginning. 60s

According to another version, at the end of the 60s, some unit commanders began to widely use soldier work for personal material gain. The statutory economic activity of military units required the organization of a system of hazing, in which the old-timers acted as guards over the soldiers of the first year of service who performed work. Such relations required the unquestioning obedience of young soldiers to any instructions of the old-timers, in order to break and turn into slaves the conscripts were subjected to pressure and violence. Thus, according to this version, hazing arose as a method of managing the hazing activities of military units. Over time, in a number of military units, officers began to use hazing as a method of management, since they themselves did not want to engage in training the young, as well as educational work.

Also, by the end of the 60s, the Armed Forces no longer had that number of front-line commanders who were full of the Armed Forces after the end of the German-Soviet War, and who knew from personal experience that a healthy morale in the unit entrusted to them was a guarantee of their own life. In the summer of the year, the Soviet troops received a secret order No. 0100 on the fight against hazing.

Widely known during perestroika was the "case of Sakalauskas", a young soldier from Lithuania, who shot a guard of 7 old-timers at the entrance to Leningrad in February 1987.

5. In the Russian army

Alexander Golts, a military observer? Ezhednevnoy Zhurnal, states: The top military leadership managed to defend the idea of ​​preserving the Soviet-style mass mobilization army. This model, in principle, excludes any serious responsibility of commanders for the life and health of subordinates, reduces the conscript soldier to the position of a slave.

The bulk of cases of hazing that have received publicity in the Russian army is associated with the use of the labor of young soldiers for personal gain by the command staff of military units. Hazing arose in the 60s of the 20th century in the Soviet army as a method of managing the hazing activities of military units and continues to develop now, it takes on various forms, is widely known from the serfdom of the 18th - 19th centuries, but looks wild in the 21st century.

The Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Vladimir Ustinov, speaking at the board of the Prosecutor General's Office, noted: It seems that the "sale" of soldiers is an ancient sacred tradition, which can be eradicated only together with the entire Russian officer corps. The army of criminals. .

Region Samara In August 2002, Senior Lieutenant R. Komarnitsky demanded that Privates Tsvetkov and Legonkov leave the unit and go home to Samara and earn money by activities not related to military service. They were to pay the officer 4,000 rubles a month. The soldiers refused, but the demands were repeated, accompanied by an onslaught and beatings from the old-timers.

October 2003, Samara, guards motorized rifle regiment of constant readiness. The servicemen who worked at Karton-Pak LLC explained that they did not engage in combat training during the "surcharges". As a result, for the entire period of service, they never acquired the necessary combat skills. Private E. Goltsov, for example, said that he fired from his personal weapon only once.

Volgograd region. On October 10, 2003, near military unit No. 12670 of the ZhDV, human rights activists from the Mother's Right organization made a video recording. Dozens of soldiers were removed, who were taken to work: 32 people for weeding, 10 people. to "Rotor" (Volgograd football club). 3 or 4 foreign cars with entrepreneurs, minibuses drove up, the soldiers were taken. There is information that about 200 soldiers were taken out of the unit one day. Checks followed. The first deputy commander of the Federal Railway Service, General Gurov, came from Moscow. Passed the prosecutor's check. The commander of the military unit and his deputy were brought to disciplinary responsibility. However, until October 2004, illegal work continued. True, the violators became somewhat more cautious, organized "left" work - the failure of container boxes - on the territory of the unit.

Stavropol region. Since February 2004, three servicemen have been working at a furniture company in the village of Nadezhda (a suburb of Stavropol). None of them received monetary and other supplies that went into someone's bottomless pocket. The damage to the state only from such "write-offs", according to the conclusions of the investigation, amounted to 120 thousand rubles.

A case that occurred on the eve of the New Year in the supply battalion of the Chelyabinsk Tank School, where private Andrei Sychev and seven other soldiers were beaten by colleagues for about three hours, who thus "celebrated" the holiday, received a huge resonance. Sychev, who turned to military doctors, did not receive the necessary medical care in a timely manner. Only by the end of the holidays, due to a sharp deterioration in health, the young man was transferred to the city hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with numerous fractures and gangrene of the lower extremities (which led to further amputation), blows to the genitals (they were also amputated,). They tried to hide information about what happened. Doctors were instructed to keep the medical history of Sychev secret . During the year, the wave of prosecutorial checks and publications related to hazing issues came to naught.

6. The essence of hazing as a phenomenon

Hazing consists in the presence of unofficial hierarchical relations parallel to the main formal ones, not excluding the case when officers not only know about hazing, but also use it to maintain "order".

It should be noted that in official statements, some high-ranking military officials talk about the disease of society, which are transferred to the army soil. For example, such a statement was made in a TV interview by Admiral Vyacheslav Alekseevich Popov, the former commander of the Northern Fleet, now a member of the Federation Council, a member of the Defense and Security Committee.

