#2
Moscow Times
January 31, 2002
Battle for Choice Heats Up
By Pavel Felgenhauer

After many years of fruitless discussions, lawmakers seem to be ready to approve a law on alternative service in accordance with the country's Constitution that permits draft-age youth the option of choosing a civilian alternative to military service.

There are three bills on alternative military service that have been prepared, and this week the government discussed a Defense Ministry draft. The government returned the Defense Ministry proposal for redrafting, so a legal alternative to military service seems to be a possibility once again.

The Defense Ministry has opposed alternative military service for almost a decade and has been the main reason for the delay in making it an option. Generals believe that alternative national service is the same as legal draft dodging. The military has for years opposed the passage of such a bill, and it is now trying as a last resort to ensure that any alternative community service will exist mainly on paper.

The Defense Ministry proposed a three- to four-year term of service for alternative draftees and as well as envisioning sending some portion of them to work in regions where they are not resident. The Defense Ministry also demands that those seeking alternative status should provide sufficient proof -- including the testimony of witnesses -- to demonstrate that they are unable to perform military service for reasons of health, religious conviction or special family circumstances.

The generals clearly hope that a highly unattractive alternative service -- in conditions not dissimilar to those of prison inmates -- will be unpopular with draftees. The demand that draftees first prove to the military authorities that they are eligible to be granted an exemption means in effect that the Defense Ministry can annually set a quota on alternative service positions.

At a meeting of the government this week, General Anatoly Kvashnin, the first deputy defense minister, was reported as saying that he expects only some 2,000 alternative service applications a year. If there are more the military could reject them on the grounds that draftees did not manage to prove their pacifist convictions beyond reasonable doubt.

The Defense Ministry drafts some 400,000 individuals per year for a two-year term of service. Of the 800,000 conscripts in regular service today, some 600,000 serve with Defense Ministry forces, while the rest are in the Interior Ministry, work as border guards or with other armies.

Compulsory military service is highly unpopular in Russia. Living conditions in the barracks are appalling; thousands of conscripts each year die of accidents, commit suicide or are killed as a result of hazing. Conscripted soldiers are sent to fight in Chechnya, and each year thousands are killed or wounded in action.

Since the beginning of the second Chechen war in 1999, draft dodging has become extremely widespread. In 2000, the police began to carry out special operations together with the military to round up dodgers and send them to barracks. Liberal State Duma deputies believe that a reasonable alternative-service bill could help up to 50 percent of potential draftees avoid the military, providing much needed manpower to run-down hospitals and other social services.

But for the military this would be a manpower catastrophe. Putin has announced plans to make the army a fully voluntary force by 2010, with conscripts replaced by professional soldiers. The military does not oppose this plan openly but is still deeply unhappy. Conscripts are not only cheaper, but they are also easier to discipline than the bums and social outcasts that the military manages to gather as volunteers.

There are also strategic considerations that fuel the military opposition to reform.

If the drafting system collapses and the army becomes fully voluntary, the military will no longer have a large reserve force and will not be able to mobilize a multimillion-man army. Most generals believe this would be a full and final departure from Soviet military traditions, an acknowledgment of second tier status vis-a-vis the United States.

The essence of the argument on alternative service is not money or manpower recruitment schemes per se. It is the strategic future of Russia. Putin will have to make a decision that could reveal his true long-term strategic goals: If the Soviet draft system survives, the Soviet militaristic past will live on, effectively hampering all attempts to reform and Westernize Russia.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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