Hazing in Chechnya and other hot spots led to the destruction of a colleague, either he was a spirit, or a grandfather, it was both. There were cases of crossbows, people shooting themselves in the leg, or other organs. Many escaped and were captured by the Chechens, many fell into tripwires and mines. Some endure bullying, but some cannot stand it and murder or suicide occurs. The soldiers were waiting for the battle to quietly kill the offender. But in most cases, the old soldiers did not try to offend the spirits (young soldiers), because they knew what the consequences could be. After the battles, the soldiers became brothers.
Case back in the USSR:
An incident was told, it was during the USSR, a warrant officer alone went on guard duty as a commander, with him Caucasians, Asians, demobilizers cried when they went on guard, he forced them to wash the floors with their hands, and if they didn’t understand, he hit them in the face, the warrant officer was a boxer, he beat them they did somersaults in the air, and another ensign took over, lay down on the trestle bed and slept for 24 hours, then these black rats mocked the Russian soldiers and had a blast
Officer's story:
I, too, had such a ghoul, a spiritual sergeant, he hit him in the forehead with a knife, the scream was that the whole battalion woke up. The battalion commander was really a good guy, he didn’t let things go and I was simply transferred to another unit. The guy can be understood, he had no time for strategy, he simply acted with what he had at hand. I’m very sorry for the boy’s ruined life, and I feel sorry for the sergeant’s grief purely as a human being, especially for the parents.
Soldier's story:
In our brigade, one of us also died, the guy knocked him down right on the bunk. They gave me 9 years.
Here is the story of the young lieutenant:
There was one incident after which hazing in my unit stopped. I came as a lieutenant after college, and on the very first evening I watched a picture of three careless “old men” hammering away at the “yellow mouth” squad. In the morning an order was received to escort the column to Shatoy. I put these three eagles on the lead patrol, as “the most experienced...” After the signal that a landmine had been detected, the column stood up, I set up a cordon according to all the rules, and to these three I said, “Now pray that there is no crunch in the bushes.” not a single branch or something seemed to someone, because the “young people” can discharge the entire BC in the bushes, and at this moment they are unlikely to remember you.” After defusing the landmine, my “old men” nervously smoked on the side of the road and dried their pants. After that, in my platoon no one even sent a friendly glance to each other... And when someone left home, they saw him off with tears, alive and well... We lived as one family. and outside the formation there was no difference, private, sergeant, warrant officer or officer.
Here is the soldier's story:
Hazing and bullying are two different things!!! in 1999 there was a crossbow, alas, the guy is gone, the grandfathers are alive and well now (no one has been punished) only all the bullshit was not due to an unzipped fly, as stated in the video (there are doubts about homo-motivation) we just didn’t have food, we it was there, he came to us, ate as much as he wanted, then brought food to them, but alas, it was not possible to feed everyone (and the task remained, to bring snacks), the guy could not stand it.
Here is a video about the consequences of hazing in Chechnya:
Full video here in part 2:
Https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLouHNaQfzJaB1VWb-RiNTRcU0ku3I0irG
This is Afghanistan 1988.
56th Guards Separate Air Assault Brigade (Kamyshin) At the end of 1989, the brigade was reorganized into a separate airborne assault brigade (airborne brigade). The brigade passed through “hot spots”: Afghanistan (12.1979-07.1988), Baku (12-19.01.1990 - 02.1990), Sumgait, Nakhichevan, Meghri, Julfa, Osh, Fergana, Uzgen (06.06.1990), Chechnya (12.94-10.96, Grozny, Pervomaisky, Argun and since 09.1999).
On January 15, 1990, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, after a detailed study of the situation, adopted a decision “On declaring a state of emergency in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and some other areas.” In accordance with it, the Airborne Forces began an operation carried out in two stages. At the first stage, from January 12 to 19, units of the 106th and 76th airborne divisions, the 56th and 38th airborne brigades and the 217th parachute regiment landed at airfields near Baku (for more details, see . article Black January), and in Yerevan - the 98th Guards Airborne Division. The 39th separate air assault brigade entered...
On December 9, 1994, Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 2166 “On measures to suppress the activities of armed formations on the territory of the Chechen Republic and in the zone of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict” followed. It was envisaged that the actions of military groups, under the cover of front-line and army aviation, would advance in three directions towards Grozny and blockade it. The plan of the operation envisaged an attack by assault detachments from the northern, western and eastern directions. Having entered the city, the troops, in cooperation with the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSK, were supposed to seize the presidential palace, government buildings, television, radio, Train Station, other important objects in the city center and block the central part of Grozny.