Objective research says that hazing is a product of hazing economic activity in the armed forces. At the same time, hazing is an auxiliary tool in the hands of the commanding staff, which can shift most of its duties of maintaining order to the leaders of the informal hierarchy, in return offering them some benefits (extraordinary dismissals, a condescending attitude towards guilt, reduced physical activity, and others).

Often, informal relationships are accompanied by humiliation of human dignity and physical violence (assault). The direct victims of the phenomenon are members of the team who, for one reason or another, have a low status in the unofficial hierarchy (the status can be determined by experience, physical, psychophysiological characteristics, nationality, etc.). The basis of the status is physical strength and the ability to insist on one's own 4.shtml # 1 Conflict resistance.

Manifestations of hazing can be very different. In mild forms, it is not associated with a threat to life and health or a serious humiliation of dignity: recruits perform state work for old-timers and, from time to time, their household assignments. In its extreme expression hazing comes to group sadism. The origins of hazing in the Russian army.] When recruits are forced to fully serve the "grandfathers" (for example, to wash their linen), they take away money, things and food, subject them to systematic bullying and even torture, severely beaten, often causing grievous bodily harm. Recently, extortion of money has been very common in order to credit them to a cell phone account. Recruits are forced to call home and ask their parents to top up "grandfather's" account or buy him a top-up card, which will then go to the same account. Military service in the RF Armed Forces often does not differ much from the "zone" 2006/02/03/repentance / Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov. An army of criminals. Hazing is the main reason for the regular escapes of conscripts from units and suicides among them. In addition, a significant part of violent crimes in the army is connected with hazing: in some cases, the crimes of "grandfathers" were discovered and brought to trial, in others - retaliatory recruits "the case of Sakalauskas." There are cases when recruits who took up guard duty with military weapons shot their colleagues who had mocked him before, in particular the case that formed the basis of the film "Guard".

7. Hierarchical steps

The meaning of the terms may vary from the traditions of the branch of service or military unit, as well as the terms of service.

Basic definitions in army slang for military personnel by service life:

• * "Smells", "drischi", "spirits incorporeal", "quarantines" - military personnel undergoing quarantine before the oath.
• * "Spirits", "elephants" (Navy), "salagas", "beavers", "salabons", "geese" (ZhDV), "Vaska", "parents", "kids", "hedgehogs", "sparrows" (BB), "checks" (BB), "security officers" (BB), "clicks", "Chizhi" (a backronym for "wish-granting person") - military personnel who served up to six months.
• * "Elephants" (Airborne and BB), "help", "laces", "geese", "crows" (BB), "carp" (Navy), "young", "walruses", "clicks", "mammoths - military personnel who served six months.
• * "Skulls", "scoops" (a backronym for "Man, Nightly Destructive Peace of the Army Barracks"), "one year old" (Navy), "greyhounds" (Navy), "pheasants", "boilers", "shaving brushes" - military personnel serving one year.
• * "Grandfathers", "demobilization" - military personnel who served for a year and a half. The name of the phenomenon comes from the stable term "grandfather".
• * "Dembel", "citizens" (already considered to be almost civilian): conscripts, after the release of the order to transfer to the reserve.

In the Navy (at least until 1990) there were 7 hierarchical levels:

• * Up to six months - "spirit" (The being is incorporeal, asexual, understands nothing, knows nothing, knows nothing, suitable only for dirty work, often helpless)
• * Six months - "crucian" (A fighter, having been trimmed in real service conditions, knows the customs, traditions and his duties, but due to the sluggishness of the "spirits" he is often beaten)
• * 1 year - "greyhound crucian" (This is a grated kalach. He knows the service well. Responsible for the performance of work by "crucians" and "spirits". Subjected to physical impact in exceptional cases);
• * 1 year 6 months - "Pivtorishnik" (The first step of the "untouchables". It is subjected only to moral pressure from the old-timers for neglecting the lower ones. "One and a half" is considered the worst and merciless creature. At this step, people with low moral standards are very clearly manifested)
• * 2 years - "podgododo". liberal degree. Those who are tired of the moral stress of "pivoting", not particularly "bothering" with official problems, just rest);
• * 2 years 6 months - "Gododo", or, as an option, which was in circulation at the Pacific Fleet: "Sarakot" (Apparently, therefore, in the fleet, "hazing" is called "Anniversary)". Really leading supreme caste of old-timers. Physical violence is personally resorted to in exceptional cases, mainly acting through "one and a half". In turn, the informal influence on the team by the officers is carried out through "godkov");
• * 3 years - "trade union", "civilian" (This "title" was granted after the publication of the order of the Minister of Defense on transfer to the reserve. "Godok" immediately after the order of the Minister of Defense was informally recognized as transferred to the reserve and withdrawn for supply, but since "by the will of fate "forced to be in the unit, allegedly was at the expense of the naval trade union. Lives in the unit or on the ship as a civilian, wears a military uniform).

