[CivilSoc] Civilian Alternative Service Gaining Ground in Russia

[Civil Society International]

This item, originally in The Christian Science Monitor, is in issue #195 of
the Russia Weekly, an online publication of the Center for Defense
Information, at http://www.cdi.org/russia/195-8.cfm
#8
Christian Science Monitor
March 1, 2002
Alternative service under fire--
Russian military officials attack a city's new effort to allow service in
hospitals rather than the Army.
By Fred Weir | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
NIZHNI NOVGOROD, RUSSIA - Andrei Zakolodkin spends his days cleaning
bedpans, hauling trash, and washing stairs. "It's hard work," he says, "but
I don't mind serving my country. I just will not join the Army." Mr.
Zakolodkin is among 20 young men here who have become the first Russians in
history to fulfill their compulsory military duty by performing public
service rather than bearing arms. If the military prosecutor in Moscow has
his way, they could be the last.
The youths, who have been working as orderlies in the city's main hospital
since early January, are part of a program set up by Yury Lebedev, the
reform-minded mayor of this Volga city of 1 million, about 300 miles east of
Moscow. Mr. Lebedev says it's a matter of constitutional principle.
Beyond that, the aim is to curb draft-dodging, and provide workers to fill
critical but low-paid municipal-service jobs.
Lebedev says he tired of seeing 2,000 local boys go on the lam every year to
avoid military service - while those unlucky enough to be caught are dragged
away to the Army, or to prison.
"We have all the legal mechanisms to provide decent alternative service to
young men, but for the past decade there has not been the political will in
Moscow to do it," Lebedev says. "This idea is long overdue, and the loud
demand for it to be implemented is coming from below."
But the project has run into trouble. At the beginning, military recruiters
pressured four of the participants into dropping out and heading for boot
camp instead. In late February, a federal court declared the program
illegal, and letters handed out by a prosecutor to the boys last week warned
that their working time in the hospital would not be counted against their
military obligations.
"These young men have become hostage to a battle being waged between local
authorities and the Defense Ministry," says Eduard Vorobyov, deputy head of
the State Duma's Defense Committee. "The mayor of Nizhni Novgorod is
responding to public opinion and acting on humanitarian principles, but he
is on a collision course with the federal government."
Russia is one of the few developed countries to practice universal male
conscription, requiring all men between the ages of 18 and 28 to serve two
years under arms. But the 1993 Constitution guaranteed a civic alternative
to those whose "religious or other convictions" preclude military service.
Successive Russian parliaments, heavily lobbied by the powerful Defense
Ministry, have refused to pass enabling legislation. In the absence of a
law, courts have turned a deaf ear to conscientious objectors and, in most
cases, consigned them straight to the Army or to jail.
A draft federal law being written by the Defense Ministry proposes
alternative service in a form critics describe as unreasonable and punitive.
The bill, which should see its first reading in the Duma in March, would
require young men to go through a tough and humiliating process of proving
their pacifist beliefs, and then agree to four years of "alternative
service" at jobs that would be defined by military authorities.
"The goal of this draft law is obviously to make alternative service so
unattractive that no one will want it," says Sergei Sorokin, chair of the
Movement Against Violence, a grass-roots, antimilitary group. "Alternative
service should entail an honorable choice for each citizen, and our Army
seems completely unwilling to accept this idea."
The Nizhni Novgorod initiative, conceived last summer, revived the
Soviet-era local draft commission - a public review board that includes
civilian as well as military representatives - and empowered it to design
municipal alternative service projects. In communist times, local draft
commissions were purely for show, but the city's new panel of 85 local
citizens quickly became a battleground between advocates and opponents of
universal military service. When the dust settled, 25 young men destined for
last autumn's conscription intake had been accepted for the new
alternative-service project. One of the boys was subsequently exempted on
health grounds, four were swept into the Army, and 20 were sent to fill
menial but badly needed positions at the city's main hospital.
"I've been asking for alternative service for five years, and now I'm
delighted to finally have the chance," says Vladimir Korochkin, who says his
religious beliefs forbid any association with violence. His job, which pays
500 rubles (about $15) per month, involves working with disabled and elderly
patients, had been unfilled for years before the program began. Like the
others, Mr. Korochkin has signed a three-year contract in exchange for
Lebedev's pledge that this will legally discharge his military obligations.
Zakolodkin says he had to flee the military police and take refuge in City
Hall. But once the mayor's office took up his case, his papers were
forwarded to the local draft commission and he was quickly accepted into the
program. "If it weren't for the mayor's commitment to alternative service,
I'd be marching and saluting right now," says Mr. Zakolodkin.
Supporters of the program say it has revolutionized Russia's political
landscape. "Before we started this, these lads had no one to advocate their
rights," says retired Col. Vasily Antipov, who serves as the mayor's
representative on the city draft commission. "Now the struggle is between
institutions. It is getting fierce, but we believe we have the constitution
on our side and we'll take it to the Supreme Court if necessary."
Most of the young participants remain confident. "I trust the mayor. I think
he will stand by us," said Vsevolod Kurepin, after being served the
prosecutor's letter warning that the local program was illegal in the eyes
of federal authority. "I can see that resistance to alternative service is
very strong. But our country needs these changes, and I'm willing to suffer
for it."
Experts say the main reason Lebedev and some other regional leaders have
begun to openly defy Moscow is that the popular groundswell on this issue is
becoming hard to ignore.
But the traditionally promilitary public mood has only recently begun to
soften. A February survey carried out by the independent Public Opinion
Center among 1,600 Russians nationwide, found that just 27 percent want to
keep conscription, down from 38 percent four years ago. In the same survey
nearly two-thirds said Russia must build an all-volunteer army, compared to
just over half in 1998.
Lebedev is more optimistic than many of the critics that acceptable terms
will eventually be worked out. "Providing proper alternative service is in
the best interests of the country, the regions and even the military," he
says. "We will adjust our own local initiative to whatever federal law
eventually comes down, but we will not abandon these boys."