Group "North" included the 131st Motorized Rifle Brigade, 81st Motorized Rifle Regiment and 276th Motorized Rifle Regiment. The combined detachment of the 131st Omsbr under the command of Colonel I. Savin consisted of 1,469 personnel, 42 infantry fighting vehicles, 20 tanks and 16 artillery pieces. The brigade was located - 1st MSB on the southern slopes of the Tersky Kh...
Based on the Directive of the Minister of Defense Russian Federation No. 314/12/0198 of March 17, 1995 and at my personal request, to carry out the tasks of restoring constitutional order and disarmament of illegal gangs on the territory of the Chechen Republic, on the basis of the 167th motorized rifle brigade and the 723rd motorized rifle regiment, the 205th separate motorized rifle brigade (military unit 74814) located in the city of Grozny, Chechen Republic. May 2, 1995 - Brigade Day. The basis of the units and divisions of the brigade were battalions and companies: 167th separate motorized rifle brigade of the Red Banner Ural Military District (military unit 29709, Chebarkul Chelyabinsk region); partly of the 131st separate motorized rifle Krasnodar Red Banner Order of Kutuzov and Red Star of the Kuban Cossack Brigade (Maykop) of the Red Banner North Caucasus Military District; 723rd Guards Motorized Rifle Order of the Red Banner Suvorov Regiment (military unit 89539, Tchaikovsky) 16th Guard…
War always smells the same - diesel fuel, dust and a little melancholy. This smell begins already in Mozdok. The first seconds when you get off the plane, you stand dumbfounded, only your nostrils flare like a horse’s, absorbing the steppe... The last time I was here was in 2000. It was under this poplar tree, where the special forces are now sleeping, that I was waiting for a fair flight to Moscow. And in that stoker, behind the highway, they sold local bottled vodka, with an incredible amount of fusel. It seems that everything has remained the same since then.
And the smell is still the same. What it was like two, three, and seven years ago.
Diesel fuel, dust and melancholy...
I first found myself on this field seven years ago, as a conscript soldier. We were then brought in a train from the Urals - one and a half thousand soldiers. They didn’t manage to accommodate the carriages, and they packed us in as hard as they could, cramming us into thirteen people per compartment, with overcoats and duffel bags. We were hungry on the train. The bread was transported in a separate carriage, and there was simply no time to distribute it at short stops, when we let ambulances pass on sidings, away from human eyes. If we succeeded, we exchanged the soldiers’ boots given to us for food.
In Mozdok we were shaken out of the carriages, and the senior crew chief, a curly-haired hysterical major, whose squeal resembled a village woman about to give birth, lined us up in a column of five and led us to take off. As we passed the last carriage, bags of moldy bread were thrown out of it. Those who had time managed to grab the loaf.
When recruiting us into the team, the curly-haired major swore that no one would end up in Chechnya, everyone would remain to serve in Ossetia. He shouted something about the principle of voluntary service in hot spots. He called us one by one and asked: “Do you want to serve in the Caucasus? Go, what are you doing... It’s warm there, there are apples.” I answered “yes,” and Andryukha Kiselev from Yaroslavl, who was standing next to me, sent him to hell with the entire Caucasus to boot. Kisel and I traveled to Mozdok in the same compartment.
Everything here was the same then as it is now. Exactly, nothing has changed. The same tents, the same tower, the same water fountain. Only there were more people then, much more. There was constant movement. Some flew in, some flew away, the wounded were waiting for a passing flight, the soldiers were stealing humanitarian aid... Every ten minutes, attack aircraft packed to capacity left for Chechnya and returned empty. The helicopters were heating up their engines, the hot air was driving dust along the takeoff, and it was scary.
Kisel and I lay on the grass and waited to see what would happen to us next. Kisel dictated to me the chords of “The Old Hotel” by Aguzarova, and I wrote them down in a notebook cut out of a thick notebook. I've always liked this song. And then me and seven other people were separated from the rest and taken in the Ural to the 429th, named after the Kuban Cossacks, Orders of Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky, motorized rifle regiment, located right there, half a kilometer from the takeoff. The major was lying. Out of one and a half thousand people in Ossetia, only eight of us remained to serve. The rest were sent straight to Chechnya. After the war, through third parties, I learned that Kisel had died.
In the regiment we were beaten ungodly. It couldn’t be called hazing, it was complete chaos. During the raising of the flag, soldiers with broken jaws flew out of the windows onto the parade ground and, to the sounds of the anthem, fell right at the feet of the regiment commander.