8. Traditions of transfer to the next level of the hierarchy

"" Transfer from the lowest hierarchical level to the highest carried out during the ritual of "interruption", "translation". A soldier who did not enjoy the respect of his colleagues or violated the principles of hazing, and equally refused to "life behind hazing" for three "golden days" upon arrival at the military unit (the so-called "Statutory", "tightened"), may remain "invincible" - in this case, he is not entitled to the privileges of the highest levels of the unofficial hierarchy, but is equated with "spirits" or "smells". This happens infrequently, as an exception.

The transition to the next level is accompanied by the infliction of physical pain in a special ritual way: a soldier who has served for a year (previously, when the service life was 2 years) is struck with a belt (badge), stool or metal ladle (scoop) on the buttocks. The number of strokes is usually equal to the number of months served. The transfer from "grandfathers" to "demobilization" is symbolic, without the use of physical impact: the future demobilization is "beaten" on the backside with a thread through a layer of mattresses and pillows, and for him "screams in pain? a specially selected" spirit ". Well-deserved by the moment "transfer" badges (the rank of corporal or sergeant) in some units are considered additional blows.

The fleet also had a considerable number of customs and traditions, but it is worth highlighting only two main ones, which were often found in different fleets.

• * When transferring from "carp" to "one and a half" there is a so-called. "Washing off the scales". Depending on the weather conditions and the place of action, the "crucian" is "washed off the scales", throwing it overboard, plunging into an ice hole, dousing a fire hose, etc., trying to carry out the rite of translation unexpectedly for the "initiate".
• * "Gap of a year old" - at the time of the appearance of the first printed version of the order of the Minister of Defense? linen. The ritual is also carried out unexpectedly for the "year-old". After the "break", the "year-old" becomes the "Trade Union", that is, civil. Any serviceman up to the "spirit" has the right to take part in the "break".

As a rule, the "transfer" takes place on the very first night after the release of the order of the Minister of Defense? On the transfer to the reserve. translation" and often in the first days and nights after the release of "Nakaz".

9. Propagation of the phenomenon depending on the service conditions

It is usually believed that the most malicious forms of hazing are characteristic of "second-rate" units and branches of the armed forces, especially for the construction battalion, but the facts of hazing are often revealed in units and formations that are considered "elite". In the border troops, hazing is traditionally much less common. "This sad phenomenon almost did not affect the border troops." Hazing is much less common in troops or units whose soldiers have constant access to combat personal weapons (eg Internal Troops). . In addition, hazing is not common in aviation units. Hazing has not become widespread in small, remote parts (for example, parts of air defense radar reconnaissance). It should be noted that the least manifestations of hazing are observed in those units where unit commanders do not use the labor of soldiers for personal gain. This phenomenon is in no way directly related to either the type of troops or the type of military units.

10. Reasons for the appearance

There are different points of view on the causes of hazing. According to some experts, the strengthening of hazing is directly related to the practice of conscripting prison inmates into the USSR army. In this case, there was no hazing in the pre-war Red Army (and before that in the army of pre-revolutionary Russia), and it dates back to 1942-43. There is also an opinion that hazing was given a "start" in the 1960s, at the time of the reduction of the term of service in the Soviet Army (from three to two years in the ground forces and from four to three in the Navy), when old-timers are forced to finish their three or four years, they began to drive evil on the recruits who came who were to serve a year less.

Violation of the elementary rights of citizens by the authorities and the general picture of lawlessness in the USSR against citizens by the authorities, despite the formal existence "on paper" of laws that should have protected the rights of citizens, could not but affect the relations between servicemen in the Soviet army. The lawlessness system in the USSR contributed to the fact that everyone who was endowed with power in the army, without regard to the threat of punishment, could mock other military personnel. The Soviet army did not have an effective procedure for appealing against violations of their legal rights by other military personnel, despite the fact that the Criminal Code of the USSR formally had a separate section on violation of the order of service, which included articles criminalizing beating of military personnel. Time in the USSR was not only not accepted, but it was often forbidden to openly discuss and criticize state institutions and negative social phenomena, including hazing in the Soviet army. Hazing was largely caused by the unpredictable military regulations of the tradition of commanders Maintain discipline in military units viysk services: on the same ranks and positions of the Viysk servicemen, the duty provided for by the charters was to "influence" comrades if they violated the established procedure for performing service. Thus, it was very often beneficial for commanders to maintain order and discipline among military personnel with the help of hazing. Because of what, they did not pay attention, and even encouraged hazing among the military. Gopivsky (criminal) traditions are widespread among young people even before being called up for military service and also contributed to the development of hazing in the army. Finally hazing as a phenomenon acquired its present form in the late 80s - early 90s and during the devastation of the first years of independence of the post-Soviet states, when the disorder and neglect of the army reached its apogee.

