Dedovshchina
Dedovshchina is the informal practice of hazing and abuse of junior conscripts historically in the Soviet Armed Forces and today in the Russian Armed Forces, internal troops, and to a lesser extent FSB, Border Guards, as well as in other armed forces and special services of former Soviet Republics. It consists of brutalization by more senior conscripts, NCOs, and officers. It is a form of non-statutory dominant-status relations between military personnel; the most common form of non-statutory relations, which is a violation of the statutory rules of relations between conscripts, based on the informal hierarchical division of soldiers and sergeants by enlistment and length of service.
The cultural basis of dedovshchina is made up of traditions, customs and rituals that are passed down from conscript to conscript. Often, these traditions and rituals are associated with the humiliation of the honor and dignity of servicemen of the later conscription by servicemen of the earlier conscription. Dedovshchina encompasses a variety of subordinating and humiliating activities undertaken by the junior ranks, from doing the chores of the senior ranks, to violent and sometimes deadly physical and psychological abuse, not unlike an extremely vicious form of bullying or torture, including sexual torture and anal rape. There have been occasions where soldiers have been seriously injured or killed.
Etymology
The term is derived from "ded", which is the Russian Army slang equivalent of gramps, meaning soldiers after their third half-year of compulsory service, stemming from a vulgarization of the word "demobilization" ; soldiers also refer to dembel half-year of conscription, with the suffix which denotes a type of order, rule, or regime. Thus, it can literally be translated as "rule of the grandfathers". This is essentially a folk system of seniority based on stage of service, mostly not backed by code or law, which only grants seniority to conscripts promoted to various sergeant and yefreitor ranks.Features as an offense
Non-statutory relations are a broader concept than dedovshchina. Non-statutory relations include the entire range of relationships between servicemen that are not described in the general military regulations. Dedovshchina in its narrowest sense covers only those violations of regulations that are related to the relationship between senior and junior enlisted personnel.In addition, the modern science of criminal and administrative law distinguishes between crimes committed within the framework of the so-called dedovshchina and "barracks hooliganism". The distinguishing feature here is the subjective side of the offense. In the first case, the intention of the offender is aimed at asserting his status as an old soldier, forcing a young soldier to perform household chores, performing certain rituals related to the "dedovshchina traditions", etc. In the second case, the offender's unlawful actions are motivated by personal hostile relations, national, ethnic, religious hostility, property relations, unexpectedly arising hostile relations, etc.
Thus, violations of the statutory rules of relations between servicemen that do not involve relations of subordination within the framework of dedovshchina can be qualified as an encroachment by senior servicemen on the rights, honor, dignity, and personal integrity of junior servicemen.
Often, the phenomenon of dedovshchina is directly related to the ratio of physical and moral strength of the "grandfathers, granpas, veterans, old men, dembels" and "devils, spirits, dushar, chekists, cheka, salabons, thingmen, young, elephants".
One of the major negative effects of dedovshchina as a phenomenon is that this army subculture seriously undermines the authority of the army among young people of conscription age and is one of the main reasons for evading military service.
A similar phenomenon, however, not as pronounced as in the army, is also observed in some Russian schools, boarding schools, and other educational and social institutions. Victims are usually physically weaker, insecure, or simply younger. Dedovshchina is not typical for the higher education system, and there are no recorded cases of phenomena resembling dedovshchina in civilian higher education institutions. This is due to the lack of an economic basis for dedovshchina in universities and other civilian higher education institutions.
Responsibility
Violations of statutory relationships are categorized by degree of public danger into:- disciplinary offenses
- criminal offenses
as a phenomenon
Dedovshchina involves the existence of unofficial hierarchical relationships that parallel the main formal ones, not excluding cases where officers are not only aware of dedovshchina but also use it to maintain "order."In official statements, some high-ranking military officials speak about the ills of society that have been transferred to the army. For example, such a statement was made in a TV interview by Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, former commander of the Northern Fleet, now a member of the Federation Council and member of the Defense and Security Committee.