Everyone beat me, from a private to a lieutenant colonel and chief of staff. The lieutenant colonel's name was Pilipchuk, or simply Chuck. He was a continuation of the hysterical major, only bigger, more masculine, and his fists were the size of a loaf of bread. And he never screamed, he only beat. Everyone - young, demobilized, ensigns, captains, majors. Indiscriminately. He pinned his big belly in the corner and started using his hands, saying: “You bitches, you don’t know how to drink.”
Chuck himself knew how to drink. One day, the deputy army commander, General Shamanov, arrived at the regiment. Check discipline. Shamanov approached the headquarters, put his foot on the first step and opened the door. The next second, a body fell straight onto him, burning into firewood. It was Chuck.
Chuck still doesn't know he was shot. And I know: I was standing next to you then. It was night, the reconnaissance platoon was drinking vodka in the barracks. They were disturbed by the lantern on the parade ground: the bright light through the windows hit their eyes. One of the reconnaissance officers took a machine gun with a silencer, walked up to the window and aimed at the lantern. I stood near the window, smoking. And Chuck was walking along the parade ground... Thank God, both were drunk - one didn’t get hit, the other didn’t notice anything. The bullet struck the asphalt and went into the sky. Chuck disappeared into the headquarters, the scout turned off the lantern and went to finish his vodka. And I threw out the bull and began to wash the corridor - I was an orderly.
The young fled in hundreds, went into the steppe barefoot, out of bed, unable to endure the nightly abuse any longer. Vacations were banned: no one returned. In our company of fifty people, ten were available according to the list. Ten more were in Chechnya. The remaining thirty are in Sochi. SOCH - unauthorized abandonment of a unit. Even the lieutenant, the platoon commander, who was called up for two years after college, escaped.
They got money to escape as best they could. We went to Mozdok and robbed cars. They removed the fuel pumps from the infantry fighting vehicles and brought them to the farmers - their KamAZ trucks had the same ones. Cartridges were taken out in bags and sold to locals, grenade launchers were exchanged for heroin.
A month later, my company was gone: six more escaped, and the four of us who didn’t make it in time were taken to Chechnya.
On the twelfth of August ninety-six, I, as part of the combined battalion of our regiment, was waiting to be sent to Grozny. August ninety-six... It was hell. The militants occupied the city and cut out checkpoints in the encirclement. Losses numbered in the hundreds. Death walked over the sultry city as he pleased, and no one could say a word to her. Ninety-six people scraped together the bottom of the regiment - we were formed into a battalion and thrown into the city. We were sitting on our duffel bags and waiting for the delivery, when a postman ran out of the headquarters and rushed towards us, holding something in his hand raised above his head. From the headquarters to the takeoff, about five hundred meters, we sat and watched him run and shout something. And everyone thought - to whom? It turned out - to me. “Babchenko... Na... Your father died...” - and he thrust a telegram into my hands. And then the board was brought forward, and the battalion began to load. The soldiers walked past me, patted me on the shoulder and said: “Lucky.” Instead of Grozny, I went to Moscow for the funeral.
My father gave me life twice. If he had died in twenty minutes, I would have died in half an hour: in Khankala, the helicopter was shot during landing. The battalion returned a month later. Of the ninety-six people, forty-two remained.
This is how the war was then.
It was all here, on this field.
I arrived in Khankala already in the Millennium. Also a soldier, but only under a contract. It was raining, and we slept by the fires under the railway embankment, sheltered from the wind by the doors taken off their hinges. They didn’t rise to their full height, they didn’t stick out from behind the embankment: they were shooting at a sniper from Grozny.
And then the sun appeared, and the sniper killed Mukhtarov. Unlike all of us, frivolous ones, Mukha never took off his bulletproof vest. I believed that he would save me, if anything happened. Didn't save. The bullet hit him from the side and went right through. “I bandaged him,” Slavka later said. “There was such a small hole on the left side. And I started bandaging him on the right, but there was nothing there, my arm had already fallen through...” The fly lived for some time. But while they were looking for smoke bombs, while they pulled him out from under the fire, while they bandaged him, he died.
That day, taking advantage of excellent visibility, a sniper killed two of us and wounded six more people. We hated the sun.
These two wars convinced me of the inviolability of Chechnya. No matter what happens in the world, no matter what kind of humanism is born, it will always be the same here.
There will always be war here.
Now I'm a journalist, and here I am again. And I don’t recognize Chechnya.
Now everything is different here. Khankala has grown to incredible sizes. This is no longer a base, it is a city with a population of several thousand (if not tens of thousands) people. There are countless parts, each separated by its own fence; if you’re not used to it, you can get lost. Canteens, clubs, toilets, and baths were built. Concrete slabs are laid in neat, even paths, everything is swept, sprinkled with sand, posters are hung here and there, and portraits of the president are found at almost every step.