In military collectives, which are formed at the expense of conscripts, the commanders of military units have many formal levers of influence on the privates and non-commissioned officers serving on conscription. These include in particular:

• * Reprimand
• * Severe reprimand (in relation to conscripts, pronunciations are completely useless, since they are not reflected in any way in a military ID - in fact, a single document that he will take with him from the army)
• * Extraordinary outfit,
• * Deprivation of the badge of an excellent student (conscripts are awarded such badges in exceptional cases)
• * Deprivation of the next dismissal (due to use in jobs not related to the activities of a military unit, conscripts usually go on dismissal no more than once a month, instead of once a week prescribed by the charter.)
• * Demotion (conscripts rarely occupy valuable positions)
• * Decrease in military rank by one step (about 80% of conscripts are in the lowest military rank)
• * Arrest with content in the guardhouse
• * Disciplinary Battalion.

There are practically no real rights for a soldier of the first year of service. beaten by an ordinary officer, if the case was publicized, but there were no serious bodily injuries, in the worst case, they will be reprimanded. Taking advantage of the lawlessness of the soldiers, the commanders use all the leverage they have to convert the rank and file into slaves, attracting particulars for such actions and old-timers. Thus, hazing is one of the tools that are created and completely controlled by the officer corps.

The opinion is expressed that the appearance of hazing in one form or another is natural in the presence of a number of provoking factors, among which the following can be noted:

11. The difference between hazing and fraternity

Fellowship is a form of hazing based on traditions that support fellowcountryman ties. The most common types of compatriot associations of conscripts based on nationality.

Discrimination against military personnel on national, racial, ethnic and religious grounds does not fall under the concept of hazing, since in this case such a main criterion of hazing as the difference in terms of service between the offender and the victim is not taken into account. This phenomenon is called "community".

12. Hazing and hazing

The designation of these criminal manifestations as "hazing" or "hazing" is not quite adequate. "Hazing" - too broad and vague name, because any deviation from the requirements of the statutes is, in fact, a hazing attitude to assigned duties. In addition, "hazing" is sometimes carried out in the form of a requirement for absurdly precise observance of the charters.

13. Some rituals associated with hazing traditions

• * "Prayer" or a lullaby for "grandfather" - performed by a "spirit", "salabons" who, standing on a bedside table or a pyramid of stools ("jars"), at night, after the "lights out", when the officers leave the location of the company, reads a certain rhyming text about the dismissal that is approaching. Depending on the part, its content is different, so there are a large number of options in the "lullaby". The Moscow News newspaper quotes this:

"" They ate the butter - the day passed, the foreman went home.
"" Demobilization has become a day shorter, good night to all the "grandfathers".
"" Let them dream of their home, a woman with a lush pussy,
"" A sea of ​​vodka, a beer basin and a Supreme order for dismissal to the reserve.

• * "Demobilization Train" - a theatrical performance in which young fighters participate as extras and "grandfathers" playing train passengers. In the process of staging, the bed is actively swaying, the sounds of the station and the movement of the train are imitated.
• * "Examination for the right to drive a vehicle" - a ritual common in automobile units and subunits, during which a young soldier is obliged to run up to a certain floor at the time set by "grandfathers", holding a car tire in his hands, which symbolizes the steering wheel. It is used as a punishment for violations related to driving a car, or keeping a fixed car in a dirty, technically faulty condition.
• * "Detention of a criminal on the top floor of a building" - in the police units of V. Art. type of punishment for violation by young servicemen of the order of patrol duty. The young fighter is obliged to take the stairs to the top floor of a multi-storey building before his grandfather, who at this time takes the elevator.
• "*" Fire "in the room. The ritual arose in the units where the fire department of the Civil Defense / Ministry of Emergencies is provided. Subsequently, it spread to other parts. Often the order of the foremen of the companies is carried out, and in the absence of them by the sergeants. from the barracks to the street all the property of the company - beds, bedside tables, etc. The barracks must remain completely empty. If the mouth does not fit into the standard, the property is brought back, and everything starts anew.
• * Cigarette under the pillow. When the "stodnevka" begins, every morning a demobilized must find a cigarette under his pillow on which is written "so many days before the order." A cigarette was put down at night, or a spirit was "fixed" to the demobilization, or one of the spirits of the department. It was considered a special skill to put down a cigarette without waking up the demobilization, but even if you wake it up, it was not considered a fault. For this courtesy, the demobilization gives the spirit in the dining room his portion of butter. Not having a cigarette was considered a serious offense and should have been severely punished.
• * Team "One!". An analogue of the statutory order "Private, to me." Only in the case of hazing traditions, the demobilization loudly gives the command "one"! and any of the "spirits" who heard or could hear this command should immediately appear at attention in front of the demobilization and introduce themselves. (Again, the performance can be, depending on tradition, either statutory: “Private so-and-so, at your order, has arrived,” or hazing, for example, “plywood 1975 production is ready for review”!) The meaning of the ritual is speed, if the spirit has not appeared enough quickly (no more than 1-3 seconds), or did not make all the necessary efforts, the demobilization responds with the command "Set aside, not sharply", the spirit returns to the initial one, and this is repeated again. It is considered a serious offense if there are several "spirits" in the barracks, and none of them dared to come running, or several came running.

