Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 7 – Last September,
Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said that “there is simply no basis in the army
for dedovshchina,” attacks by soldiers and officers on each other
because of abuse arising from how soldiers are treated because of their length
of service, ethnicity or religion.
“Look,” he said, “one soldier hits
another! But such situations are much more numerous among civilians in any
city. The main thing is that in our million-man army, crime is an order, I
repeat, an order lower than in any city with a population of a million. And
this is the dry statistic” (mk.ru/politics/2019/09/22/sergey-shoygu-rasskazal-kak-spasali-rossiyskuyu-armiyu.html).
Given the level of violent crime
among civilians and the greater ability of commanders in the military to visit
punishment on those who violate the rules, Shoygu may be correct. But a new investigation by the Tayga news
agency finds that in the last year alone, dedovshchina has been on the
rise in the Transbaikal Military District (tayga.info/151295).
It documents the nearly 20 cases of such
illegal behavior that have reached the courts over the last 12 months in that
MD alone and suggests that the actual number of what commanders call “unstandard”
behavior almost certainly is far larger given that the military has both the
interest and means to hide many lesser examples.
Indeed, commanders have done almost everything
they can to hide such cases unless they involve a level of violence, including
murders, that cannot be concealed. They have made it more difficult for the
Soldiers Mothers Committees to track things down, but court records are now mostly
online.
That has allowed regional agencies
like Tayga to keep track of what is certainly a growing problem. If Shoygu is
right that the situation is better in the military than in the civilian sector –
and he may be -- that only calls
attention to how bad things have become in Russia today more generally.
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