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Russian Army and the culture of rape
| A few days later, gangrene appeared in his most badly beaten areas. He was rescued from death only by having both legs and his genitalia amputated. While this example of savage hazing in the Russian army made headlines everywhere, one detail too gruesome yet all too common was left out:
The officers also repeatedly raped the shit out of the poor young conscript.
| The word “hazing” doesn’t come close to capturing the terror of dedovshchina, or the “rule of grandfathers,” in the Russian army. Dedovshchina isn’t some prank where the victims are forced to shotgun cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon until they puke. Dedovshchina is what happens when the officer corps loses authority and 19-year-old conscripts start making the rules for the 17- and 18-year-olds.
| It is so bad that draftees fear it far more than Chechnya. One former soldier, Vlad, told Vice, “On our first day in the barracks, everybody yelled at us, ‘Hang yourselves now, it’s too much shit to handle.’” Many soldiers sooner or later take that advice: The Russian army averages some 500 suicides a year, or about 45 per 100,000 soldiers. The U.S., by contrast, averages about 17 per 100,000.
| Military prosecutors say that dedovshchina is the primary reason for suicide. More than 10,000 soldiers desert every year, for the same reason. Others go nuts, like two conscripts in 2002 who shot dead eight fellow soldiers at their outpost in Ingushetia, in southern Russia. When they were captured a couple of days later, they claimed they did it “to avenge dedovshchina.” Incidents of RUS AWOL soldiers heading into the forests and leaving a few corpses behind are incredibly common.
| Last year, at least 16 soldiers died from abuse at the hands of dedy. Both physical and psychological abuse continue nonstop. While there are no statistics on it, Valentina Melnikova, who runs the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, says that rape is endemic.
| The roots of dedovshchina go back at least to the 1960s, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union it mutated from a ritual of breaking in new recruits to a sadistic system of torture and abuse. After 1991, the army descended into chaos and it became possible to buy your way out of conscription. It currently costs around $5,000 to escape the draft and, given the horrors of dedovshchina, anyone who can afford it pays. Only the poorest ten percent of Russians end up serving.
| They tend to be the dregs of society, often the children of raging alcoholics or petty criminals.
As a rule you won’t find any Muscovite or Petersburg kids serving in the army.
Dedovshchina is exacerbated by the fact that Russian petty officers only get around $200 a month. Even in a country as poor as Russia, that’s not nearly enough to live on.
| Officers quickly realize that one of the best ways to supplement their income is to convert the only resource they have into cash. They start renting out their conscripts as cheap day laborers and male prostitutes.
| And this strikes to the core of the Russian nation's problem with human life: it's cheap. When you treat your people like animals, you get exactly that out of them, they behave like animals, either as unrepentant savages or a fearful mob. Pitler sits now at the top of this decrepit system and clearly endorses the continuation of such a culture. This is Pitler and Dugin's 'Eurasianism', an unlivable hell for all involved.
| Sounds like an easy army to defeat...
| holy shit man, I thought what the U.S had was bad enough from time to time. This is just pure human depravity. The Russians may be our enemy, and what they're doing now is unjustified, but even the enemy should get sympathy with things like this.
| Full Metal Jacket - the russian hardcore version.
I would love to see russia/putin having their vietnam with ukraine. On the other hand I don't wish ukraine sharing the same horrors as vietnam.
| Welcome to the army, my dude.
| Wait a minute, it happens in 2006, this is old news.
| >>b86081
That's what I found out as well... I guess to some extent this is supposed to fuel a mix of compassion and outrage...
Especially with what reports are coming out of Ukraine. Or who knows, coincidental insight into Russian military.
| >>850015
It's cultural and has been ongoing for 60+ years. Rape, torture and gay prostitution is an integral part of Russian army culture and always have been.
You can opt out of the draft if you're rich enough, which everyone does if they can afford it. Only the poorest ten percent of Russians end up serving. The dregs of society, if you may.
| >>850311
>Rape, torture and gay prostitution is an integral part of Russian army culture and always have been.
This kind of stuff exist in ANY military organization. It's inherent part of militarization. If you want to make average humans inhumane stuff, you need to dehumanize them. That's what EVERY military ever did and still does. Armies are no human-right-protecticing welfare organizations - and they never will be.
| >>850340
>This kind of stuff exist in ANY military organization.
False. Dedovshchina is strictly a russian practice. Dedovshchina is a HUGE part of russian military culture, and russian military culture alone. Stop making excuses and face reality.
>Gay prostitution is an inherent part of militarization.
Are you projecting right now? Are these your projections?
| >>850340
You're a fucking idiot.
You don't torture and abuse the people you may depend on to stay alive. That's a great way to end up dead yourself.
