Russia's Collapsing Military

__"Disarmed and Dangerous" by Anatol Lieven, in The New Republic (Dec. 22, 1997), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.__

Though the war in Chechnya is over, the casualties in the demoralized and ill-equipped Russian military continue to mount—inflicted by the enemy within. In 1996, 1,071 soldiers were murdered, mostly by other soldiers, and 543 committed suicide. The Russian navy admitted there were at least 32 suicide attempts that same year, many successful, among the officers of the Northern Fleet, which includes most of Russia’s nuclear-armed submarines.

While the weakened state of its military may seem like good news to Russia’s neighbors and to the West, Lieven, a correspondent for the London Times in the former Soviet Union from 1990 to 1996, warns that "the more anarchic the Russian military becomes, the more of a destabilizing factor it may be, both inside Russia and in the Eurasian land mass that Russia dominates." Though politically quiescent so far, the officer corps could be tempted to take a decisive hand in the event of an extraconstitutional power struggle, and a force too weak to defend Russia could contribute to a dangerous power vacuum in the neighborhood. Even worse, officers who are not paid regularly are more likely to peddle nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorists.

The infamous practice of dyedovshchina—a form of exploitation far surpassing hazing in its cruelty—is largely to blame, Lieven says, for the wave of murders, suicides, and nervous and physical breakdowns in recent years. Lacking enough effective noncommissioned officers, even those officers with a will to do so have been unable to control the abuses. "The weakest element in our army," one general says, "is the sergeants."

There has been some talk in Russia of reform—of downsizing and professionalization. But the transition to a professional force of 1.2 million would require the equivalent of almost a 40 percent increase in the 1997 military budget. President Boris Yeltsin’s advisers, Lieven says, reportedly greeted the reform idea with mockery, deeming it "an absolutely preposterous notion given Russia’s present fiscal circumstances."