Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 11 – Reflecting the
increasing share of non-Russians among draftees in the Russian army and the
declining percentage of them who know the Russian language, Duma deputies are
now calling for the Russian military to begin providing Russian-language
training for soldiers in these groups.
Yesterday, “Izvestiya” reported that
members of the Duma education committee have concluded that the military must
introduce course in the Russian language for draftees and said it would soon
send a draft measure about that to the Ministry of Defense for its review (izvestia.ru/news/551689).
Education
committee staff told the Moscow daily that there has been a significant decline
in the level of education among draftees in recent years and that many of the draftees,
almost certainly those who come from the North Caucasus and other non-Russian
regions of the country, do not speak Russian well enough to function as
soldiers and sailors.
If the Russian military is to be
effective, these staffers added, those in its ranks need to know enough Russian
to follow orders and to explain them to others. If that is not the case, it
undermines the possibility of good order in the ranks.
Apparently the situation has
deteriorated to the point that parliamentarians think they have to do
something: “The minimum for us,” they said, “is to teach those who do not speak
Russian well to understand it; the maximum is to use Russian” as a means of
promoting social cohesion within the ranks.
“In Soviet times,” the paper noted, “the
ABCs of Russian were taught in political enlightenment lessons for residents of
the union republics.” The politruks used school textbooks, “but this took place
in an unsystematic way and without testing.”
“Izvestiya” asked the defense
ministry for a comment but was turned down, although it reported that Vasily
Smirnov, the deputy head of the general staff had recently complained in an
interview about the difficulties of working with those draftees who lacked what
he called “sufficient education.”
Vadim Rudnyev, a Moscow linguistics
expert, told the paper that he thinks that the Duma proposal is a good one. The
Soldiers’ Mothers Committee NGO did as well, as did parliamentarians surveyed
on this issue by Regions.ru (regions.ru/news/2462593/), even though some of them argued that the schools
not the military should address the issue first.
But
the idea of teaching Russian in the ranks is opposed by some. Igor Zotov, a member of the Duma defense
committee, said that he remembered such lessons from his time in the Soviet
army but that “now” he does not see “any need” for them given that “the
majority enter with elementary knowledge of the language.”
And
some military commanders, like Boris Podoprigov, the former head of the Unified
Group of Forces in the North Caucasus are opposed as well, fearful that Russian
language training would take time away from military instruction, something
that is already at a premium given the dramatically shortened time in service
for draftees.
But the problem
of lack of Russian language knowledge among draft-age young in the Russian
Federation is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, the situation is getting
worse from Moscow’s point of view. Regnum.ru reports, for example, that “almost
a third of the graduates of schools in Chechnya do not know Russian” (regnum.ru/news/cultura/1669979.html).
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