14. Common Hazing Laws

Contrary to popular belief, hazing is not always associated with physical violence. In units and subunits with stable hazing traditions, there is no need to physically force young fighters to comply with the rules and traditions of this phenomenon. The very atmosphere of the cult of old-timers and respect for the elder conscription creates the conditions for the unquestioning submission of the younger ones to the older ones. In such units, even the very idea of ​​​​denying old-timers is considered blasphemous and is nipped in the bud by the "council of grandfathers" (grandfather's council), which has the unconditional support of sergeants and is tacitly supported by some of the officers. In most "non-statutory units" assault was not associated with hazing traditions. This phenomenon in most cases acquired distribution within the framework of barracks hooliganism, or, in prison jargon, "chaos".

Depending on the type of troops, the combat capability of the unit, its location, recruitment conditions, hazing laws differ very much. In fact, hazing laws are exaggerated interpretations of the provisions of the Charter, or official dogmas, for example: "Orders are not discussed, but carried out." Despite this, there are a number of provisions (some of which are carried out even by officers) that are characteristic of most units:

15. The most common myths about hazing

Pattern: Orissa

Recently, a number of statements have appeared in literature, cinema, and use that deal with elements of hazing. Despite the fact that such facts do take place, they have nothing to do with hazing traditions directly. Such statements include the following.

1. # Hazing is based solely on the physical predominance of grandfathers and assault. If there are stable traditions of hazing in the unit, then their support practically does not require assault, since the authority of grandfathers is supported by sergeants and officers. Obviously, no hazing in the life of a military unit does not arise if it is not necessary for the unit commander. The commander of the unit has enough leverage to put an end to hazing on the territory of the unit and to get the officers and sergeants to perform their service strictly according to the regulations. .
2. # A young fighter of sufficient physical strength can resist grandfather. Even if a young fighter is physically stronger than his grandfather, but stable hazing traditions are maintained in the unit, if he disobeys, he falls into the category of "black people" with all the ensuing consequences. The "educational process" includes sergeants and officers who, in accordance with the charter, create unbearable conditions for it (the principle applies: "if you want to live according to the charter, try it, how unpleasant it is" - the day is scheduled by seconds, personal time is limited, natural needs are bound according to the schedule, care -approach to the chief, strict observance of the norms of the combat charter).
3. # A young soldier with a strong will and hardened character will withstand pressure old-timers, but more than one private will not be able to resist the will of the unit commander. In the case of a special strength of moral and volitional characteristics of a recruit, the entire range of measures available to the command staff is applied. The requirements of the strictest implementation of the charter on the part of the officers and sergeants, pressure from the old-timers and responsibility to the team on the principle of "One for all X and all X for one." In fact, it looks like this: while a fighter with character firmly refuses, for example, to do push-ups, his entire call is pushed out to exhaustion. With an emphasis on the "fact" that they all suffer especially because of the obstinacy of this fighter. Each time, increasing the pressure on the young draft, the idea is suggested that their suffering, intensified, arises from the stubbornness of a colleague. Thus, they deprive the serviceman of the support and tacit approval of the soldiers of their own conscription, which is stubborn. On the contrary, very soon the aggression and hatred of the soldiers of the junior draft, subject to the manipulation of consciousness by the old-timers, is transformed and begins to pour out on that which resists. "Rebel" is isolated in the "vacuum space". One example of the application of such a method of influencing a soldier in Cinema vividly and clearly shown in the first half of the film

08/25/10 The Ministry of Defense issued a memo, deliberately preparing recruits for service not according to the charter
From the NVO dossier

Hazing in the Armed Forces of the USSR, and now in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and in a number of armies of the CIS countries, is the most common form of hazing, which is a violation of the statutory rules of relations between military personnel called up for service and based on an informal hierarchical division of soldiers and sergeants by conscription and term services.

The ideological basis of hazing is made up of traditions, customs and rituals passed down from conscription to conscription. Very often, the traditions and rituals operating within its framework are associated with facts of humiliation of the honor and dignity of military personnel of a later draft. In modern conditions, the difference in service life cannot be more than six months. However, even this recent positive change did not save the army from hazing. As before, in order to maintain the authority of the old-timers and compel the young to perform certain chores, they are subjected to psychological pressure and physical violence. There are facts when, as a result of beatings, serious bodily injuries or bodily injuries of medium gravity were inflicted on servicemen. In some cases, hazing led to death.

Within the framework of the “Month of Uniting Military Collectives” held since the beginning of August, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, having apparently exhausted all its possibilities to eradicate the evil called hazing in the army, decided to shift its functions of ensuring their safety onto the shoulders of recruits. War Department educators began handing out handouts to newly converted fighters, which listed a whole bunch of recommendations on how young soldiers should protect themselves from this scourge.

