Hazing in the USSR army flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, but its roots should be sought beyond the period of stagnation. Cases of hazing in the Armed Forces also occurred in early years Soviet power, and in Tsarist Russia.
Origins
Up to early XIX centuries of attempts at relationships not according to the regulations in Russian army successfully stopped. This was connected both with the authority of the officers and with the level of discipline of the personnel. However, closer to the middle of the century, as society liberalizes, orders become more free among military personnel.
The scientist and traveler Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky recalled his stay at the School in his memoirs guards ensigns and cavalry cadets, where he entered in 1842 as a 15-year-old youth.
“The newcomers were treated in a way that degraded their dignity: under all possible pretexts they were not only beaten mercilessly, but sometimes outright tortured, although without brutal cruelty. Only one of the students in our class, who was distinguished by cruelty, walked with a belt in his hands, on which a large key was tied, and even beat the newcomers on the head with this key,” wrote Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, cases of hazing began to occur much more often. In Nikolaevsky cavalry school They even developed their own vocabulary reflecting hazing. The juniors were called “beasts”, the seniors were called “cornets”, and the second-year students were called “majors”.
The methods of bullying the elders over the younger ones in the school were striking in their diversity and originality and, according to contemporaries, were developed by entire generations of predecessors. For example, harsh first-class “majors” could force newcomers to “eat flies” as punishment.
The first case of hazing in the Red Army was recorded in 1919. Three old-timers of the 1st Regiment of the 30th rifle division They beat their colleague born in 1901 to death because the young soldier refused to do their work for the old soldiers. According to martial law, all three were shot. After this incident, for almost half a century there were no official reports of recorded cases of hazing in the USSR army.
Return
When in the late 1960s Soviet army cases of hazing began to be noted again, many, especially veterans of the Great Patriotic War, did not want to believe in it, calling it fiction, nonsense. For the gray-haired front-line soldiers, for whom morale, honor and mutual assistance in war were above all else, this was not easy to accept.
According to one version, hazing returned to the army after conscription service was reduced in 1967 from three years to two in ground forces and from four to three - in the fleet. For some time, a situation arose that in one unit there were conscripts who were serving their third year and those who were destined to spend a year less in the army. The latter circumstance infuriated the employees of the old conscription, and they took their anger out on the new recruits.
There is another reason. The change in service life coincided with a shortage of conscripts caused by the demographic consequences of the war. The five-million-strong Soviet army was to be reduced by a third. In order to somehow compensate for demographic losses, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was forced to decide to conscript men with a criminal record into the army, which had previously been completely excluded.
The functionaries explained this event as the correction of fellow citizens who had stumbled. However, in reality, former residents of prisons and zones began to introduce into military use the orders and rituals of their former places of residence.
Other observations place the blame for hazing on unit commanders who began to widely use soldier labor for personal material gain. Not provided for by the charter economic activity led to the fact that old-timers began to act as supervisors over soldiers in their first year of service.
However, sociologist Alexey Solnyshkov notes that already in 1964 a number of works appeared on the issues of hazing, which means that this problem existed earlier and has deeper roots. Moreover, some experts on hazing in the army argue that hazing has never gone away, but has always been there everywhere.
Society's disease
For many researchers, hazing in the Soviet army is direct consequence changed social background in the country. Admiral, former commander Northern Fleet Vyacheslav Popov believes that hazing is a disease of society that was transferred to the army environment.
In the 1960s, a breakdown occurred in Soviet society, when the elite, having finally escaped from under total control Stalin's system began to shake the decades-old system of subordination and subordination. Responsibility was replaced by irresponsibility, and pragmatism by voluntarism.
Scientist and publicist Sergei Kara-Murza connects hazing with the fall of the communal principle of building the Union and with the transition of the entire population to Eurocentric and individualistic lines. Kara-Murza calls this “virtually the first bell of a catastrophic destruction of public morality.”
This was the time when ships and planes were cut for scrap metal, and in officers There were big cuts. Generals who tried to counteract from their point of view destructive process, immediately shifted. In their place came a new, “parquet” generation of military leaders, who were no longer concerned with increasing combat readiness, but with personal well-being.
At the turn of the 1960s and 70s, few people believed in an external threat, and this greatly dampened the Armed Forces. However, an army cannot exist without hierarchy and order. All this has been preserved, but according to new trends it has been transformed into non-statutory methods of maintaining discipline. As Kara-Murza notes, the emasculation of Stalinism from the army led to the fact that an obvious and harsh form of suppression of the individual was replaced by a softer and hidden one.
The ideology of hazing is well illustrated by the words of one of the warrant officers: “Hazing is beneficial to me. What is most important to me? So that there is order and everything is done clearly and on time. I’ll ask the grandfathers, and let them demand it from the young people.”
