Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 2 – Draftees who
maintain attachments on the basis of where they are are a greater source of
violations of military discipline than are those who identify as members of a
particular nationality, according to a retired Russian colonel who served as deputy
commander of the unified Russian forces in the North Caucasus and now gives
advice to the Duma.
And while there is some overlap
between the two – people from a particular place are often members of the same
nationality – it is far from absolute, and the regional dimension is more
significant than the ethnic one, Boris Podoprigora told the Federal News Agency
yesterday (riafan.ru/101914-armii-ne-nuzhnyi-zemlyachestva-i-svyashhenniki/).
The
issue of ethnicity and “dedovshchina” – the Russian word for “unstandard
military behavior” – has resurfaced this week given Moscow’s decision to extend
the military draft to Chechnya, something it has not done for 20 years, and the
fears this has sparked among some about the impact of doing so on unit
cohesion.
Podoprigora
said he wouldn’t overemphasis the danger and that he personally has “always
called for drafting all citizens of Russia without exception when they reach
the corresponding age.” Moreover, he continued, he “does not see any particular
link between the nationality of a soldier and his inclination to violations” of
military discipline.
According
to the veteran and now military advisor to the Russian parliament, “already in
Soviet times, dedovshchina originated as a rule from among soldiers who formed
the majority in a given unit.” Tyically, such majorities were made up of men
from a particular region or city rather than of a given nationality.
The
retired colonel said that he remembers serving in a unit “dominated by men from
Tashkent.” “You can believe me or not,” he continued, but among them was not a
single Uzbek: these were ethnic Russians and Koreans. Nevertheless, they
introduced significant dissonance in the actions of commanders.”
When
people say that men from the North Caucasus will do so regardless of how many
of them there are in a particular unit or the strategy commanders adopt,
Podoprigora said, “I don’t believe it because what is involved is not
nationality” but rather the failure of military commissariats to assign men so
that there won’t be too many from any one place.
Ethnicity
matters much less than the propensity of soldiers to group themselves on the
basis of where they are from, he argue.
For example, he said, “if in a company of 100 men, there are 40 draftees
from Vladivostok, I assure you that they after six months will dominate all the
others.”
In
other comments, the military advisor said that sergeants should play a key role
in maintaining discipline, that he “does not see the need” for a chaplaincy
corps, and that he thinks the religious needs of soldiers should be satisfied off-base
and not on a daily basis on it. Otherwise, religious activities could affect
military readiness.
Podiprigora’s
comments may strike some as an indication that Moscow has fewer problems with
draftees than they had thought, but in fact, his remarks suggest that the
Russian command has even more than many had imagined, if regional attachments
can be the basis for violations of indiscipline as much or more than ethnic
ones.
And
that in turn calls attention to something else that most Russian commentators
and many Western analysts are reluctant to consider: the national identity of
ethnic Russians is in this case as in others much less strong than are regional
attachments, something that makes building a “Russian world” and even
maintaining a single Russian state that much more difficult.
No comments:
Post a Comment