Silence, like on a collective farm. The soldiers here walk without weapons, at full height, without crouching. We've lost the habit. Or maybe they never heard a shot. There is no tension or fear in the eyes. They are probably not lousy at all and not hungry...
The rear has long been deep here.
In general, Chechnya is very surprising. The republic was filled with people, the broken clay huts were replaced by new brick cottages, richly built, three floors high. Not only armored personnel carriers, but also Zhiguli cars now drive on the roads, and regular buses stop near the cafe. In the evenings, Starye Atagi, Bamut and Samashki glow no worse than Beskudniki.
The most striking thing is Severny Airport. The 46th brigade of internal troops is stationed here. A cozy little world surrounded by a concrete fence from the war. The army as it should be. Ideal. The order is amazing. Straight paved paths, green grass, white curbs. The new one-story barracks are lined up, the blocky Western-style mess hall gleaming with corrugated iron. Very similar to American military bases as they are shown in the movies.
There is a shooting range on the airfield field. In accordance with the regulations, red flags are raised during shooting: do not enter, it is dangerous. When they are not shooting, white flags flutter in the wind: go, now you can.
The new shooting range was built in order to learn how to destroy the old city, which is two steps away.
In the evenings, officers walk along the paths under the light of lanterns. Seriously, there are streetlights here. And there is an officers' dormitory. Quite a few officers come here to serve with their wives. “Darling, I’m going to work, please give me the bayonet.” And in the evening: “Darling, did you have a good day today?” - “Yes, dear, good. I killed two.” Some already have children. They grow here, in Grozny.
Next to the officers' mess is a hotel for high-ranking guests. Double-glazed window, hot water, shower. Television - five channels... Hotel in Grozny! I can't wrap my head around it.
And the Minute is just a stone's throw away. And to the cruciform hospital, where Russian lives are laid to rest, as on the Kulikovo field, too: here it is, behind the fence.
The feeling of duality is now the strongest feeling in Chechnya. It seems to be peace, but it seems not. The war is somewhere nearby: in Starye Atagi, where four FSB men were killed, in Grozny, where land mines are constantly exploding, or in Urus-Martan, where she sits with a machine gun in ambushes - there is a war, it is somewhere nearby, somewhere there, but not here... It's quiet here. They shoot here only when the red flag is raised.
The army in Chechnya is now in a stalemate. There are no big gangs left for a long time. No front, no partisan detachments, no commanders.
Basayev and Khattab have not been on air for three months,” says the commander of the explosive group in Chechnya, Lieutenant General Abrashin. - Perhaps they are no longer in Chechnya. It is not necessary that they are in Georgia. In Ingushetia, we have our own Dzherak Gorge, which is unafraid...
By and large, there is no more war in the republic. At least in her usual understanding. There's just crazy crime in Chechnya. And gangs are organized on the principle of punks. A militant who has fought a war, an “authority,” gathers around himself a gang, usually young people, three to five people. This is his gang. With her he goes to showdowns and earns money. He is fighting not only with the feds. If there is a paid order, the gang goes to place a landmine. No - he goes to rob local residents or fight with a neighboring gang for oil. Money is everything.
At the same time, stabbing a “cop” to death is a matter of honor for them. Just casually.
My husband worked in the riot police,” says Khava, a trader. - Over the summer, 39 people in their detachment died. They are killed right on the street, shot in the back of the head. A week ago a neighbor was killed, and yesterday his son. Both worked in the police...
The army cannot fight crime: catching bandits is not the prerogative of a regiment or division. Imagine this situation: Moscow is tired of theft and robbery in the gateways. And so a regiment is stationed on Red Square to maintain order. With tanks anti-aircraft installations and snipers. During the day, the military lines the Kremlin paving stones with smooth sandy paths and installs portraits of the president. And at night they lock themselves in their camp, shoot at any sound and never go beyond the checkpoint. Will this stop the robbery in Tushino? And if the Tushino district police officer and prefect are also completely on the side of the local “authority”, Shamil the Chechen, and in the last shootout they were with him against the cops?..
But it is also impossible to withdraw troops: in this case, everything that happened after Khasavyurt will be repeated.
We now live only in mop-up operations,” says special forces commander Fidel. - If we clean the village constantly, it’s relatively calm there. For a month or two there have been no clean-ups - that’s it, it’s better not to interfere. Did you want to go to Grozny? My advice to you: don't. It hasn't been cleaned for two months now. For example, I don’t go, I’m afraid. And don’t meddle in Shali: the village is completely shabby...