The language of hazing
Hazing in the army is a long-established principle of everyday life and a way of communication between soldiers. Naturally, hazing also requires specific vocabulary, which emphasizes hierarchy among conscripts. Vocabulary varies according to the types of Armed Forces, the characteristics of the unit and the location of the military unit. However, any language of hazing is understandable to everyone. Here is the most commonly used dictionary:
A soldier who has not yet taken the oath and lives in separate barracks: “salabon”, “mammoth”, “smell”, “quarantine”;
Serviceman of the first half of the year of service: “spirit”, “goldfinch”, “siskin”, “goose”;
Serviceman of the second half of the year of service: “elephant”, “walrus”, “senior goose”;
A soldier who has served more than a year: “cauldron”, “scoop”, “brush”, “pheasant”;
A soldier who has served from one and a half to two years: “grandfather” or “old man”;
A serviceman who is in a unit after the release of the order to transfer to the reserve: “demobilization” or “quarantine”.
Some terms require decoding. “You are not even “perfume” yet, you are “smells,” - this is what the “grandfathers” told the recruits who had just arrived at the unit. Why "smells"? Because the conscripts still smelled of their grandmother’s pies, which they were fed with before service.
The next level of the recruit is “spirit” (also “salabon” or “stomach”). He is a nobody in the army. He has no rights. Nobody owes him, but he owes everything.
“Elephants” were called conscripts who had already become involved in everyday life in the army: they were not yet accustomed to fighting and were ready to withstand any load.
When the soldier entered turning point service, he was considered a “scoop”. To gain the status of being “initiated” into the “scoops,” he had to withstand twelve blows on the buttocks with a ladle. The task of the “scoop” is to ensure that the “spirits” and “elephants” do not interfere with each other. He doesn't seriously strain himself, but still doesn't have many rights.
Rituals
The transition of military personnel to the next hierarchical level was accompanied by a special ritual - transfer. Its forms were different, but the essence was the same. For example, a soldier was beaten with a belt as many times as he had months left to serve, and he had to endure all this in silence. However, when moving to the “grandfather” category, the blows were inflicted with a thread, and the soldier had to scream at the top of his voice, as if suffering from severe pain.
The navy had its own rituals. So, when transferring from the category of “crucian carp” to “one and a half rashniks”, the ritual of “washing off the scales” took place. Depending on weather conditions and the scene of action of the “crucian carp” was thrown overboard, dipped into an ice hole or doused with a fire hose, trying to carry out the transfer ceremony unexpectedly for the “initiate”.
The Soviet army also practiced more severe rituals, such as “punching the elk.” The old-time soldier forced the new conscription soldier to cross his arms at some distance from his forehead, after which he struck him in the crosshairs of his hands. The force of the blow depended on the mood of the “grandfather” or the guilt of the recruit.
Often the ritual side of hazing faded into the background, and the old-timers began to openly mock the newcomers. Sometimes it ended in tragedy. Not only for “spirits”. During the perestroika period, the “Sakalauskas case” became widely known - young soldier from Lithuania, who shot a guard of seven senior colleagues at the entrance to Leningrad in February 1987.
Among the dead were Sakalauskas’ offenders: cook Gataullin, who regularly added half a glass of salt or sand to the “spirit” portion, depriving him of breakfast or lunch; senior sergeant Semenov, who more than once dunked a private’s face into the toilet, putting him on duty for 10 hours. After the incident, Sakalauskas, diagnosed with a chronic mental illness with a continuously progressive course, was sent for compulsory treatment.
And there were many such tragic consequences of hazing. How did you react to this? military leadership? Back in the summer of 1982, secret order No. 0100 was issued to combat hazing. However, by this time hazing had become so widespread that it was almost impossible to fight it.
Moreover, senior party and military officials were in no particular hurry to eradicate hazing. Firstly, their children were protected from this scourge by right of birth, and secondly, in order to declare war on hazing, it was necessary to publicly acknowledge its existence. Well, how could there be hazing in a country of developed socialism?..
Hazing in the USSR army flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, but its roots should be sought beyond the period of stagnation. Cases of hazing in the Armed Forces occurred both in the early years of Soviet power and in tsarist Russia.
Origins
Until the beginning of the 19th century, attempts at relations not according to regulations in the Russian army were successfully suppressed. This was connected both with the authority of the officers and with the level of discipline of the personnel. However, closer to the middle of the century, as society liberalizes, orders become more free among military personnel.
The scientist and traveler Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky in his memoirs recalled his stay at the School of Guards Ensigns and Cavalry Junkers, where he entered in 1842 as a 15-year-old youth.