The essence of the instructions, oddly enough, boils down to the fact that "saving the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves." These documents contain recommendations, strictly following which, young soldiers supposedly will be able to completely avoid the outrages of zealous "grandfathers", take advantage of their complete defenselessness and minimize the possible consequences of their attacks. First of all, of course, recruits are recommended in any circumstances to strictly follow the norms of Russian legislation, strictly comply with the requirements of military regulations, the instructions of commanders and superiors, and also not give reasons for humiliation and blackmail by senior comrades in the service. Well - the preamble is quite understandable and, so to speak, traditional, one might say - familiar. But further...

The memo formulated several rules, following which, an ordinary soldier can avoid hazing or maximally weaken all possible serious consequences of attacks by old-timers on his freedom. Educators recommend that soldiers who have arrived at the service do not do anything “for which they will be ashamed later.” “If you find yourself in a situation where they try to humiliate you, insult you, and after making sure that you are one of those who are easy to get scared, they threaten you with physical violence, do not pretend that you are scared,” the drafters of the document recommend. They are deeply convinced that it is precisely this behavior of recruits that supposedly will help them, in a moral sense, to stand head and shoulders above their offenders and win a “psychological and moral victory” over them.

The mentors of the defenders of the Fatherland advise them to strengthen their fighting spirit and after that begin to look for effective ways of personal protection. "Don't go for aggravation, try to reason with the scoundrels with words," the creators of the memo advise. However, not excluding the possibility of physical clashes, they advise the fighters to remain men to the end and defend their rights even with their fists, but at the same time not to exceed the measures of necessary self-defense established by law. Therefore, young soldiers are urged not to use weapons to punish their offenders.

The fact that conscripts will begin to distribute leaflets with the rules of action in case of manifestations of hazing, it became known in early August this year. As news agencies recently reported, all this action related to educating young soldiers about hazing takes place as part of the so-called month of uniting military teams, which is organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense and will take place throughout August.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the Main Military Prosecutor's Office announced this action at the beginning of this month. The officials of these departments said that they will teach soldiers to resist hazing, and instill in military leaders of all levels the necessary skills to effectively resolve conflicts that arise in army teams.

The press service and information department of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation said in a statement that “during the month, methodological exercises will be held with commanding officers of all levels on the prevention of violent crimes, including the resolution of conflict situations between military personnel in multinational military collectives” . The report also refers to the already mentioned memos containing an algorithm of actions in “various situations of increased risk of unlawful actions of a violent nature by colleagues”, indicates options for contacting unit commanders, military courts and military prosecutors, and even contact numbers.

REFLECTIONS OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE AND THE PROSECUTOR

In mid-June of this year, Nikolai Pankov, former Army General, Secretary of State - Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, at a joint meeting of the collegiums of the Ministry of Defense, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Sports and Tourism called "communication skills" one of the main reasons for hazing in the Russian army received by conscripts in informal extremist youth groups.

He noted that today in Russia there are about 150 such groups, which are located mainly in large cities, but stressed that their influence could spread throughout the Russian Federation.

According to the Deputy Minister, recruits arriving in the Armed Forces from the Perm and Primorsky Territories, Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaliningrad Regions, as well as from North Ossetia and Buryatia, show a particularly high level of crime. Named Pankov and regions, conscripts from which are unfit for military service due to drug use. These include the Krasnodar Territory, Moscow, Kemerovo, Sverdlovsk and Amur Regions, as well as Bashkiria.

In 2009, according to the secretary of state, more than 3,000 Russians were recognized as limited or completely unfit for military service. “The diagnosis of drug addiction, unfortunately, is becoming a common factor for draft boards of the subjects of the Federation,” said Pankov.

And Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika noted that over the past 20 years, the number of men of military age fit for military service has decreased by almost a third. According to him, the level of physical fitness of many conscripts for a variety of reasons does not fully meet the requirements of military service. However, he also stressed the fact that recently among young Russian citizens there has been an increase in interest in serving in the ranks of the Armed Forces. The Prosecutor General considers this trend to be a very positive shift in the mood of Russian youth.

The conscripts who have not yet put on their uniforms are already being warned about an imminent meeting with the "grandfathers".

NOT SO SIMPLE

Meanwhile, one of the officials of the Ministry of Defense, in a conversation with an NVO observer, noted that there are a lot of difficulties in the problem of hazing. He noted that relationships in closed teams, which today are called hazing, have a very long tradition. “If my memory serves me, similar phenomena were observed in the 16th-18th centuries at Eton College in England. There, the power of fellow students over their party comrades was even more cruel than the lawlessness of their teachers, who were extremely cruel,” the source said.

In the middle of the 19th century, in the most privileged military educational institution of the Russian Empire - the Corps of Pages, as Peter Kropotkin testifies, very tough morals also reigned. The older pupils, chamber-pages, "gathered newcomers into one room at night and drove them in nightgowns in a circle, like horses in a circus." Some of the chamber-pages stood in the circle, others outside it and mercilessly whipped the boys with gutta-percha whips.

