#8
The Russia Journal
October 4-10, 2002
Editorial
For a fitter army

Throughout the annals of history, the Russian military has generally commanded great respect. Legions of would-be conquerors, from the Teutonic Knights thwarted by Alexander Nevsky to the armies of Napoleon and Hitler, discovered this the hard way. And, while the Soviet Union’s economic prowess was often grievously exaggerated by propaganda, its status as a great military power was unquestioned.

However, the economic and social chaos of the post-Soviet era have been hard on the Armed Forces. Lack of funding has taken a toll on the once-proud military, and the Army that once paraded its armed might through Red Square with pomp and circumstance now has a hard time maintaining its aging equipment and adequately feeding its poorly-trained conscripts.

A short time ago, when speaking with liberal Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy, Union of Right Forces head Boris Nemtsov said that on a recent trip to a military unit, none of the men he spoke with were able to do more than six pull-ups. Nemtsov himself managed to make it to 20.

One may get the impression that Nemtsov was just using the opportunity to show off his athletic prowess. But his point is well-taken: The quality of new recruits is generally sub-par. Government statistics show that only 11 percent of men of conscriptable age are actually called to serve, and those that do get called – with distressing frequency – are poorly educated with a high incidence of criminal records and/or psychological problems, and physically unfit or even malnourished. The poverty and low professionalism of the run-of-the-mill soldiery are probably also significant factors in the banditry practiced by many Russian military personnel in Chechnya.

Everyone knows – everyone, that is, but a caste of officers who seem to view the Armed Forces as a means of self-aggrandizement rather than an instrument for defending the country – that the military needs to be reformed. The military is still designed to function within the bloated Soviet structure that existed over a decade ago. But the world that military was designed to deal with – a Cold War with pitched battles between belligerent superpowers or their proxies – has faded from the scene. The Army simply does not have enough money now to act as if this were not the case.

Yet it has been years since reforms were announced, and little in the way of real progress has been made. What has been accomplished seems to be limited to solemn Victory Day rhetoric about the glory of the Defenders of the Fatherland, and hysterical pronouncements about the utter decay of the Armed Forces.

Admittedly, an effective reform of the military, turning it from an underfunded anachronism relying on sheer size to an efficient organization capable of tackling the real problems facing Russia, is a daunting task. Organizational inertia, ideological resistance, and an interest in preserving the status quo, alongside the logistical scale of the task, are enormous obstacles.

Russia is a huge country, with armed conflict inside its own borders, as well as shared borders which are unstable or show potential for becoming so. Reform of the military is not an abstract proposition to be decided by officials who concoct models of reform and turn them this way and that before deciding whether to implement them. Russia is not Sweden – it faces very real military threats to its territorial integrity and stability, unlike the NATO countries who have other problems with military logistics and restructuring. Military reform in Russia is a serious affair, and one that needs to be taken care of as quickly as possible.

Reform was announced long ago. Waiting for it to materialize has become tiresome. One hopes that Russia does not have to experience other Chechnyas before the urgency of the matter at last hits home.

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