“The newcomers were treated in a way that degraded their dignity: under all possible pretexts they were not only beaten mercilessly, but sometimes outright tortured, although without brutal cruelty. Only one of the students in our class, who was distinguished by cruelty, walked with a belt in his hands, on which a large key was tied, and even beat the newcomers on the head with this key,” wrote Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, cases of hazing began to occur much more often. The Nikolaev Cavalry School even developed its own vocabulary reflecting hazing. The juniors were called “beasts”, the seniors were called “cornets”, and the second-year students were called “majors”.
The methods of bullying the elders over the younger ones in the school were striking in their diversity and originality and, according to contemporaries, were developed by entire generations of predecessors. For example, harsh first-class “majors” could force newcomers to “eat flies” as punishment.
The first case of hazing in the Red Army was recorded in 1919. Three old-timers of the 1st Regiment of the 30th Infantry Division beat their colleague born in 1901 to death because the young soldier refused to do their work for the old-timers. According to martial law, all three were shot. After this incident, for almost half a century there were no official reports of recorded cases of hazing in the USSR army.
Return
When cases of hazing began to be noted again in the Soviet army in the late 1960s, many, especially veterans of the Great Patriotic War, did not want to believe it, calling it fiction, nonsense. For the gray-haired front-line soldiers, for whom morale, honor and mutual assistance in war were above all else, this was not easy to accept.
According to one version, hazing returned to the army after conscription service was reduced in 1967 from three years to two in the ground forces and from four to three in the navy. For some time, a situation arose that in one unit there were conscripts who were serving their third year and those who were destined to spend a year less in the army. The latter circumstance infuriated the employees of the old conscription, and they took their anger out on the new recruits.
There is another reason. The change in service life coincided with a shortage of conscripts caused by the demographic consequences of the war. The five-million-strong Soviet army was to be reduced by a third. In order to somehow compensate for demographic losses, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was forced to decide to conscript men with a criminal record into the army, which had previously been completely excluded.
The functionaries explained this event as the correction of fellow citizens who had stumbled. However, in reality, former residents of prisons and zones began to introduce into military use the orders and rituals of their former places of residence.
Other observations place the blame for hazing on unit commanders who began to widely use soldier labor for personal material gain. Economic activities not provided for by the charter led to the fact that old-timers began to act as supervisors over soldiers in their first year of service.
However, sociologist Alexey Solnyshkov notes that already in 1964 a number of works appeared on the issues of hazing, which means that this problem existed earlier and has deeper roots. Moreover, some experts on hazing in the army argue that hazing has never gone away, but has always been there everywhere.
Society's disease
For many researchers, hazing in the Soviet army is a direct consequence of the changed social background in the country. Admiral and former commander of the Northern Fleet Vyacheslav Popov believes that hazing is a disease of society that was transferred to the army environment.
In the 1960s, a breakdown occurred in Soviet society, when the elite, having finally escaped from the total control of the Stalinist system, began to shake the system of subordination and subordination that had been developing for decades. Responsibility was replaced by irresponsibility, and pragmatism by voluntarism.
Scientist and publicist Sergei Kara-Murza connects hazing with the fall of the communal principle of building the Union and with the transition of the entire population to Eurocentric and individualistic lines. Kara-Murza calls this “virtually the first bell of a catastrophic destruction of public morality.”
This was a time when ships and planes were cut for scrap, and large reductions took place in the officer corps. Generals who tried to counter what they saw as a destructive process were immediately removed. In their place came a new, “parquet” generation of military leaders, who were no longer concerned with increasing combat readiness, but with personal well-being.
At the turn of the 1960s and 70s, few people believed in an external threat, and this greatly dampened the Armed Forces. However, an army cannot exist without hierarchy and order. All this has been preserved, but according to new trends it has been transformed into non-statutory methods of maintaining discipline. As Kara-Murza notes, the emasculation of Stalinism from the army led to the fact that an obvious and harsh form of suppression of the individual was replaced by a softer and hidden one.
The ideology of hazing is well illustrated by the words of one of the warrant officers: “Hazing is beneficial to me. What is most important to me? So that there is order and everything is done clearly and on time. I’ll ask the grandfathers, and let them demand it from the young people.”
The language of hazing
Hazing in the army is a long-established principle of everyday life and a way of communication between soldiers. Naturally, hazing also requires specific vocabulary, which emphasizes hierarchy among conscripts. Vocabulary varies according to the types of Armed Forces, the characteristics of the unit and the location of the military unit. However, any language of hazing is understandable to everyone. Here is the most commonly used dictionary:
A soldier who has not yet taken the oath and lives in a separate barracks: “salabon”, “mammoth”, “smell”, “quarantine”;
Serviceman of the first half of the year of service: “spirit”, “goldfinch”, “siskin”, “goose”;
Serviceman of the second half of the year of service: “elephant”, “walrus”, “senior goose”;
A soldier who has served for more than a year: “cauldron”, “scoop”, “brush”, “pheasant”;
A soldier who has served from one and a half to two years: “grandfather” or “old man”;
A serviceman who is in a unit after the release of the order to transfer to the reserve: “demobilization” or “quarantine”.