On March 1, 2000, the sixth company of the Pskov Airborne Division died in the Argun Gorge. How the “six” died is a separate matter. I was then in the gorge, twenty kilometers from them. My battalion was stationed near Shatoi. At night we heard their fight, heard them die. We could not help them: there was no order to move forward, although we were waiting for this order, we were ready. Twenty kilometers is three minutes on a turntable. On an armored personnel carrier - three to five hours. In five hours we could be there. But there was no order.
The battle went on for more than a day. During this time, help could be transferred from Cuba. Someone turned them in, the paratroopers.
At dusk we land in Kurchaloy. It is considered to be one of the most dangerous areas, although it is flat. However, here too the war slowed down greatly. The last sabotage took place in these places two and a half months ago. On December 23, an infantry fighting vehicle of the 33rd St. Petersburg brigade was blown up by a landmine. The shell was placed directly on the road surface and exploded under the car itself.
Now it’s tolerable,” says the acting director. brigade commander Colonel Mikhail Pedora. - There have been no shellings for a long time. And land mines are not planted so often anymore: engineering reconnaissance cleans the roads every morning. But we still rent about three a month. As a rule, in the morning: put at night. Who? And the devil knows. Locals, probably...
A dead "beha", covered with a tarpaulin, stands on the edge of the helipad. The turret is torn off, the bottom is turned inside the hull like a rose. Sharp strips of torn metal bend into the sky exactly in the place where the operator-gunner's legs were.
Next to her stands another one, also dead, burned down a week earlier. Also covered with a tarpaulin. Very similar to corpses. At the height of the fighting, they were also stacked at the edge of the takeoff and covered with a tarpaulin. Only there were dozens of times more of them.
At the brigade checkpoint before the exit there are two posters: “Soldier! Don’t talk to strangers, it’s dangerous!” - and “Soldier! Don’t pick up anything from the ground, it’s dangerous!”
It happens that explosives are hidden very skillfully,” says Pedora. - A fighter is walking down the street and looks to see a box lying around or a child’s ball. He brushes her foot - and there is a light-sensitive sensor. And there is no half-stop. Experts are already establishing such surprises...
In general, no one knows how to come up with slogans and posters better than the military. In Khankala, fighters leaving for cleansing operations are greeted with a fatherly farewell by a poster “Bon voyage!”
I drive and drive around Chechnya... No, it’s not the same. Perhaps the war really is ending. Probably my soldier's instinct for dark places deceived me. Maybe it’s really time to open a sanatorium here? There are also unique sulfur springs here - almost all the diseases of the world can be cured in the geysers of lowland Chechnya. As a soldier, I was cured in Grozny from ulcers that spread across my skin from dirt, cold and nerves. Only then could one get to the source only by crawling. And then they shot. And now car washes have been built on the geysers; locals run their own small businesses using the free hot water.
Probably, there really will be peace soon.
At the headquarters of the 33rd brigade there is a post of Private Roman Lenudkin from St. Petersburg. Lenudkin is not a sniper, not a machine gunner, and not a driver. Lenudkin is a computer scientist. His Pentium - "weaving" is in a "butterfly" - a special headquarters vehicle - and is powered by a gas generator.
When we take off, I lean against the window glass. The feeling of duality takes over again. There, in Chechnya at night, there is now a dead infantry fighting vehicle. The blood that had flowed from the gunner's severed legs had not yet been washed off the armor. And nearby, literally a hundred meters away, in the headquarters “butterfly” sits the programmer Lenudkin and hammers on the keys of his computer.
The helicopter hovers over a small area on a flat bald hill. For a second or two the car stays in the thin air, then one and a half tons of humanitarian aid take over the three thousand horsepower engine. The fuselage begins to shake violently, the pistons in the cylinders work with noticeable tension. Almost without slowing down, the car hits the ground heavily. Something is cracking in the landing gear, a shock wave is running through the blades - they are about to fall off.
We sat down, - the pilot opened the door and put up the ladder. - Did you see it? And you ask why they fall... There are few serviceable cars, each one is filled to capacity. The flight weight is maximum, the engine constantly operates at maximum speed. There is no longer enough strength to hover: the heavy car cannot stay in the air. We do it like this every time: if we don’t sit down, we fall. What can I say, the cars are worn out to the limit. We do thirty flights a day...
In Grozny I go to see intelligence officers I know from previous business trips. The reconnaissance battalion lives separately from everyone else, in a tent camp. Compared to Khankala, these are khrushchevs. There is no time to make money: intelligence, special forces and the FSB are overwhelmed with work. But still, life here is slowly getting better: refrigerators, TVs, tables and chairs have appeared.
