Significant numbers of fighting-aged Russian men are trying to escape President Vladimir Putin’s partial military draft. They don’t want to join the approximately 15,000-25,000 Russians who have been killed in Ukraine since Putin’s new invasion in February. But there’s another reason for this preemptive draft-dodging.
Namely, “dedovshchina,” or the “rule of the grandfathers.” Dating back to the Soviet days of the Red Army, dedovshchina involves extreme hazing of new and drafted recruits. This concern goes far beyond the burdensome discipline, physical training, restrictions on personal liberty, and prolonged absence from loved ones that defines military service generally. Dedovshchina involves relentless bullying that has very little to do with actual military training.
An illuminating account of this unpleasantness is offered by Arkady Babchenko’s One Soldier’s War, a memoir of Russian army service during the Chechen wars. The brutality of those wars aside, Babchenko testifies to abusive corruption that flows down from the top. The generals sit, idle and corrupt. The colonels abuse the majors who in turn do the same to the captains. The captains then abuse the lieutenants who in turn target the sergeants. Then come the corporals. At the bottom of the ladder are the privates. It’s a realm in which extortion, brutal physical abuse, drunkenness, and misery are the norm.
The traditional structure of the Russian armed forces makes matters worse here. Where U.S. noncommissioned officers mentor a unit’s newest members and hold their units together, Russian noncommissioned officers are afforded few rights, respect, or powers of initiative. It becomes every rank for itself.
The Russian government has attempted a number of reform efforts to address dedovshchina. But while hazing complaints have fallen in recent years, it’s unclear whether this is a result of true progress or increased pressure against making reports/statistical games. Still, a 2018 survey found that the primary reason Russians wished to avoid military service remained their fear of hazing (44% of respondents). This figure exceeded that of those who said that their primary concern was going to war, or hardships associated with military training, or family separation.
The Kremlin is now assuring its new draftees that they will not be deployed outside of Russian borders, that they will be fairly compensated, and that their jobs will be waiting for them once their service is concluded. Understandably, however, considering the Kremlin’s perpetual love affair with deception, many Russians do not trust these commitments. Flowing in the vein of Russia’s conduct of this war, the organization of the mobilization has been chaotic. Undermining the claim that draftees won’t be sent into combat, for example, a Russian military spokesman claimed that those mobilized would predominantly include reservists with specialists as “[combat infantry], tankers, gunners, drivers, [vehicle] mechanics.” Which is to say, front-line units.
The problem for Putin and his senior commanders is how they resolve these intersecting issues. Evinced by new waivers that were announced for various professional classes on Friday, the Kremlin clearly fears agitating the middle class with the draft. This means that poorer Russians and the always targeted ethnic minorities will have to pick up the slack. It’s already happening. As Kommersant reports, a military commissariat in the Ural federal district has banned reservists even from leaving their district or city. And as Katie Bo Lillis reports, Russian command and control and battlefield morale are already plummeting. With many Russian units already descending into ill discipline, Putin’s ability to conduct significant combined arms operations is likely now in terminal decline.
This mobilization, then, isn’t likely to help Putin’s war effort in any significant way. And while Putin’s rule remains stable for the moment, the mobilization will not do any favors for his long-term domestic stature.