Objective studies show that dedovshchina is a product of non-statutory economic activity in the armed forces. At the same time, dedovshchina is an auxiliary tool in the hands of the leadership, which can shift most of its responsibilities for maintaining order to the leaders of the informal hierarchy, offering them some benefits in return
Often, informal relationships are accompanied by humiliation and physical violence. The direct victims of the phenomenon are team members who, for one reason or another, have a low status in the informal hierarchy. The basis of the status is physical strength and the ability to insist on one's own way, as well as conflict resistance.
According to Amangeldy Kurmetuly, dedovshchina happens because the modern Russian military is primarily composed of men who did poorly in school and could not enter a university, and they repay the "pressure and harassment" they often received from authority figures onto those weaker than them.
Manifestations of dedovshchina can be very different. In its milder forms, it does not involve threats to life and health or serious humiliation: recruits perform household chores for old men and, from time to time, their household tasks. In its extreme manifestation, dedovshchina reaches the point of group sadism. Manifestations of dedovshchina in the Russian army include forcing recruits to fully serve their "grandfathers", taking away money, clothes and food, subjecting them to systematic abuse and even torture, beating them severely, often causing serious bodily harm. Recently, extortion of money to credit a cell phone account has become very common. Recruits are forced to call home and ask their parents to top up their "grandfather's" account or buy a recharge card, which will then go to the same account. Conscript service in the Russian Armed Forces is often not very different from the procedures and relations between prisoners in penitentiaries. "Grandfathers" will often initially extort money from recruits by threatening to kill them. This is to test if the recruit has money, and the "grandfathers" will extort more money from the recruit if he obeys their initial demand.
Dedovshchina is the main reason for regular desertions of conscripts from units and suicides among them. A significant part of violent crimes in the army is associated with dedovshchina: in some cases, these are crimes of "grandfathers" that have been brought to court. In others, the actions of recruits in retaliation, such as the "", when a Lithuanian private, after being nearly raped, murdered five fellow military servicemen, as well as the head of the guard, his assistant and the train conductor on 23 February 1987.
There have been cases where recruits who went on guard duty with military weapons shot their fellow soldiers who had humiliated them beforehand, including the case that formed the basis of the 1990 film The Guard.
History
The phenomenon of hazing has been described as far back as Eton College in the 16th through 18th centuries, where the authority of fellow students was even more cruel and capricious than that of teachers. The school community was of all ages. The age at which boys were sent to school ranged from 8–9 to 16–17 years old. The inequality in strength, age, and length of schooling created a rigid "vertical of power".Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin described the traditions that prevailed in the mid 19th century in the most privileged military educational institution of the Russian Empire, the Page Corps. The older students, the chamberlains, "gathered the newcomers in one room at night and drove them around in their nightgowns like horses in a circus. Some cellmates stood in the circle, others outside it, and mercilessly whipped the boys with leather whips."
In the early 20th century, at the Mykolaiv Cavalry School, juniors were called "beasts", seniors were called "cornets", and second-year students were called "majors".
"Tsuk" was an outright mockery of the elders over the younger ones: the younger ones were required to do things that were not supposed to be done by senior cadets: salute, make them do squats, howl at the Moon, give them offensive nicknames, wake them up repeatedly at night, and so on. Not only were the officers-educators of military educational institutions aware of the abuse, many of them were convinced that "pull-ups give the junior class discipline and training, and the senior class practice in the use of power".
Participation in such customs was relatively voluntary: when a yesterday's cadet, gymnasium student or student entered the school, the elders first asked him how he wished to live – "according to the glorious tradition of the school or according to the legal statute?" Those who expressed a desire to live "according to the statute" were relieved of the "tsuk", but they were not considered "theirs", called "red" and treated with disdain. Lower-level commanders, such as platoon commanders and watchmasters, were particularly picky about the "reds", and most importantly, after graduation, no Guards regiment accepted them into its officer circle. Therefore, the vast majority of cadets preferred to live "according to tradition", the shortcomings of which were attributed to camaraderie.