The scouts are sitting, drinking vodka. For the first few minutes we are happy to meet you. But everyone is waiting for me to ask. And I ask: “Well, how is it here?..” And now the glances become heavier, the eyes are filled with hatred, pain and enduring depression. In a minute they already hate everything, including me. With every word they plunge deeper into madness, the speech turns into a feverish patter: you write, correspondent, write...
Tell me, why don’t you write anything about losses? In our battalion alone there are already 7 killed and 16 wounded!
The war continues - we are not getting out of the raids. We have now spent 22 days in the mountains. Well, we just arrived. We rest here for the night - and tomorrow we go back to the mountains for twenty days...
And they don’t pay a damn thing here! Look, 22 days multiplied by 300 people equals six hundred and sixty man-days. This is only for this raid. In reality, a brigade receives three thousand combat days per month. And the headquarters has its own limit: close a maximum of seven hundred. I went to find out...
The hardest thing will be returning home. What should I do there, in the division? Write outlines?.. Nobody needs us there, you understand! Oh, I don’t care: just finish your service, get an apartment and to hell with everything!..
And now I recognize myself in them. And again the field, the same field appears before my eyes. And somewhere outside the city, a lonely SAU truck is hammering so familiarly into the mountains. And the topics of conversation did not change one word: hunger, cold and death. Yes, NOTHING has changed here! I was not deceived.
The whirlpool of carnage will be covered with a thin crust of ostentatious ice of the world. The President is depicted on it from different angles, and smooth concrete paths are laid for ease of walking. The ice is still holding, but it could crack at any moment.
And under the ice, for the second year in a row, reconnaissance, distraught from raids and blood, is drinking itself to death. And he pokes at the edge, and wants to break the ice and get out of here, take his wives, children and go to hell, start life anew, without war, without killing strangers and without burying his own. And he can’t. It is firmly attached to Chechnya.
And the hazing in this tent labyrinth is simply terry: no one can keep track of what is happening in the tarpaulin nooks and crannies. Yes, no one is watching. For what? They will all die anyway. And the cartridges are also sent in bags to Grozny, and the constant gnashing of teeth is filled with decalitres of vodka. And funerals from here also fly all over Russia, and the hospital is just as regularly supplied with torn human meat. And fear and hatred still rule this land.
And it still smells like diesel fuel and dust.
And here I am again in Mozdok, again standing on this field.
Seven years. Almost a third of my life, a little less. A person spends a third of his life sleeping. And I'm at war.
And nothing has changed on this takeoff in seven years. And nothing will change. Another seven years will pass, and another seven, and the same tents will stand here, in this very place, all the same tents, and people will still crowd around the water fountain, and the screws of the turntables will spin without stopping.
I close my eyes and feel like an ant. There are hundreds of thousands of us standing on this field. Hundreds of thousands of lives, so different and so similar, pass before my eyes. We were here, lived and died, and our funerals flew to all corners of Russia. I am one with them all. And we are all one with this field. In every city where the funeral came, a part of me died. In each pair of eyes, bottomless young eyes scorched by the war, a piece of this field remained.
Sometimes I catch those eyes and come over. Infrequently. In summer. When a truck drives along a stuffy street and the smell of diesel fuel mixes with the dust. And it will become a little sad.
“Brother, let me light a cigarette... Where did you fight?..”
About the Russian army
As we proceed, I would like to immediately note the situation of conscripts in those conditions.
In my opinion, it was much easier for them to be among the mass of contract soldiers in Chechnya than among the mass of conscripts in Russia. Since they were contract soldiers, they were already quite old people, 25-35 years old, who did not need acts of self-affirmation. For the most part, they treated the conscripts like a father, loading them with everyday chores: putting things in order in the tents, theirs and the officers’, going for food, washing the dishes. Since young people need to get accustomed to work, they were naturally included in the outfits as often as possible. But I didn’t notice or hear about any kind of mass bullying of contract soldiers against conscripts in the brigade.
Although... I remember. In October, conscript S. shot himself in the 3rd battalion. Without drawing up a protocol for examining the scene of the incident, they rushed to take the body to the forensic examination in Severny. And a rumor spread that the poor guy had been shot. To dispel suspicions, I had to go to Grozny in a single armored personnel carrier, without a column, to examine the corpse in the morgue. I remember a thin, helpless body, naked to the waist, lying quietly on a stretcher... I admit that in that case the boy was overloaded; They plugged all the holes in them and seemed to even beat them. But on record, all his colleagues spoke of the absence of visible external reasons for suicide. For greater objectivity, it should be noted that our brigade was considered the most disciplined, in comparison with other units of the Russian Defense Ministry stationed in Chechnya. We were almost an exemplary unit in the group.
