blogfromgog / блогизгога: Russian Soldiers

“It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being. If there is any reason for pride in my past, it is that I became a convict, not a soldier.”
-Brodsky

Like I mentioned earlier, military service in Russian is mandatory for males. From talking with my professors and just from whatever knowledge I've acquired about Russia (including watching Russian movies, heh), the army is a miserable place. It's full of monotony, drudgery, incompetence, stupidity, pointlessness, and vulgarity. Professor Dorontchenkov described how much he had dreaded going into the army and how he had to prepare himself mentally for it. He went in as just a common soldier, and stayed in for two years, in contrast to Professor Golstein who was able to do something like an ROTC program, where you study military history and have some training while in school. But Prof Golstein only had that because he went to a math/engineering school in Moscow, whereas Dorontchenkov was in Ukraine and no doubt studying at a humanities based school, which did not have those military programs in place. So Golstein was only doing "real" military training for about half a year (artillery division), and then moved to the states when he was 23.

The soldiers here can be scary. I happened to be sitting next to one on the bus so I was able to check out his uniform more and also notice all the scars on his face and hands, and other weird markings. I do like a lot of the uniforms, and the really important guys look awesome (no pics though, sorry). We saw a lot of military folk in Moscow, which was fun. Including a whole group of foot soldiers who really enjoyed winking, smiling, and waving at us.

It's really sad though when you see the soldiers on the street who are missing arms, hands, feet, or legs or whatever, no doubt from land mines or bombs in Chechnya or from Afghanistan. Dorontchenkov said that once you're injured in the army, they basically discharge you and leave you to your own devices. There's this one guy I often see begging on the street who is missing both his feet. He has no wheelchair or crutches and so has basically wrapped plastic and fabric (to make shin pad things) around his legs so he can shuffled on his shins and knees to get around. It's really unfortunate how terrible Russia's welfare system is, how bad their health care is, and how there is no real infrastructure to help those most in need, like the old, mentally ill, or handicapped. Old people can go through their entire pension money in a day, and the mentally ill simply take to the streets until they're rounded up whenever the next big international even is held. The problem is not just with the government's lack of programs to help these people, but also that there is not as much a tradition of charity organizations in Russia as in America for example to help pick up the slack. I think it has a lot to do with the way religion is practiced here (more personal, less about forming a church community), and how the orthodox church is still recovering and trying to catch up to modern times after the USSR. But yeah... enough sad stuff.

So here are some soldier pics. I'm still sad I don't any good ones of the navy boys. I'm also afraid to take pictures of the soldiers, so that's why the pictures are kind of random.