Hazing in the Russian army

Fri Feb 10 21:25:28 UTC 2006

Dear Mills Charles,

The latest issue of "Los Angeles Times" talks about the  horrible case of
dedovschina that occurred  in the Chelyabinsk Military College in January
2006. See it below. If you'll have time to read some Russian newspapers
regards this issue you'll see that many politicians, journalists etc. are
calling for the resignation of the Minister of Defence -Ivanov. Last Sunday
there was a brilliant discussion about the roots of dedovschina in the
Russian army on Russian radio -Ekho Moskvy . Some historians talked about
the  state of dedovshchina in post-Soviet times in relation to the issue of
discipline in the 19th-century Russian army....This radio station is
available via the internet: http://echo.msk.ru/news/292794.html
In the archive they have an interview (a printed version) with Vadim
Rechkalov (who published a controversial article on Sychev and hazing in the
army  in "Moskovskii komsomolets"). See: http://echo.msk.ru/interview/41629/

Professor Mary McAuley ( a retired  Oxford professor) has in her possession
one brilliant short film made in the style of US and Russian silent
movies--it's on dedovschina in post-Soviet Russia. She showed it during one
of the BASEES conferences in Cambridge (UK) 3 or 4 years ago. I note that
she is currently doing some research on Russian prisons and young offenders
for  International Centre for Prison Studies
(http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/organisation.html#Mary%20McAuley). As
far as I know she is also a research fellow attached to the department of
political science at the University of London (University College). I have
no doubt that she might be of some help to you since she seems to be a pool
of knowledge regards any issues related to hazing, legal structures and
human rights....Her talk during the BASEES conference on hazing was very
informative. She gave a lecture and then she showed the film (sorry I don't
remember its title). It's about 30-40 minutes long.

Alexandra Smith (PhD, University of London)

Senior Lecturer in Russian
School of languages and Cultures
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch
New Zealand

-----------------
Los Angeles Times
February 10, 2006
Charges of Brutal Hazing Put Russian Military on Defensive
Families and advocates of alleged victims say conscripts face abuse,
sometimes lethal, that is more prevalent than has been acknowledged.
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer

CHELYABINSK, Russia  Just before New Year's, army Pvt. Andrei Sychyov
called his mother and asked her to come bring him home for the holiday. He
had four days' leave, he said. Please don't make him spend it in the
barracks.

But Galina Sychyova thought of the extra hours she had to put in at the
market where she works. Conscripts are not allowed to go on leave
unaccompanied, and it would take her 11 hours on the bus each way to travel
roughly 120 miles along the east side of the Ural Mountains from her
village outside of Yekaterinburg. For just four days?

"I explained to him, I said: 'Andryusha, please understand me correctly,
it's the highest buying season now, and we can't leave the shop for a
minute. And I will come and see you some other time.' He was very, very
upset," Sychyova recalled. "I felt tears in his voice. He said, 'I don't
want to stay here for the new year with these drunken louts.' "

The next time Sychyova saw her 19-year-old son, it was at a hospital in
Chelyabinsk. Doctors had amputated one leg, then the other, then his
genitals, then the tip of his right ring finger. On New Year's Eve, her son
said, his army mates tied him and forced him to squat for more than three
hours, beating him repeatedly on the legs.

Gangrene had spread through his lower extremities and was threatening his
kidneys, lungs and brain. He breathed with a respirator. His eyes only
flickered when his mother peered anxiously into his face and repeated his
name.

The Russian army is legendary for being almost as dangerous in peacetime as
it is in war. Last year, 16 soldiers were officially listed as killed in
brutal hazing incidents, and 276 others committed suicide.

But many believe those figures are misleading. A number of the 1,064
servicemen who died in various "crimes and incidents" were also victims of
abuse, and many cases listed as suicides are faked to disguise fatal
beatings, or occur because soldiers can no longer endure the torment, say
military analysts and human rights organizations.

The small, two-room office of the Soldiers' Mothers Committee in
Chelyabinsk is lined with files, most of them reports of violence committed
against conscripts serving their two years of mandatory military service.

"Do you see those walls over there? They're filled with complaints. And
it's one-millionth of what's going on," Lyudmila Zinchenko said.

Nearly every army in the world has initiation rites and means of informal
discipline, some of it violent. In Russia it has evolved into an entrenched
system known as dedovshchina, or the "rule of the grandfathers," in which
senior soldiers force new recruits to conduct menial chores, give up their
food, money and cigarettes and undergo sleep deprivation and humiliating
rituals.

