Draft Dodgers, Low Call-Up Quota Leave Russian Military in the Lurch

What if they formed an army but nobody joined? That’s been the problem this year in Russia.

Just last week, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Bondartsev, the military’s deputy chief for mobilization, announced that Russia’s armed forces are running more than 700,000 soldiers, aviators and sailors short.

Only 51% of the privates’ and sergeants’ jobs that were to be filled through the spring 1993 call-up actually were, the worried general disclosed.

Tens of thousands of young men have opted out of defending the democratic Russian state, but officials don’t think they are the chief problem. In fact, this spring, the target of about 170,000 inductees was met, more or less. The problem, in the military’s eyes, is that the target is too low.

In the fall 1993 call-up, by the military’s forecast, 130,000 to 150,000 conscripts will be sworn in. But simultaneously, about 320,000 enlisted and noncommissioned personnel are scheduled for discharge.

If nothing is done to find more new blood, Bondartsev said, by Jan. 1 the armed forces will have only 30% to 35% of the personnel they need and the inductees will be forced to stand back-to-back watches and do double duty. Russia’s military capability, he said, will lapse into crisis.

Defense Ministry officials refuse to reveal the actual size of today’s Russian armed forces, said to be between 1.25 million and 2 million. But staffing levels have become so critically low that Col. Gen. Igor Sergeyev, head of the elite strategic rocket forces, said he has been forced to go on combat duty himself. “Today, manning levels of duty crews are only 50% to 60% of what they should be,” Sergeyev said in a newspaper interview.

So what can be done? To expand the candidate pool, Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev wants the draft age raised to 21 (from 18), with the term of service cut to 12 months. (Conscripts now serve 18 months on land, two years at sea.)

Grachev’s plan would allow, in particular, the drafting of university students after graduation, eliminating the automatic deferments they receive. So few members of Russia’s educated elite serve now that officers, in a play on Soviet Communist propaganda, wryly note, “We’re finally getting a genuine workers’ and peasants’ army.” Ending student deferments would mean 1 million more men who could be drafted, Bondartsev said.

The military is also pushing for looser medical requirements to give them an estimated 300,000 new inductees now granted deferments on health grounds. Likewise, they want proposed legislation creating an alternative national service shelved until 1994-95, saying that such a law would allow 100,000 more young men to avoid military duty.

The Supreme Soviet legislature, moved by the generals’ pleas, already revoked some deferments last May. Vocational students, youths who are the sole support for an aged parent and those who have children 3 or younger will be getting the flimsy, gray leaflet that summons Russians to military “collecting points” during the twice-yearly call-ups in May and November.

The armed forces are betting on expanded conscription as a quick fix for their manpower problems. Some specialists, however, believe that social change is occurring so fast that Russia may be forced to go to an all-volunteer force much sooner than Grachev and his generals would want.

Lt. Gen. Gennady D. Ivanov, chief of the Defense Ministry’s Administration of Military Construction and Reforms, agrees that contract service, ultimately, is the only “real solution.”

Russian peasants used to weep when their sons were dragooned into the czar’s army, because foot soldiers served until they died. In a startling moment of liberalism, historians note, Ivan the Terrible offered his musketeers the option of enlisting by contract--for 25 years.

This year, 6 billion rubles ($6 million) have been allocated to lure at least 100,000 servicemen to “re-up” on a contract basis for a minimum of three years. As of last week, 109,000 had done so, and the Defense Ministry was asking the government for the authority and money to sign up 50,000 more.

But remarks from the military show the contract system will not be a panacea. Few individuals, it seems, want to serve in bleak, out-of-the-way places like Siberia, the Far East and navy bases far from cities. There has been an abundance of applicants for the paratroops, Russia’s military elite, and relatively little interest in the complex, technical jobs that are no less vital in a modern army: radar technicians, computer operators, radio specialists.

Russian naval officers recently visited the San Diego Naval Base, marveling at the BX (base exchange), commissary (supermarket) and the comfortable, clean lodging provided enlisted bachelors. It was a different world from threadbare, often-brutish existence at Russian bases. But giving the Northern Fleet’s home port of Severomorsk the same comforts as San Diego would require trillions of rubles and years of construction.

That won’t solve today’s pressing problems. So the Russians have hit on the same solution to their personnel problems as their U.S. counterparts once did--hiring women.

The drive became serious this year. Glamour jobs like fighter pilot are not open, but women are being allowed into service academies and such noncombat jobs as radar and computer operators, air force ground controllers, medical personnel and military intelligence staff.

According to Russian officers, there are about 15,000 women serving as commissioned and noncommissioned officers. By comparison, there were 98,332 female officers, warrant officers and noncoms on active duty in the U.S. military on March 31.