At the beginning of the 20th century, as Prince Vladimir Trubetskoy wrote, in the Nikolaev Cavalry School, bullying of the elders over the younger was also practiced: forced to do squats, howl at the moon; they were given derogatory nicknames; they were repeatedly woken up at night, etc.” Officers-educators of military educational institutions not only knew about bullying, many of them were sure that "a pull-up gives the younger class discipline and drill, and the older one - the practice of using power."

All this smoothly passed into military practice under the Soviet regime. In 1919, the first case of hazing in the Red Army was recorded. Then the old-timers of one division beat their colleague to death, who refused to do their job. According to the laws of wartime, all three were shot.

Now there are many versions explaining the reasons for the appearance of hazing in the army. But the official of the Ministry of Defense is of the opinion that this phenomenon fully manifested itself only in 1967, although certain signs existed even earlier. This year, the term of service in the army was reduced from three to two years. Then came the first wave of shortage of conscripts, associated with a drop in the birth rate after the Second World War. Evidence appeared that the Soviet army, which numbered 5 million people, could not recruit more than 1.5 million conscripts into its ranks.

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU decided to conscript citizens with a criminal record into the army, which was previously strictly prohibited. Ideologically, this was framed as an opportunity for stumbled fellow citizens to take the path of correction. However, in life, everything happened just the opposite. Along with the criminals, the order of the zone also came to the barracks, the thieves' jargon appeared in the soldier's speech, and the former prisoners introduced ritual humiliation and bullying, adopted behind barbed wire.

In addition, by the end of the 60s, there were practically no commanders left in the Armed Forces of the USSR who participated in the Great Patriotic War. And they clearly understood what criminals were bringing to the troops, and were able to actively resist their actions.

In the summer of 1982, the USSR Armed Forces received a secret order No. 0100 on the fight against hazing. Thus, at the very height of the era of stagnation, the authorities recognized that hazing had become deadly dangerous, and tried to start fighting it.

Subsequently, there were many terrible cases of hazing in the Russian army, starting with the "case of Sakalauskas", a young soldier from Lithuania, who in February 1987 shot a guard of seven old-timers at the entrance to Leningrad. Already in modern times, the case of Private Andrei Sychev, who served in the supply battalion of the Chelyabinsk Tank School, received a wide response. The soldier lost both legs due to bullying by the sergeant. There were many more similar incidents, ending either in death or severe mutilation of military personnel.

The interlocutor of NVO believes that the new "papers" of the commanding educators from the military department testify only to their complete impotence. Soldiers come to the army with different education and upbringing, with different cultures, different life experiences, communication skills, etc. It is simply impossible to change their views, morality and forms of interaction with each other in one year. This takes years. It is necessary to radically reconsider all approaches to the education of the younger generation, starting with the school, laws, the system of moral training of future fighters and ending with the powers of their commanders. No other is given. And primitive memos will not help here in any way. Just another checkbox will be put that the appropriate measures have been taken.

It is impossible not to notice that recently the confidence of the population in the Russian army has increased so much that the military craft has regained the status of a priority privileged occupation, and military service is gradually turning into a school of life, as it was called in the once existing union. As soon as the state took a course towards modernization and re-equipment, cardinal changes were not long in coming.

However, the deplorable state of the armed forces of the 1990s will remain in the memory of many people for a long time to come. Even some combat officers today wonder how Russia managed to maintain its integrity in such difficult times. The defense capability left much to be desired, but it was not even a matter of technical equipment. The motivation of citizens to military service was practically reduced to zero.

Why young people do not want to serve in the army

One of the reasons for this situation was hazing in the Russian army of the nineties. The opinion poll showed that the vast majority of young men are afraid of military service not because of the difficult military life, but because of hazing. Fears were reinforced by feature films, video materials, chronicles and stories of experienced people about the hard life of the young replenishment of soldiers.

Is it worth recalling specific cases when a young man was injured or everything ended in death? To this gloomy list it is necessary to add wholesale desertion, executions of colleagues, suicide.

In 1998, the first human rights organization for conscripts was created, which is called the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers. We can say that this was a desperate step aimed at combating hazing, since it was this manifestation in the army that was named as the main reason for the above acts.

Positive or negative social phenomenon

In order to talk sensibly on the topic of hazing, you need to set yourself up for the fact that this issue is quite multifaceted, and when one truth is established, even more disputes arise. The first paradox is that they have been trying to eradicate this manifestation for many decades, but most of the men of the older generation, at the mention of a kind of hierarchy in the army, will only smile thoughtfully. Moreover, they often note that it is thanks to the upbringing by the "grandfathers" that the "spirit" becomes a real soldier.

What is this contradiction? Undoubtedly, in families that have suffered from the consequences of hazing, they will repeat about the complete eradication of this remnant of society, and former military personnel whose fate did not suffer a tragedy believe that everyone must go through such trials. The reason for the disagreement lies in the ambiguous understanding of hazing, as such.

