Ending. Start at N 7

To put or not to put under the banner of the so-called problem youth? In Israel, the lesser of two evils is chosen: they do not leave hooligans and renegades to the trouble of ordinary people, but hand them over to the army instructors.

It is generally accepted that the military organization has a beneficial effect on the immature youth. Hardened vegetation is not afraid of any thunderstorms. Those eighteen-year-olds who are going to part with not too beautiful youth, become a Man, a real man, are ready to put on the uniform. Another thing is that other domestic garrisons eke out a miserable existence. In no way do they pull on the role of a school of courage, tempering of characters.

I recall a conversation with a random interlocutor, one of the first Soviet ensigns. S. Akimov-a front-line machine gunner, and after the war-the commander of a platoon of mine trawl delivery. He was awarded three Orders of the Red Star, two of them in peacetime. He lives just a stone's throw from his native engineer-sapper battalion, and does not visit there for the sake of idle curiosity.

- What happened ten years ago and is happening today - the earth and the sky, - the veteran compares with pain. - I used to go away for a month to clear mines, and instead of me, a sergeant calmly drove the platoon. Try leaving the unit unattended now! They demand little from their commanders, and they demand little from their subordinates. We also drank on weekends, but not during school hours... What's good: drunken officers in a small town in broad daylight. Or soldiers begging passers-by for bread...

The barbaric fact was captured by a video clip that has already been repeatedly played on various TV channels. Amateur shooting was made in the Dzerzhinskiy division. Barrack "authorities" practice kicking.

Not on dummies - on new colleagues. Having engaged in sadists in camouflage, the military prosecutor's office has established a curious detail of their biographies. While in Chechnya, they could not stand the baptism of fire, showed cowardice. Truly: terrible in the ranks, pathetic in battle.

Again, if we resort to an analogy, it is easy to distinguish a combat grenade from a training one, at least by the color of the body. The imitation fuse creates only the appearance of a break, sound and smoke effect. The most reliable determinant of characters is an extreme situation. A man drops his mask when bullets whistle. A verification test with a one-hundred-percent guarantee has not yet been invented. However, there are some common features among those who are contraindicated in a rigid army way of life.

Unsuitable for use

"The availability of conscription resources in the country exceeds the need for them of all law enforcement agencies," said Colonel-General V. Putilin, Head of the Main Organizational Department of the General Staff. Simply put, it became possible to safely reject the unfit for service. In fact, military registration and enlistment offices would be happy to be picky, but they sometimes have little choice.

The catastrophic state of health of Russians in itself undermines the security of the state. We can be called "the country of scoundrels" in the Yesenin way, but with a different meaning. In ancient times, the word "scoundrel" meant "unfit for the military field." Bogatyrs in the ranks are now a rarity.

Once upon a time in Russia, they put on a soldier's shoulder strap by lot, "those who did not come out in moderation", that is, shorties, were not even allowed to this dispute. The average nineteenth-century draftee was a head taller than his current descendant. Literally. The number of undersized ones has increased by 20 times. The number of people with mental abnormalities, poorly prepared physically, is growing. 100 thousand people make up the annual growth of disabled people. For various illnesses, every third person who came to the military enlistment office is released from service or receives a deferral. It is also alarming that a healthy part of the youth is deliberately "cut off" from the army in all respects. And it turns out: dropping out the best, summoning the worst.

There were no fewer attempts to evade the service - "damage", in the words of V. Dahl. I know cases when healthy guys do not shy away from going to a mental hospital on the eve of service-just to get a diagnosis that makes it possible to" cut off " from the army. Just like a hundred years ago, you can safely ask a recruit: why was they taken away? It became the order of things: for bad behavior, they are sentenced to an honorable duty. They put forward an ultimatum: either go to the army, or we'll put you in jail for your sins. What can you expect from a soldier who was forcibly dragged into the ranks? Thousands of young people ignore subpoenas, some on the run for a long time. They'll catch him, take him to the military swearing-in - and who can guarantee that a seasoned evader won't take a walk again, only with a submachine gun?

An old song bemoaned the recruit's share. The village council quickly came to an agreement:

"To give us a rich man is to make us angry. And there's a widow who has an orphan son, and we'll give him to the soldiers." Isn't that still the case?! Although the "widow's mite" is valuable, you can't strengthen an army with it alone. In today's soldiers ' ranks, you rarely meet the sons and grandsons of famous politicians, military leaders, people's deputies, and cultural figures. Every year, the intellectual potential of the conscription contingent is steadily decreasing. In fact, recruitment is carried out at the expense of those who are at the lowest rungs of the social ladder. It is no wonder that non-statutory relationships live and flourish. It is worth remembering: the frightening "hazing" took root in those very years, when, also due to the lack of good guys, they began to en masse recruit those who had been in prison.