Some terms require decoding. “You are not even “perfume” yet, you are “smells,” - this is what the “grandfathers” told the recruits who had just arrived at the unit. Why "smells"? Because the conscripts still smelled of their grandmother’s pies, which they were fed with before service.
The next level of the recruit is “spirit” (also “salabon” or “stomach”). He is a nobody in the army. He has no rights. Nobody owes him, but he owes everything.
“Elephants” were called conscripts who had already become involved in everyday life in the army: they were not yet accustomed to fighting and were ready to withstand any load.
When a soldier entered a critical period of service, he was considered a “scoop.” To gain the status of being “initiated” into the “scoops,” he had to withstand twelve blows on the buttocks with a ladle. The task of the “scoop” is to ensure that the “spirits” and “elephants” do not interfere with each other. He doesn't seriously strain himself, but still doesn't have many rights.
Rituals
The transition of military personnel to the next hierarchical level was accompanied by a special ritual - transfer. Its forms were different, but the essence was the same. For example, a soldier was beaten with a belt as many times as he had months left to serve, and he had to endure all this in silence. However, when moving to the “grandfather” category, the blows were inflicted with a thread, and the soldier had to scream at the top of his voice, as if suffering from severe pain.
The navy had its own rituals. So, when transferring from the category of “crucian carp” to “one and a half rashniks”, the ritual of “washing off the scales” took place. Depending on the weather conditions and the location of the action, the “crucian carp” was thrown overboard, dipped into an ice hole, or doused with a fire hose, trying to carry out the transfer ceremony unexpectedly for the “initiate.”
The Soviet army also practiced more severe rituals, such as “punching the elk.” The old-time soldier forced the new conscription soldier to cross his arms at some distance from his forehead, after which he struck him in the crosshairs of his hands. The force of the blow depended on the mood of the “grandfather” or the guilt of the recruit.
Often the ritual side of hazing faded into the background, and the old-timers began to openly mock the newcomers. Sometimes it ended in tragedy. Not only for “spirits”. During the period of perestroika, the “case of Sakalauskas”, a young soldier from Lithuania who shot a guard of seven senior colleagues at the entrance to Leningrad in February 1987, became widely known.
Among the dead were Sakalauskas’ offenders: cook Gataullin, who regularly added half a glass of salt or sand to the “spirit” portion, depriving him of breakfast or lunch; senior sergeant Semenov, who more than once dunked a private’s face into the toilet, putting him on duty for 10 hours. After the incident, Sakalauskas, diagnosed with a chronic mental illness with a continuously progressive course, was sent for compulsory treatment.
And there were many such tragic consequences of hazing. How did the military leadership react to this? Back in the summer of 1982, secret order No. 0100 was issued to combat hazing. However, by this time hazing had become so widespread that it was almost impossible to fight it.
Moreover, senior party and military officials were in no particular hurry to eradicate hazing. Firstly, their children were protected from this scourge by right of birth, and secondly, in order to declare war on hazing, it was necessary to publicly acknowledge its existence. Well, how could there be hazing in a country of developed socialism?..
We all know how difficult it is in the Russian army because of the hazing that exists there. Some were simply beaten half to death, and some were even driven to suicide. Grandfathers mock recruits and the saddest thing is that all this happens with the permission of the officers. Also, the situation with hazing is getting worse from year to year due to national hatred within the army. Read more creepy stories soldiers who were victims of hazing. Not for the faint of heart.
Anton Porechkin. Athlete, national team member Trans-Baikal Territory in weightlifting. He served on Iturup Island (Kuril Islands), military unit 71436. On October 30, 2012, during the 4th month of service, he was beaten to death by drunken grandfathers. 8 blows with a mining shovel, little was left of the head.
Ruslan Aiderkhanov. From Tatarstan. Drafted into the army in 2011, he served in military unit 55062 in the Sverdlovsk region. Three months later he was returned to his parents like this:
Traces of beatings, a knocked out eye, broken limbs. According to the military, Ruslan caused all this to himself when he tried to hang himself on a tree not far from the unit.
Dmitry Bochkarev. From Saratov. On August 13, 2012, he died in the army after days of sadistic abuse by his colleague Ali Rasulov. The latter beat him, forced him to sit for a long time on half-bent legs with his arms extended forward, striking him if his position changed. Also, by the way, Sergeant Sivyakov mocked private Andrei Sychev in Chelyabinsk in 2006. Sychev then had both legs and genitals amputated, but he remained alive. But Dmitry was brought home in a coffin.
