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Inside the Soviet Army
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17053 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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8 / 1990 |
2,624 Words |
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Stanislav Levchenko
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During the last several years, developments in the Soviet Union have tracked like an EKG of a patient with grave arrhythmia. One crisis situation follows another. Yet new procedures are going full speed ahead, and some of these are of such a nature that even seasoned Sovietologists would not have dreamt of them just a few years ago.
A multitude of books and articles have been published, or are now being written, about many aspects of the USSR. There is much discussion about the size of the Soviet military, especially the quality of Soviet nuclear strike forces. Even different government bilateral negotiations are being conducted simultaneously.
I am not going to repeat or interpret the basic points of the new Soviet realities: Journalists and academics have already sunk their teeth into those. The purpose of this article is to give a portrait of the inner workings of the 72-year-old Soviet army and its social and moral problems.
Until very recently the Soviet socialist system could be visualized as a structure resting on two huge pillars: The State Security Committee (the KGB) and the Soviet army. Now the architecture of the system is gradually changing. One major pillar - the army - had developed a few massive cracks.
For hundreds of years military officers in Russia have played an important role in the political life of the country and in its decision-making processes. The living standards of officers have always been above average. In the provinces a senior military commander, even under Soviet rule, was one of the four most powerful and important figures, the other three being the party secretary, the chairman of the local government, and the KGB chief of a province.
It was also the military that helped the rulers - whether the czars or the communists - to expand and strengthen the Russian and Soviet empires. The military received more decorations than civilians and the many special privileges that came with them.
It is well known that Soviet society was divided into privileged and underprivileged social classes almost immediately after the 1917 Revolution. The children of the military had much better chances of being accepted into the best colleges, or of getting high-paying jobs when security clearance was needed. Senior military officers were given spacious apartments and dachas - a luxury not available to more than 90 percent of the Soviet population.
The peak of privileges for the Soviet military coincided with the 17-year-long rule of Leonid Brezhnev, who himself had an obsession with medals and decorations. During the last years of his life Brezhnev liked to be photographed in military uniform, with four gold medals of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Hero of Socialist Labor.
But five years ago Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as the no. 1 man of the Soviet leadership, and the atmosphere started to change fast - and in a negative way for the military.
Gorbachev does not have a military background - he was too young to serve in World War II. And his main power base consists of relatively young technocratic civilian
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