Ethnic minorities in the soviet armed forces: The plight of central Asians in a Russian‐dominated military

Military Defection During the Collapse of the Soviet Union

“…Known in the Russian language as 'dedovshchina'a unique form of hazing existed in the context of the Russian empire, was carried over to the Soviet Union and remained prevalent into the early 2000s in the Russian Federation. This was as Daugherty (1994) correctly describes it, a form of severe bullying that ended up being integral to and inseparable to the basic training processes dating back to Tsar Nicholas I. Dedovschina includes abuse of soldiers and conscripts such as sexual violence, beatings, bullying, confiscation of personal belongings, salaries and other adverse behaviour (Eichler 2011). During the late 1980s, Glasnost made public discussions of dedovshschina possible for the first time and a grim reality set in for parents who had sons that were either in the armed forces or in plan to be conscripted-young men that entered the army fit, healthy and with ambitions for a future career often returned to their parents as 'corpses, murdered or hounded to suicide by the predators within their own ranks' (Eaton 2004: 94).…”