Before the army, Ali Rasulov studied at a medical school, so he decided to practice on Dmitry as a doctor: he cut him with nail scissors cartilage tissue from the nose, damaged during the beatings, he sewed up tears in the left ear with a household needle and thread. “I don’t know what came over me. I can say that Dmitry irritated me because he did not want to obey me,” Rasulov said at the trial.
Dmitry irritated him because he did not want to obey...
Taking into account the fact that Rasulov carried out sadistic experiments on the victim for 1.5 months and tortured her to death, the verdict Russian court a sadist should consider it ridiculous: 10 years in prison and 150 thousand rubles to the parents of the murdered person. Compensation type.
Alexander Cherepanov. From the village of Vaskino, Tuzhinsky district, Kirov region. Served in military unit 86277 in Mari El. In 2011, he was brutally beaten for refusing to deposit 1000 rubles. to the phone of one of the grandfathers. After which he hanged himself in the back room (according to another version, he was hanged dead in order to imitate suicide). In 2013, in this case he would have been sentenced to 7 years ml. Sergeant Peter Zavyalov. But not for murder, but under the articles “Extortion” and “Excess of Official Power”.
Nikolai Cherepanov, father of a soldier: “We sent this son to the army, but this is the kind of son he was returned to us...”
Nina Konovalova, grandmother: “I began to put a cross on him, I saw that he was covered in wounds, bruises, bruises, and his head was all broken...” Ali Rasulov, cutting out cartilage from Dima Bochkarev’s nose, did not know “what came over me.” And what happened to Peter Zavyalov, who for 1000 rubles. killed another Russian guy in the army - Sasha Cherepanov?
Roman Kazakov. From Kaluga region. In 2009 recruit of the 138th motorized rifle brigade (Leningrad region) Roma Kazakov was brutally beaten by contract soldiers. But apparently they overdid it. The beaten man lost consciousness. Then they decided to stage an accident. The soldier, they say, was asked to repair the car, but he died in the garage from exhaust fumes. They put Roman in the car, locked him in the garage, turned on the ignition, covered the car with an awning to guarantee... It turned out to be a gas van.
But Roman did not die. He was poisoned, fell into a coma, but survived. And after some time he spoke. The mother did not leave her son, who became disabled, for 7 months...
Larisa Kazakova, mother of a soldier: “At the prosecutor’s office I met with Sergei Ryabov (this is one of the contract soldiers - author’s note), and he said - they forced me to beat recruits. Battalion commander Bronnikov beat off my hands with a ruler, I have a criminal record, the conviction was not expunged until 2011, I could not act differently and had to follow the battalion commander's order".
The case was closed, information about hematomas disappeared from the soldier’s medical documents, and the car (evidence) unexpectedly burned down a month later. The contract soldiers were fired, the battalion commander remained to serve further.
Roman Suslov. From Omsk. Drafted into the army on May 19, 2010. The photo below was taken at the station before boarding the train. He had a one and a half year old son. To the place of duty (Bikin, Khabarovsk region) didn't arrive. On May 20, he informed his family via SMS about abuse on the train by an officer and a warrant officer who accompanied the conscripts. On the morning of May 21 (the second day in the army) he sent an SMS: “They will kill me or leave me disabled.” May 22 - hanged himself (according to the military). There were signs of beatings on the body. Relatives demanded a re-examination of the causes of death. The military prosecutor's office refused.
Vladimir Slobodyannikov. From Magnitogorsk. Called up in 2012. Served in military unit 28331 in Verkhnyaya Pyshma (also in the Urals). At the very beginning of his service, he stood up for another young soldier who was being bullied. This caused the fierce hatred of grandfathers and officers. On July 18, 2012, after 2 months in the army, I called my sister and said: “Valya, I can’t do it anymore. They will kill me at night. That’s what the captain said.” That same evening he hanged himself in the barracks.
Pechenga, Murmansk region. 2013
200th motorized rifle brigade. Two Caucasians mock a Russian guy.
Unlike Caucasians, Russians, as always, are atomized. We are not in solidarity. They would rather mock the younger conscripts themselves than help someone during the lawlessness of national minorities. The officers also behave as they once did in tsarist army. “Dogs and lower ranks are not allowed to enter” there were signs in the parks of Kronstadt and St. Petersburg, i.e. the officers did not seem to consider themselves and the lower classes to be one nation. Then, of course, the sailors, without regret, drowned their nobles in the Gulf of Finland and cut them into pieces in 1917, but what changed?
Vyacheslav Sapozhnikov. From Novosibirsk. In January 2013, he jumped out of a 5th floor window, unable to withstand the bullying from the community of Tuvans in military unit 21005 (Kemerovo region). Tuvinians are a small people Mongoloid race in the south of Siberia. The current Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation S.K. Shoigu - also Tuvan.