Military training isn't about dehumanizing, because whether or not someone's human doesn't figure into it at all. It's about developing muscle memory so you react to fight in the right way, and about creating bonds of trust between soldiers who will depend on each other.
| >>850340
The hazing new soldiers receive is meant to do two things: a) create a bond of shared suffering between new soldiers, which is the quickest way to create a foundation of trust, and b) it's part of the process of teaching what your body's actual limits are, as most people never exercise past being slightly uncomfortable.
But when you hit km 20 and can finally set the rucksack down. It's a hell of a feeling.
| >>850363
>It's about developing muscle memory so you react to fight in the right way, and about creating bonds of trust between soldiers who will depend on each other.
Ever heard about stockholm syndrome?
Militarism and military is generally shit.
| >>850367
This kind of stuff also exist in any kind of army - also in the russian army. But there are ALWAYS certain "special units" which are (in)famous for being (de)formed with shitty rituals in order to be able doing the ugly hardcore stuff.
Tell me, was there ever a war in history, in which one side did not commit war crimes?
| Don't understand me wrong. I don't want to justify the russian agression or anything like that. I'm just against that anti-pacifism shit, which gains more and more popularity. If now in the west factions are strengthen that that have the same (or simmiliar) way of thinking like putin then he wins the war without the need to win it. Ukrainian people and society isn't that different to the russian.
| Just look at the political circumstances in poland and hungary. It's basically tiny putins except they're non russian.
They are homophobe, antiliberal, racist and MASSIVELY nationalistic. Corruption, nepotism and oligarchic structures are a huge problem there. And I doubt that ukraine is that different. Waving EU flags and the desire to join the NATO is clearly more driven by fear from russian imperialism than from "western" values/ideals.
| >>850402
Anti-pacifism is standing by back when Georgia got fucked out of Astrakhan and South ossetia byt RUSSIA using same damn fuck shit tactics
Pacifism is being a coward
FUcking fight for good times you coward, pacifist he says while implicitly defending warmongering state as a consequence
Si vis pacem para bellum you rape defending faggot
| I have no doubt that if the post-soviet countries leaders had the means to harm russia, they would do it. Many people there HATE the russians, now matter what they do. I know many people from the czech republic, poland and bulgary that told me that they see russians as primitive animals. It's not some old people who live in the past. They're young, progressive, urban hipsters with a (to me) very strange nationalism and problematic russophobia.
| >>850404
>Pacifism is being a coward
Then you share the same shitty logic used by putin. You are exactly the same kind of antihumanist, just on different side.
| >>850404
>FUcking fight for good times you coward
I don't see how good times can be reached through killing people.
| >>850412
1. stop homophobia
2. The popular negative judgment about chamberlains appeasement policy (not doctrice) is very hypocritical and not even consensus in scientific political-historical research. At his time, Hitler had many fanboys in the UK too, especially in the bourgeois/conservative parts of society. Many of them saw a "bulwark against communism" in hitler and the nazis and antisemitism was en vogue in their ranks too.
| Even the british "anti-hitler" churchill was a little hitler fanboy in his early years. The truth is, that chamberlains appeasement policy aimed at giving the young soviet union time to prepare for "exporting the revolution" to germany.
Conservatives and socialists in the west were in fact shocked, when nazi germany and the soviet union allied despite their ideological fundamental antagonizing views.
| Socialists underestimated the true fascistic nature of stalinism, and conservatives underestimated the ideological flexibility of the nazis. Both didn't saw the strong similarities of those dictatorships that could unite them against liberalism and democracy.
Todays popular reception of chamberlain is a huge unjustice, that is massively exploited by warmongers to justify their policy of arming up and "preventive warfare". It's also used by russian propaganda against ukraine.
| >>60c0ba
It shows how much of a FAGGOT you are when you try making the whole thread about your bullshit
I don't care about a FAGGOT who hasn't even read the thread title and goes off about his FAGGOT rantings
| >>850434
It wasn't me who brought in chamberlains appeasement policy as a unreflected propaganda lie.
| >>850434
Also, you are disqualified by using "faggot" as an insult since it shows on what side you really stand.
| >>850435
No, YOU'RE propaganda! Because I say so!
>>850436
Oh no, is the FAGGOT getting his little fee-fees hurt?
| >>850438
Really? Putinism supporter? That's very interesting. Does my closed lead to Narnia?
You should know, because you're in it, FAGGOT
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| https://www.vice.com/en/article/gqdx44/full-v13n4
Over the recent New Year's holidays, Private Andrei Sychyov's superiors tied him to a chair and beat him continuously for hours and hours, taking breaks only to sustain their drinking binge.
When it was over, Sychyov was told not to say a peep. He didn’t complain, and the doctors who examined him reported that he was fine.