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Dedovshchina (best translated as reign of the old-timers) is a system of dominance and abuse in the Russian and Soviet army as well as the prison system. Younger conscripts are made to do work for older conscripts and contract soldiers; they are subject to abuse if they don’t obey. Abuse can range from verbal to physical to sexual violence and is usually carried out by soldiers of middling status as the oldest soldiers are seen as above the task of disciplining the new conscripts. It’s also quite common for older soldiers to haze and abuse new conscripts just for the hell of it. A common practice for contract soldiers is to steal conscripts’ shoes and demand bribes to stop, among many other things.
You are telling me they institutionalised this shit and they still wonder why everyone runs away the moment they see a chance to do so?
The very fact, that the Russian military is run in a less disciplined way than some criminal organisations in other countries, is very very funny to me.
Yes, and it’s not a new thing. It is not unusual to go to mandatory military service and come back with permanent injuries or trauma. The only official way to avoid getting there is studying. Therefore there is such an inflation of students in whatever field. Most surreal for me was always the following: after you graduate (e.g. from school) you are “vulnerable” until you are enrolled into a university, so they try to get into anything asap. And sometimes the military guys are waiting at the graduation event, to scoop you up before you can even leave the building.
What a nightmare. It’s bad enough that the Russian army is treated like cannon-fodder by their own leadership. But institutionalized abuse and hard-core hazing? I’m actually kind of shocked. I guess this is about as strong an argument for the importance and efficacy of leadership modeling that you can find.
And sometimes the military guys are waiting at the graduation event, to scoop you up before you can even leave the building.
“In Russia, fraternity rushes you.”
it’s just deeply entrenched hazing, with all the cultural borrowings from prison culture that you can expect
some of yall acting like “maskirovka” was invented in russia in 1907 and no one had lied before