They told me about another case. I don’t remember in which unit, in the morning, they found a dead conscript with a broken neck. The death was reported as an accident - they say the soldier fell from the second tier of the bed in his sleep. In fact, it was pure murder. A few days before, deceased conscript I got into an argument with a drunken contractor and punched the latter in the face. The contractor harbored a grudge. Choosing the moment, at night he crept up to the sleeping man and broke his neck.
Since I touched on the topic of relationships between soldiers in the army, I would like to develop it. Since I had the opportunity to serve in both the old - Soviet and new - Russian armies, I will take the liberty of analyzing the causes of the most vile and destructive phenomenon - hazing. Hazing is the main reason why today’s young people of military age are trying with all possible forces and means to avoid the fate of ending up in the army.
In 2002, I happened to spend several months in the Ryazan region, in an area where the population eked out a miserable existence, surviving by making sauerkraut and selling it wholesale to resellers in Moscow markets. To do this, people took the train at six o’clock in the evening, traveled three hours to Moscow, spent the night there near the fires (in winter and summer), handed over the goods in the morning and returned home. And so on all year.
Well, what kind of money can you earn from such trading? People were teetering on the brink of poverty. And yet, they managed to save money to buy medical certificates for their sons about their unfitness for life. military service. At that time, in those parts this pleasure cost 1000 US dollars.
If there were a normal working environment in the army, and if the life, health and human dignity of soldiers were treated with respect, their parents would under no circumstances dissuade them from serving. Because young people, due to the inability to engage in creative work, essentially rotted alive - they drank themselves to death en masse. They started to be coded and treated for alcoholism at the age of 18!!!...
I remember in the training battalion, when I was just starting to serve in military service in 1984, in one of the classes the company political officer said that hazing appeared in Soviet army either from '62 or '65. The time has come to put on boots and overcoats for those who were born 20 years ago, that is, young people born in 1941-45. But for well-known reasons, a demographic hole was formed. And then people who had previously been convicted began to be drafted into the army. It was they who infected the previously healthy army body with cancer. Those who served in the SA until the 60s, all as one, said that there was no bullying of the old-timers against the young.
I had a chance to talk to guys who were imprisoned in the 80s - 2000s. From their stories, I made a paradoxical conclusion that today, the relationships between prisoners in camps and prisons are many times more humane than between soldiers in the army. Those who served time unanimously claim that in the penitentiary system the main evil is generated by the employees of this system in relation to their charges; the inmates, for the most part, communicate with each other quite correctly - “according to concepts” (which, unlike the Constitution and laws, do not change so often). If a person is “lowered”, then this happens within the framework of established procedures and certain rules. This creates an absurd situation in which it is safer for young people to serve time in the zone than to serve in the Russian army.
An attentive reader has probably noticed a certain absurdity: if the army was infected with hazing by former prisoners, then why is there chaos in the army, but there is order in the zones? The reason is due to age. Only young people serve in the army, in need of acts of self-affirmation, and in the zones there are people of various age categories who have gone through the stage of personality formation.
In my opinion, hazing could be eradicated by making some organizational changes to the army structure. It will soon be 20 years, as in the means mass media started talking about the need to reform the Russian army. The proposals to increase wages and eliminate barracks living conditions are correct. It seems that wages have already become the same as those of workers in industry, and some timid progress is planned with regard to housing. But if today they offered me to serve under a contract, even with a good salary and a separate living space, I would refuse.
The reason is that in the army there is no separation between combat training and household functions. These two types of activities must be clearly and unambiguously distinguished. The same principle of service should apply in the army as in the police. After all, when a policeman comes to work, he does not sweep the area near his station, does not scrub toilets and offices, does not serve in the canteen, and does not wash the dishes. He receives a weapon and goes to perform functions of protecting public order on a strictly certain time. The duty is over - the policeman is resting for his allotted time. There are no marching drills, no drill reviews and other nonsense.
The army has a fundamentally different system. From morning until lunch, a serviceman can engage in combat training, and after lunch, take up his daily duty in the canteen - peeling potatoes, washing dishes, or go on duty for the company - scrub floors for a day and stand like an idol on the bedside table. Having been on duty for a day and a half, the serviceman has only one night to rest. And after this, this cycle can be repeated until demobilization. I spent most of my military service in this mode.
To better understand the problem, let’s imagine a civilian plant, the production process of which is built on an army model. The following funny picture emerges: I was hired at a factory, let’s say as a mechanic. My main job is to turn nuts for eight hours. If, after working for 4 hours, I throw down the tool and start washing the floors in the workshop, and stay overnight to guard the territory of the plant, what kind of products will this long-suffering enterprise ultimately produce?