In the Soviet Union, and even more in a broad sense- in Russia, there has always been a significant hierarchical structuring of society according to a wide variety of criteria. But the most interesting thing is that great importance attached to external attributes of status. For example, once upon a time, boyars wore kaftans of a certain cut, and it was very clearly indicated who was supposed to use what fur, what decorations, and sleeve length. Based on these signs, it was quite easy to determine social level this boyar. Very great value was also given to hats...
Interestingly, echoes of this have reached us, and in the recent Soviet past, a fur hat could with a fair degree of probability determine the status of a citizen. Rabbit hats were worn by insignificant people, as they would say today - losers. Nutria could be worn by both well-earning proletarians and the lower stratum of “free” people. Next came hats made of muskrat and fawn. It's already respectable people, often party workers or trade workers...
Such hierarchical features manifested themselves even more clearly in closed communities. In this regard, it is interesting to turn to the experience of the Soviet Army. So:
1. A soldier is only a conscript. Service life up to six months. Spirit, fighter, goose, hare, elephant, solobon, etc.
Actually, this category of servicemen is not entitled to absolutely anything. Everything is only according to the regulations. A very tight “wooden” belt, a cotton belt with a collar fastened with a hook...
Musician Valery Kipelov
Haircut only to zero, or a little more. The only possible award is the Komsomol badge “on a needle.” The parade is either new or “exchanged” on a voluntary-compulsory basis with old-timers.
When taking the oath, concessions are possible. You can sit and have a smoke.
2. A soldier who served for half a year. Also a fighter, gusila, senior hare, etc.
There are not many changes in the form of clothing, but there are some. You can unfasten the hook on the collar and loosen the belt. Apparently a graduate of the sergeant's school.
The hook is fastened, but the hat speaks eloquently that he served for at least half a year or more. The higher it is and the more angular, the steeper it is. Usually, cuts were made in the cap with inside, and cardboards (covers from the charter) or pieces of plastic were inserted there. Ideally, the hat should be absolutely bucket-shaped. Judging by the cockade, Roman Abramovich served for no more than a year.
3. A soldier who has served for a year. Scoop, skull, candidate, pheasant, yearling, etc.
Radical changes are coming here. This can do almost anything. True, it should be clarified here that all relaxations are possible only after the official transfer to scoops. It's a whole ritual. Each fighter has “his own” grandfather. As a mentor in production. At night, a sacred ceremony takes place in the barracks, when the fighter is placed on stools and whipped on the ass with a belt. This is done either by “his” grandfather or by several old-timers. They whip well, with force, six blows with the plaque. At the same time, the one who is transferred to the scoops must shout “Don’t fuck!” This has great semantic meaning. From that moment on, he becomes “not **butchy.” Those. he doesn't care about any problems at all household plan. Everything falls on the shoulders of those who served less and still went through this solemn procedure. Naturally, this whole procedure is accompanied by drinking. Responsible for software support is newly transferred to new status soldier.
But let's get back to form...
Now our soldier can walk with a button undone, wear a leather belt, which “his” grandfather was obliged to pass on to him, and he can wear it very relaxed. He has the right to sew in the uniform, make recesses on cotton and paradka, has the right to smooth out the horizontal arrow on the back, called the “greyhound stripe,” can trim the boot tops by a few centimeters, or repair the accordion. Heel padding is allowed. Now you can wear a vshivnik - a non-statutory civilian sweater under forsen cotton.
The badge on the belt should change shape and become more curled, just like the cockade. The collar can now be hemmed with a stand-up stitch.
In general, soldiers in the army are the most elegant and front-line part of the soldier community.
Naturally, these liberties are worth a lot, and the right scoop would rather sit on its lip than fasten a hook or pick up a rag, a shovel... Unless there are only grandfathers around, and there is no one to delegate the work to. However, this is also not a fact. According to the law, no one has the right to force him to work.
I remember how I got sick and ended up in the medical unit. And in the medical unit there was such an order that those recovering had to go to the storeroom with thermoses and bring food for all patients. But, this must happen - among the patients there was not a single young person... For three days no one went to the canteen to get food.
Their fighters brought portions, and this made it possible not to stretch out their legs. On the third day, a young warrior appeared with a temperature of 40... and was immediately sent to the dining room covered with sideburns.
Here is a typical scoop.
4. A soldier who served for a year and a half. Grandfather.
Anything is possible. The belt is worn “on the balls”, the buttons can be undone, all of them can be hemmed with black thread. You absolutely cannot work. Chasing young people is also bad manners. This is what the evil scoops should be doing. All thoughts are only about demobilization, all interests are preparing a demobilization album and a demobilization uniform.
