Dedovshchina Revisited
Last year I was in a Moscow taxi riding from Sheremetevo to my apartment at Profsoiuznaia after spending Christmas in Germany. Of course I began talking to the driver, asking questions about himself, and his family. He happily told me that he had four sons. As a joke I told him that he was raising an army. To this day I don’t know if it was my bad Russian or that my mention of the word “army” brought him such immediate and undeniable disgust. “I wouldn’t send one of my sons to the damn army. I won’t let them take not a one.” I then explained to him what I meant by the comment. He replied, “Not an army, a football team!” The near death beating of Private Sychyov by an officer at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy is just another example of why ..read more