The punishment is beatings or, in a few cases, sexual abuse. So miserable
has conscript service become that last year only 9.2% of the 1.7 million
18-year-olds subject to the draft were actually inducted. Families with
money or connections won exemptions through educational, health or family
waivers.

Human Rights Watch in 2004 concluded that "hundreds of thousands" of new
recruits faced "grossly abusive treatment" that killed dozens every year.

The organization described a 2002 case in which recruit Dimitri Samsonov
wrote his parents and grandmother urgently requesting money and cigarettes
to offer senior soldiers during a 100-day period of intense hazing.

"Mama, this is what I need for the next four months: every week a transfer
of 40 to 50 rubles, and a small package with Prima [cigarettes]. Mama,
don't forget to send this immediately. Immediately!"

The letter was followed by another. "Today, the [period] is starting, and I
haven't received anything from you. I don't know what to do. It's 2 p.m.
now. It will be lights out in eight hours. I don't think that I will
survive this night. You just don't understand how important it was for
me." In any case, both letters arrived too late.

Two months later, Samsonov was hospitalized with a broken wrist. Eleven
days after that, the family received a telegram saying their son was dead.
He had slit his veins, authorities said.

In Chelyabinsk, an industrial city of 1.3 million in the southern Urals,
Zinchenko said her group received about 300 hazing complaints a year,
ranging from a young soldier who was hired out to dig graves while his
supervisor pocketed his wages to soldiers who were beaten or driven to
suicide.

"Here's a boy who was killed," she said, picking up a report filed by the
parents of Oleg Afanasyev, 20, who was reported to have committed suicide
by hanging himself on July 12, 2005, during service in the strategic rocket
forces.

"The parents opened his coffin in the cemetery, and we have a list signed
by 70 witnesses who saw the signs of beatings on his body," she said.
"There were bruises under his eyes, the nose was broken, there was a stitch
on his head, another ugly stitch on his neck, and blood in his right ear."

In the town of Chebarkul, about 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk, a 24-year-old
serviceman was reported to have suffocated from carbon monoxide poisoning
in a military garage Oct. 11. "But his uniform was covered with blood,"
Zinchenko said. "He was murdered, and the military called it suffocation."

When her son was drafted, Sychyova's husband had already drunk himself to
death, but his mother and sisters were resigned to seeing "our baby" go,
she said. "He accepted this as his duty. And we told him, 'You are a man,
and to be a real man, you need to serve in the army.' "

Sychyov was assigned to a tank academy in Chelyabinsk. His mother visited
him in August, when he got a two-day leave, and they strolled through a
park together. He talked about his studies, about work details cleaning up
the base and washing cars. He was thin, but "he said everything is normal.
He never complained."

After the conversation about New Year's, she said, she called him again
Jan. 4, and found that he was on his way to the clinic. "He said, 'I have a
very bad pain in my left ankle.' "

By Jan. 6, Sychyov had been transferred to a civilian hospital in
Chelyabinsk. A doctor from the hospital phoned his mother the next night.

"He said my son is in extremely bad condition, that his left leg is
amputated, and after these words, I went into hysterics," she said. "And he
said to me very sternly, 'Please, leave your hysterics behind, listen to
me.' He said: 'I'm giving you the address of the hospital, and you need to
come. Because your son may not survive until morning.' "

Alexander Ionin, assistant chief doctor, said that when Sychyov arrived,
gangrene had started in his legs and infected his blood, apparently because
his circulation was cut off when he was forced to squat.

Sychyov has improved since then, and his life is out of danger. When he
could talk, he said he and others had been beaten by older soldiers, and by
one sergeant in particular. Within days, the commanding general of the tank
academy was dismissed, and 12 servicemen are facing criminal
investigations. President Vladimir V. Putin, calling the case "horrible,"
said the Defense Ministry would take measures to improve discipline in the
armed forces.

But at the academy, some servicemen appear defensive.

"Nobody touched Sychyov. Maybe a little bit, but they have just blown it
all out of proportion," said one soldier, who declined to give his name.

"Everybody says, 'Hazing, hazing.' What do you know about hazing? You read
those horror stories in the paper, but in life, somebody has to teach a
young soldier how to serve properly," he said. "I was taught by older
soldiers. And we are not in a kindergarten, after all. It can be a bit
rough, but everyone goes through it."

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