The main reform of the army should consist precisely in the fact that economic and everyday functions would be performed by specialized units or civilian citizens. The soldier is obliged to engage only in combat training. The main point of hazing is precisely to shift all the housekeeping work onto the young people. But in peaceful life, the army actually does only this - it serves itself, there is no time left for the rest.
When I first arrived in the brigade, the units still included contract soldiers who took part in the winter-spring combat offensive operations. As soon as active hostilities ceased after the terrorist attack in Budennovsk, processes of decomposition characteristic of peacetime began in the camp: formations, drill reviews; morning, afternoon, evening routines, household outfits, etc. In less than two months, all the veterans deserted from such service. It was just time for them to go on vacation. They did not return back - they terminated the contracts.
A tiny episode in the middle of the summer of 1995 from the life of the 166th motorized rifle brigade illustrates how dramatically the army changes when it stops fighting. Once I had the opportunity to read material collected to impose disciplinary punishment on a lieutenant. They planned to consider him at the officer's court of honor. The essence of this poor guy’s offense was that he caught the eye of brigade commander M and the latter asked him a stern question - why he wears distinctive emblems airborne troops, and not motorized rifle? To this, the lieutenant reasonably noted that when the battles for Grozny were going on, no one paid attention to the buttonholes, but now, in the calm, for some reason they began to peer...
There is one folk saying: when a cat has nothing to do, he licks his own balls. Modern Russian army It seems to me like this healthy cat who, instead of catching mice, is busy licking his crotch and there is no end in sight to this activity.
Hazing in Chechnya and other hot spots led to the destruction of a colleague, either he was a spirit, or a grandfather, it was both. There were cases of crossbows, people shooting themselves in the leg, or other organs. Many escaped and were captured by the Chechens, many fell into tripwires and mines. Some endure bullying, but some cannot stand it and murder or suicide occurs. The soldiers were waiting for the battle to quietly kill the offender. But in most cases, the old soldiers did not try to offend the spirits (young soldiers), because they knew what the consequences could be. After the battles, the soldiers became brothers.
Case back in the USSR:
An incident was told, it was during the USSR, a warrant officer alone went on guard duty as a commander, with him Caucasians, Asians, demobilizers cried when they went on guard, he forced them to wash the floors with their hands, and if they didn’t understand, he hit them in the face, the warrant officer was a boxer, he beat them they did somersaults in the air, and another ensign took over, lay down on the trestle bed and slept for 24 hours, then these black rats mocked the Russian soldiers and had a blast
Officer's story:
I, too, had such a ghoul, a spiritual sergeant, he hit him in the forehead with a knife, the scream was that the whole battalion woke up. The battalion commander was really a good guy, he didn’t let things go and I was simply transferred to another unit. The guy can be understood, he had no time for strategy, he simply acted with what he had at hand. I’m very sorry for the boy’s ruined life, and I feel sorry for the sergeant’s grief purely as a human being, especially for the parents.
Soldier's story:
In our brigade, one of us also died, the guy knocked him down right on the bunk. They gave me 9 years.
Here is the story of the young lieutenant:
There was one incident after which hazing in my unit stopped. I came as a lieutenant after college, and on the very first evening I watched a picture of three careless “old men” hammering away at the “yellow mouth” squad. In the morning an order was received to escort the column to Shatoy. I put these three eagles on the lead patrol, as “the most experienced...” After the signal that a landmine had been detected, the column stood up, I set up a cordon according to all the rules, and to these three I said, “Now pray that there is no crunch in the bushes.” not a single branch or something seemed to someone, because the “young people” can discharge the entire BC in the bushes, and at this moment they are unlikely to remember you.” After defusing the landmine, my “old men” nervously smoked on the side of the road and dried their pants. After that, in my platoon no one even sent a friendly glance to each other... And when someone left home, they saw him off with tears, alive and well... We lived as one family. and outside the formation there was no difference, private, sergeant, warrant officer or officer.
Here is the soldier's story:
Hazing and bullying are two different things!!! in 1999 there was a crossbow, alas, the guy is gone, the grandfathers are alive and well now (no one has been punished) only all the bullshit was not due to an unzipped fly, as stated in the video (there are doubts about homo-motivation) we just didn’t have food, we it was there, he came to us, ate as much as he wanted, then brought food to them, but alas, it was not possible to feed everyone (and the task remained, to bring snacks), the guy could not stand it.
Here is a video about the consequences of hazing in Chechnya:
Full video here in part 2:
Https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLouHNaQfzJaB1VWb-RiNTRcU0ku3I0irG
This is Afghanistan 1988.
