Restoration Watch: Putin’s ‘Remilitarization’ Campaign

(Washington, D.C.): In a courageous op.ed. article in today’s New York
Times, a Russian
journalist by the name of Masha Gessen has written a stark warning to the West: Vladimir Putin
is “rapidly remilitarizing Russian society.” She paints a picture of a Kremlin leader taking a
series of steps — many of which go unnoticed, or at least unchallenged, by Western governments
— that seem to be steadily, if incrementally, moving his country in a direction that will be neither
conducive to a free and peaceable Russia nor to the interest of the United States and
international stability.

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was au courant to declare that
Russia had undergone
such a free-fall in terms of its military power that the West would have at least 5-10 years of
warning before it would confront a renewed threat from that quarter. Few of the proponents of
this sanguine view ever described what the early stages of such warning would look like. It
seems reasonable to believe it would include the sorts of ominous signs described by Ms.
Gessen.

The New York Times, 29 February 2000

Lockstep to Putin’s New Military Order

By Masha Gessen

In the nearly two months since Vladimir V. Putin became acting president of Russia, the
world
has barely begun getting to know him. But already, he is building a clear record in one area of
policy: little noticed by the West, Mr. Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the K.G.B., is rapidly
remilitarizing Russian society.

Visitors to the old Soviet Union used to be surprised at the sheer number of people in
uniform in
the streets. At 18, men were conscripted for two years of mandatory military service. Virtually
everyone who had graduated from a technical, medical or foreign-languages college was
considered an officer of the reserves and required to report for regular training exercises.

Young schoolchildren had to take part in bomb drills and survival games, complete with toy
guns
for boys and nurse training for girls. Starting at 14, students learned warfare in a mandatory class
called primary military preparation; one activity was taking apart and cleaning the famous
Kalashnikov rifle. All men and many women were required to carry military cards, and the
all-important internal passport also indicated military status.

In the 1990’s the number of people in the services dwindled as budgets were cut and
opportunities increased in the private sector. When Russia ended its involvement in Afghanistan,
more young men began to be exempted from the draft. The 1993 Russian constitution guaranteed
the right to alternative civilian service, and a few hundred men managed to claim it by going to
court. The military preparation class in schools was abolished in 1989. Training exercises for
reservists were quietly discontinued.

But like other Soviet legacies, the institutionalized military nature of Russian society
remained
ready to be resurrected. Since Vladimir Putin took office on Dec. 31, he has issued 11
presidential decrees. Six concerned the military.

Mr. Putin’s second decree — after the one granting immunity from prosecution to Boris
Yeltsin,
the former president — established a new Russian military doctrine abandoning the old
no-first-strike policy toward nuclear weapons and emphasizing a right to use them against
aggressors “if
other means of conflict resolution have been exhausted or deemed ineffective.”

Soon another decree re-established mandatory training exercises for reservists. How many
will
be called up this year and whether they may be required to serve in Chechnya is unclear, since
two of the decree’s six paragraphs are classified as secret. (This, incidentally, is the sort of
problem that journalists in Russia will be encountering often, since a Jan. 17 Putin order granted
40 government ministers and other officials the right to classify information as secret.)

Other decrees related to military administration, public information about the war in
Chechnya
and commemoration of a general’s death.

Mr. Putin has also focused on the military in his capacity as acting prime minister. His
government’s first legislative action re-established military training in secondary schools, both
public and private. Russian teenagers will once again become intimate with the Kalashnikov.

The Ministry of Education’s plans to expand the school curriculum to 12 years will also have
a
military impact. Boys will graduate from high school not at 17, as now, but at the conscription
age of 18, and will not have time to try to gain acceptance to colleges that could grant draft
exemptions. As for alternative service, Russians can forget about it: the first young man who
went to court to claim this right in the Putin era was jailed for avoiding the draft.

On Jan. 27 Mr. Putin’s finance minister announced that defense spending will be increased
by 50
percent. Where will the country get the money, when it consistently fails to meet its obligations
to an increasingly impoverished population?

The government’s latest resolution contains an eerily ingenious solution to one urgent social
problem: from now on, military detachments will be encouraged to “adopt” boys 14 and older
who are orphaned or have single mothers.

Russia’s remilitarization not only testifies to Mr. Putin’s resolve to press on with the war in
Chechnya, but signals a return to the besieged, us-against-the-world mindset that Russia had
begun to leave behind. Yet as the March 26 election approaches, Mr. Putin has been
complimented as a reformer and an inevitability by President Clinton, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, NATO Secretary General James Robertson and British Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook. Such overtures make those of us in Russia who hope never again to touch a
Kalashnikov feel very lonely indeed.

Masha Gessen is chief correspondent at the Russian news weekly
Itogi.