Often, the current soldier serves for himself and for that guy, the darling of fate, who in one way or another was helped by rich relatives to avoid the military lot. Yesterday ,the "beloved, native army" did not even reach the title of workers 'and peasants' army. 37 percent of its recent additions are lumpen - proletarians who have never worked or studied anywhere. In the questionnaires, after questions about qualifications, dashes are increasingly put. If there are no enterprises or collective farms , there are no messengers of labor collectives. There are no rudiments of professional knowledge and skills that help you master a military specialty. We insist on increasing the requirements for technical literacy and the level of training of personnel. And the battle ranks are filled with dropouts who left school early, who do not know their abilities and interests. It's also a "risk group", even if not so high.

How much would our country benefit if, when appointing candidates to positions of responsibility, they categorically rejected candidates who ungodly did not care about the sacred duty. Does such a person have the right to defend the interests of the state, if he neglected them at the dawn of his youth? For some reason, our pseudo-democrats do not praise the United States for "pricking" even the president's eyes, do not let him forget how shamefully he dodged military service in Vietnam. In Russia, they are not interested in the strange army gap in the biographies of high-ranking figures, their children and household members. And the issue is not a private one, not a delicate one, and if we made it dependent on our career, we might see more people in the Russian elite who think and act in a state-like way. Otherwise, it seems that the powerful do not want to live in a strong state. After all, "it is impossible to revive Russia without an army and in addition to the army" (P. Struve). You will regret a hundredfold the loss of the characteristic feature of Soviet military service - its universality and obligation.

It would be necessary to ruthlessly remove from high positions bosses and officials of any rank, compassionate only to relatives, but not in relation to the Motherland. Then we will have no calls, no requests, no certificates of exemption from conscription. There will be no "untouchable caste" in this matter, which turns the stronghold of the state into an institution of the common people, or worse - into a sump of lumpen proletarians. What this is fraught with, as evidenced by numerous emergencies. It would not be bad to introduce personal responsibility for pandering to draft dodgers, as well as for a ticket to the "persona non granata"system.

...In the center of Novorossiysk, in fact the only port city in the south of Russia, a parachute regiment is stationed. Not the first year it is equipped with Kuban Cossacks. Suddenly, by someone's thoughtlessness or intent, the traditional composition began to be replaced by replenishment from Dagestan, among which Chechens-Akins predominate. Guys older than twenty, some with" marks " of the Chechen war. Mountaineers and Cossacks, to put it mildly, do not get along with each other. And then "describe the bad, do not expect anything good."

I put the question squarely: what do we want to see in the face of the Armed Forces-a source of trouble or a school for educating civil virtues? Defensibility is vitality. The army should get all the best, including human resources. And not on a residual basis, not in the form of handouts. Not like in the popular operetta: "Let the boy serve the Fatherland, if there is no other way out."

The picture that was presented at the city assembly point will not be forgotten. Almost empty "ikaruses" with conscripts - 2-3 people in the cabin. Scrawny boys frantically gulping down beer before disappearing through the doorway. Drunken mothers clinging to the gates and calling out their own names... It is hard to believe in the benevolence of reforms when you see how aimlessly crowds of young people are loitering on the streets. How pathetic skinny girls trample in the ranks, and their well-groomed peers roll out in foreign cars.

Danger sign

At the end of the Soviet era to the young writer Yu. Polyakov for the story "One Hundred days before the order" got a hard time. He colorfully depicted how old-timers humiliate young people. Who would have known they were flowers? Nor could the talented writer have foreseen this. In the article "Without chain mail" (I advise you to read it in the magazine "Russian House" No. 1 for 1999), he sadly reflects: "Why did the "grandfathers" come to replace the military, who with terrible regularity turn guardhouses and barracks into shooting ranges?.." - if they shoot from morning to night - on TV, on the street? If the killer turns into an ordinary profession... It is psychologically much easier for today's fighter to use AKM than, say, during my military service. I'm not even talking about the" Chechen syndrome " - it's so obvious! And then there's the officer corps disaster..."

To the writer's resume, I would add the persistent "anti-army syndrome" instilled by criminal democrats. The society, which was called upon to provide material and spiritual nourishment to the native army-defender, took an almost hostile attitude towards it. The army is terrible, impoverished, self-defeating... And who made it like this? Television and the media do not tire of hitting the military with a smaller caliber. Almost enthusiastically present every case of army lawlessness. But there is not enough gunpowder to understand the nature of this phenomenon. TV scoundrels have taught the average person to perceive the military tragedy as a national drama.

