Every year more than 300,000 Russian youths are drafted for two years military service and face months of fagging and brutality at the hands of older conscripts. Soldatprovides an inside view into the state of what was once the world’s most feared military.
The Russian Army today, as ever, remains the heart of the state, a wounded giant run by an embittered officer corps and manned by millions of undernourished, underequipped and brutalised conscripts. For ten years, since the withdrawal from Eastern Europe, the army has been a hotbed of dissent and dissatisfaction. Often unpaid, it is a huge rusting arsenal of resentment. If Putin means to play the nationalist card – and all the signs are that he does – the first thing he will do will be to look to the army. For in the vast land of Russia, the army has always been the unifying instrument, the source of pride and the ultimate guarantee of authority, standing behind fragile political institutions.