Tajikistan’s Military Continues to Follow Soviet Model and Suffers from Dedovshchina and Regional Divisions as a Result

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 10 – Two problems that Soviet military suffered from, the mistreatment  those drafted later by those drafted earlier known as “dedovshchina” and conflicts between draftees from various regions of the USSR continue in many post-Soviet states but perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in Tajikistan.

            Dushanbe still conducts a twice-a-year draft, thus creating the divisions between those who  are nearing the end of their service and those just taken in, and concentrates those from one area in some places so conflicts between them and others are an everyday feature of life in the Tajikistan army.

            Russia has made some progress against dedovshchina because it now drafts men throughout the year, thus limiting the possibility that groups defined by length of service and thus privileges will form; although it has not managed to reduce clashes between men from different regions, especially if these regions correspond to ethnic groups.

            The Current Time television channel, a joint project of RFE/RL and the Voice of America, has produced a 3,000-word article on the state of these problems in Tajikistan, a country on the border with Afghanistan that faces challenges from there as well as ethnic and regional challenges from within its border (currenttime.tv/a/33870497.html).

            It is thus important in its own right for considering the security situation in Tajikistan; but it is perhaps even more important for the attention it calls to similar problems in the many other post-Soviet states which have not succeeded, even more than 30 years on, in escaping from the problems of the Soviet template.