In a long-ago, it seems, dead era, at the stage of communist construction, the party at least declared the task of educating a new Soviet person who " harmoniously combines spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection." They don't talk about it today. The mindset seems to be different: create as many antiheroes as possible. "The only thing that modern Russia has succeeded in is the production and reproduction of bandits... Crime has become a source of existence and a way of life" (Criminal Chronicle No. 1, 1999).

In every complex mechanism, there is a system that insures against gross interference, a kind of"protection from a fool". The simplest grenade and that is equipped with four fuses. Our existence is marked by the gradual elimination of all the properties of self-preservation. It was as if they'd lost their brakes...

Wars have not been abolished, and Russians are becoming increasingly ill-equipped to defend themselves. If a country orders you to be a hero, will anyone become one? And television, radio, and print are busy glorifying everything criminal. They sing praises of division, ignore valor. Reduce the pain threshold for perceiving evil. They blur the boundaries of what is criminal and permissible. They cultivate militant egoism, unbridledness-qualities that fundamentally contradict military work with its self-denial and self-discipline. You tend to think that there are few people in society who are interested in the young generation accumulating creative forces. To "harden the steel". On the contrary, they encourage the accumulation and explosion of negative energy. Waste yourself, have fun! You can't help but envy the fact that in other Western countries (it is not known under the influence of what) the male part of the population is completely quitting drinking and smoking. These will be warriors!

And we flatter ourselves that we have supposedly entered the civilized world. And the level of humanity and culture has fallen to the lowest level. The wretchedness of thoughts, speech, feelings, and actions is what pulp fiction and video do to us. Movie fighters cultivate real fighters. An adult youth with a wild mess in his brain joins the banner, gets a weapon...

Apparently, the actions of the newly appeared terrorists-sailors from Novaya Zemlya-were also spied on and prompted by the screen. Their desire to ennoble their villainy, to give it the gloss of a political act, was clearly traced. They say that they were driven to a desperate step by the desire to be close to the Kunaks in a difficult hour.

Army lawlessness is a direct consequence of unrest and shaky foundations in the country. Persona non Granata is not an army model, but a product of the crazy and thoughtless world we have plunged ourselves into.

Thank God that the hour of general mobilization has not struck. The time has come for all of us to mobilize long ago. Russia is doomed to be a country of strong-willed, conscripted people. In nature, there is no power of merchants, an empire of shopkeepers. The Russian military force is historically destined to dominate society as a bulwark of territorial integrity, as an organism connecting all segments of the population. The battle school may be the last chance to save a generation that thinks and acts in an anti-patriotic, anti-state way. The people are threatened with degeneration without a healthy army. Not to spare her the best is an age-old tradition, a proven way of self-survival. For the Armed Forces, you can not be afraid, provided that they really get the color of the nation. Without this priority of quality, the renaissance of Russia's military and, consequently, state power cannot be imagined.

How can we ensure that we have more real soldiers capable of dealing damage to the enemy, and not to ourselves and our colleagues?

- Private initiatives will not solve the problem. We need a large-scale state program that activates the military-patriotic education of citizens, " says Colonel V. Krasnogorsky, Deputy Military Commissar of Moscow.

State and non-governmental organizations, families and schools - all without exception should face the tasks of defense importance. We will raise mass sports, restore the universities of the future warrior - we will not know grief. Happy are those military units where pupils of clubs of young paratroopers, sailors, pilots, border guards, plenipotentiaries of associations such as "Feat", "Courage", "Heirs of Alexander Nevsky" go for their intended purpose...

It is necessary to return to the soldiers the authority and weight of the sovereign's people-valued and publicly patronized. To honestly serve was "persona grata" - studied at a university, held a high position, worked in a prestigious workplace. We will give the soldier and his family significant rights, benefits and advantages - the desire to cling to deferrals from service will disappear. Not with a drooping, but with a proudly raised head, the young man will put on shoulder straps: ahead is "not a dump for sewage", but a springboard to the future. Not a funeral for this future, but a launching pad for a career.

...I can't guarantee that until the material is released, there won't be another tragedy somewhere. We have enough resources and resources to hunt down a fugitive soldier-killer. We lift helicopters into the air, cordon off the area with snipers... Why don't we think about anything before? Have you and I done everything possible to stop the trouble on the distant approaches? Do we experience acute pain from shrapnel in the body of the Armed Forces?