5. Dembel. The same grandfather, but after the order.
Dressed ostentatiously sloppily. The belt is wooden, which is taken from the child in exchange for his own leather one. In this case, the plaque straightens completely. Just like the cockade. This category of soldiers considers themselves, as it were, civilians, and this is manifested, for example, in the fact that demobilization does not eat its own butter for breakfast, but gives it to the young. If we form a formation to walk in a common column, the demobilizer is already at a loss, and he does this only in case emergency. He wears whatever he can, almost like a “partisan” (a civilian called up for retraining). At the same time, in the captor hangs a brand-new demobilization uniform with braid and velvet, a demobilization diplomat, an album, etc. are ready.
Hazing in the USSR army flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, but its roots should be sought beyond the period of stagnation. Cases of hazing in the Armed Forces occurred both in the early years of Soviet power and in tsarist Russia.
Origins
Until the beginning of the 19th century, attempts at relations not according to regulations in the Russian army were successfully suppressed. This was connected both with the authority of the officers and with the level of discipline of the personnel. However, closer to the middle of the century, as society liberalizes, orders become more free among military personnel.
The scientist and traveler Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky in his memoirs recalled his stay at the School of Guards Ensigns and Cavalry Junkers, where he entered in 1842 as a 15-year-old youth.
“The newcomers were treated in a way that degraded their dignity: under all possible pretexts they were not only beaten mercilessly, but sometimes outright tortured, although without brutal cruelty. Only one of the students in our class, who was distinguished by cruelty, walked with a belt in his hands, on which a large key was tied, and even beat the newcomers on the head with this key,” wrote Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, cases of hazing began to occur much more often. The Nikolaev Cavalry School even developed its own vocabulary reflecting hazing. The juniors were called “beasts”, the seniors were called “cornets”, and the second-year students were called “majors”.
The methods of bullying the elders over the younger ones in the school were striking in their diversity and originality and, according to contemporaries, were developed by entire generations of predecessors. For example, harsh first-class “majors” could force newcomers to “eat flies” as punishment.
The first case of hazing in the Red Army was recorded in 1919. Three old-timers of the 1st Regiment of the 30th Infantry Division beat their colleague born in 1901 to death because the young soldier refused to do their work for the old-timers. According to martial law, all three were shot. After this incident, for almost half a century there were no official reports of recorded cases of hazing in the USSR army.
Return
When cases of hazing began to be noted again in the Soviet army in the late 1960s, many, especially veterans of the Great Patriotic War, did not want to believe it, calling it fiction, nonsense. For the gray-haired front-line soldiers, for whom morale, honor and mutual assistance in war were above all else, this was not easy to accept.
According to one version, hazing returned to the army after conscription service was reduced in 1967 from three years to two in the ground forces and from four to three in the navy. For some time, a situation arose that in one unit there were conscripts who were serving their third year and those who were destined to spend a year less in the army. The latter circumstance infuriated the employees of the old conscription, and they took their anger out on the new recruits.
There is another reason. The change in service life coincided with a shortage of conscripts caused by the demographic consequences of the war. The five-million-strong Soviet army was to be reduced by a third. In order to somehow compensate for demographic losses, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was forced to decide to conscript men with a criminal record into the army, which had previously been completely excluded.
The functionaries explained this event as the correction of fellow citizens who had stumbled. However, in reality, former residents of prisons and zones began to introduce into military use the orders and rituals of their former places of residence.
Other observations place the blame for hazing on unit commanders who began to widely use soldier labor for personal material gain. Economic activities not provided for by the charter led to the fact that old-timers began to act as supervisors over soldiers in their first year of service.
However, sociologist Alexey Solnyshkov notes that already in 1964 a number of works appeared on the issues of hazing, which means that this problem existed earlier and has deeper roots. Moreover, some experts on hazing in the army argue that hazing has never gone away, but has always been there everywhere.
Society's disease
For many researchers, hazing in the Soviet army is a direct consequence of the changed social background in the country. Admiral and former commander of the Northern Fleet Vyacheslav Popov believes that hazing is a disease of society that was transferred to the army environment.
In the 1960s, a breakdown occurred in Soviet society, when the elite, having finally escaped from the total control of the Stalinist system, began to shake the system of subordination and subordination that had been developing for decades. Responsibility was replaced by irresponsibility, and pragmatism by voluntarism.
Scientist and publicist Sergei Kara-Murza connects hazing with the fall of the communal principle of building the Union and with the transition of the entire population to Eurocentric and individualistic lines. Kara-Murza calls this “virtually the first bell of a catastrophic destruction of public morality.”
This was a time when ships and planes were cut for scrap, and large reductions took place in the officer corps. Generals who tried to counter what they saw as a destructive process were immediately removed. In their place came a new, “parquet” generation of military leaders, who were no longer concerned with increasing combat readiness, but with personal well-being.