Find out: What military uniform is intended for the Marine Corps

On the one hand, it is represented by a strict school, which is arranged by old-timers for young recruits. What's bad about it? Of course, the form of education is peculiar, but as a result, the recruit becomes independent, learns to serve, first of all, himself, observe subordination, live in a team, follow orders, and march correctly.

On the other hand, educational measures sometimes cross not only conceivable boundaries, but also the framework of legality. There are hazing, lawlessness, which is interpreted as a crime against the person. They are expressed by public humiliation, beatings, and other terrible deeds. Thus, with all the negativity, hazing will be remembered with good irony by a decent share of storekeepers, but we, nevertheless, will talk about the dire consequences of this phenomenon.

When did

The next paradox arises when trying to determine the time when hazing appeared in the army. According to the stories of real witnesses, even before the 50s, such a concept was not even discussed. The origin of the hierarchy took place during the thaw period, when many prisoners were amnestied, for whom military duty was provided.

As a result of such reforms, part of the “Zon concepts” migrated to the armed forces. But the reasons for the emergence of hazing should be discussed separately, and in this respect it should be noted that hazing in the Soviet army of the 50-60s became the basis of modern battles.

And in this matter it was not without the ubiquitous "BUT". Some documents, including works of art, indicate the peculiar attitude of old-timers towards new recruits back in tsarist times. And this is not surprising, since military service was calculated for decades, so experienced servicemen could not help claiming certain concessions with all the consequences.

Reasons for the formation of hazing

We agreed that such a phenomenon as hazing has a complex structure. It manifests itself as a set of certain rites, sometimes causing the laughter of the recruits themselves and can have significant varieties, reaching illegal acts. We will consider this social phenomenon in a negative plane and try to determine where the reasons for the emergence of hazing in the USSR lie.

Find out: Disciplinary battalion in the army, abbreviated disbat

After the demobilization of all the military - participants in the Second World War, volleys of shells of real hostilities in human memory began to gradually subside. Already in 10-20 years it was possible to talk about peace and a cloudless sky. Oddly enough, but it was this fact that brought the destruction of the former solidarity into society. If a common misfortune unites, then the absence of external conflicts gives rise to internal ones. The army, on the other hand, was a kind of “mirror” of the state of society, and taking into account the fact that criminal elements fell into the structure of the troops, the Armed Forces began to gradually replenish with hazing.

The next vector could be the destruction of the Stalinist foundations. By the beginning of the 60s, the government elites, having escaped from fear of punishment, turned from creators into consumers, which was reflected in the leadership of the army. Freethinking led to the degradation of the commanding staff. This does not mean that the General Staff was replenished with incompetent commanders, but low ranks firmly settled in the field, whose responsibility was reduced to zero. The connivance of the officers did not become the reason, but was the catalyst for the appearance of general hazing.

The thaw of the 1960s was remembered by all the negative attitude towards denunciations and informing. From the political background, these terms migrated to the army. At that time, a report of infliction of bodily harm was considered as a snitch. And if the state stopped such manifestations, then what could be said within the military unit. Gradually hazing in the army began to include fights and beatings, which were silent on both sides of the conflict.

The urbanization of society and the conflict of generations usually stand in the same row, since the motive is the same. Just as the old-timers could not accept the foundations of the newly arrived soldiers, the city dwellers placed themselves above the rural, both in terms of social and mental development. On a regional scale, the periphery constantly clashed with Muscovites.

What do we have today

Returning to the question of whether there is hazing in the army at the present time, we will begin to cover the period from the end of the 90s. Attempts to stop this phenomenon have been made repeatedly. The top leadership finally began to understand that if you do not get rid of the manifestation of non-Ustavism, then problems with the contingent will arise in every draft campaign. It should be noted that all attempts were in vain, since the phenomenon, like a virus, hit the armed forces at all levels.

Find out: How many years did conscripts serve in the army in the USSR

Among all the proposals on how to deal with hazing, quite realizable ones were put forward, but crumbled about the cruel reality of the deplorable state of the army.

• To occupy the soldiers, especially the old-timers, so that they simply do not have time to torture the young replenishment. For implementation, officer cadres were required, which were not available.
• Increase the number of officers. This proposal required significant financial outlays. For the budget of that time, the task was considered overwhelming.
• Introduction of regulatory bodies (independent). Such an approach is fraught with the simulation of the military personnel themselves in order to sabotage military orders.
• Transfer of the army to a voluntary basis. The geopolitical situation does not allow such steps to be taken. The territory of Russia is large enough, so there is a risk of not getting enough troops.
• Tightening responsibility for the manifestation of hazing on officers. There were banal cases of revenge, when, thanks to his own authority, an officer gave orders that humiliated a soldier. Everything happened in accordance with the charter, so hazing smoothly transposed into "Ustavshchina", which practically did not change the essence.