At the turn of the 1960s and 70s, few people believed in an external threat, and this greatly dampened the Armed Forces. However, an army cannot exist without hierarchy and order. All this has been preserved, but according to new trends it has been transformed into non-statutory methods of maintaining discipline. As Kara-Murza notes, the emasculation of Stalinism from the army led to the fact that an obvious and harsh form of suppression of the individual was replaced by a softer and hidden one.
The ideology of hazing is well illustrated by the words of one of the warrant officers: “Hazing is beneficial to me. What is most important to me? So that there is order and everything is done clearly and on time. I’ll ask the grandfathers, and let them demand it from the young people.”
The language of hazing
Hazing in the army is a long-established principle of everyday life and a way of communication between soldiers. Naturally, hazing also requires specific vocabulary, which emphasizes hierarchy among conscripts. Vocabulary varies according to the types of Armed Forces, the characteristics of the unit and the location of the military unit. However, any language of hazing is understandable to everyone. Here is the most commonly used dictionary:
A soldier who has not yet taken the oath and lives in a separate barracks: “salabon”, “mammoth”, “smell”, “quarantine”;
Serviceman of the first half of the year of service: “spirit”, “goldfinch”, “siskin”, “goose”;
Serviceman of the second half of the year of service: “elephant”, “walrus”, “senior goose”;
A soldier who has served for more than a year: “cauldron”, “scoop”, “brush”, “pheasant”;
A soldier who has served from one and a half to two years: “grandfather” or “old man”;
A serviceman who is in a unit after the release of the order to transfer to the reserve: “demobilization” or “quarantine”.
Some terms require decoding. “You are not even “perfume” yet, you are “smells,” - this is what the “grandfathers” told the recruits who had just arrived at the unit. Why "smells"? Because the conscripts still smelled of their grandmother’s pies, which they were fed with before service.
The next level of the recruit is “spirit” (also “salabon” or “stomach”). He is a nobody in the army. He has no rights. Nobody owes him, but he owes everything.
“Elephants” were called conscripts who had already become involved in everyday life in the army: they were not yet accustomed to fighting and were ready to withstand any load.
When a soldier entered a critical period of service, he was considered a “scoop.” To gain the status of being “initiated” into the “scoops,” he had to withstand twelve blows on the buttocks with a ladle. The task of the “scoop” is to ensure that the “spirits” and “elephants” do not interfere with each other. He doesn't seriously strain himself, but still doesn't have many rights.
Rituals
The transition of military personnel to the next hierarchical level was accompanied by a special ritual - transfer. Its forms were different, but the essence was the same. For example, a soldier was beaten with a belt as many times as he had months left to serve, and he had to endure all this in silence. However, when moving to the “grandfather” category, the blows were inflicted with a thread, and the soldier had to scream at the top of his voice, as if suffering from severe pain.
The navy had its own rituals. So, when transferring from the category of “crucian carp” to “one and a half rashniks”, the ritual of “washing off the scales” took place. Depending on the weather conditions and the location of the action, the “crucian carp” was thrown overboard, dipped into an ice hole, or doused with a fire hose, trying to carry out the transfer ceremony unexpectedly for the “initiate.”
The Soviet army also practiced more severe rituals, such as “punching the elk.” The old-time soldier forced the new conscription soldier to cross his arms at some distance from his forehead, after which he struck him in the crosshairs of his hands. The force of the blow depended on the mood of the “grandfather” or the guilt of the recruit.
Often the ritual side of hazing faded into the background, and the old-timers began to openly mock the newcomers. Sometimes it ended in tragedy. Not only for “spirits”. During the period of perestroika, the “case of Sakalauskas”, a young soldier from Lithuania who shot a guard of seven senior colleagues at the entrance to Leningrad in February 1987, became widely known.
Among the dead were Sakalauskas’ offenders: cook Gataullin, who regularly added half a glass of salt or sand to the “spirit” portion, depriving him of breakfast or lunch; senior sergeant Semenov, who more than once dunked a private’s face into the toilet, putting him on duty for 10 hours. After the incident, Sakalauskas, diagnosed with a chronic mental illness with a continuously progressive course, was sent for compulsory treatment.
And there were many such tragic consequences of hazing. How did the military leadership react to this? Back in the summer of 1982, secret order No. 0100 was issued to combat hazing. However, by this time hazing had become so widespread that it was almost impossible to fight it.
Moreover, senior party and military officials were in no particular hurry to eradicate hazing. Firstly, their children were protected from this scourge by right of birth, and secondly, in order to declare war on hazing, it was necessary to publicly acknowledge its existence. Well, how could there be hazing in a country of developed socialism?..
