Reviving Russia’s Military Culture and the Officer Caste
Western electronic and print media have given considerable attention to the speeches that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Shoigu delivered yesterday before a gathering of top military personnel.
Putin spoke about the ability of his government to satisfy all requests for funding that may arise from the armed forces. Indeed, it is rumored that the Russian military budget will double in 2023. Moreover, this increased spend is only partially about the operational costs of the war in Ukraine. What we see is a wholly new concept for the Russian forces prompted by the understanding that Russia is engaged in what will be a ‘long war’ against the United States and NATO. This will require greater attention to conventional weapons and improved control and command technologies, whereas the Russian military budget under Putin has till now focused on building world-beating strategic weapons systems for purposes of nuclear deterrence.
Shoigu put specific numbers to the plans to raise the Russian armed forces to 1.5 million men. We are told that about 40% or nearly 600,000 will be kontraktniki, i.e. well-paid professionals. Meanwhile, the approach to draftees will be changed in ways that support the new vision of the Russian army as technically capable. To be specific, the age of conscription will be raised from 18 years to 21, with a cap set at age 30. Clearly the idea is to bring into the army not raw youth but young men who have already received some essential skills and knowledge from their first civilian employment and higher education.
All of the foregoing has been covered in greater or lesser detail by Euronews, by The Financial Times and other Western media yesterday evening and today. However, what Western media are not following or passing along to their audiences is the change in mindset underway in Russia as regards the role of their military in society. This is one of the chief consequences of the ongoing war in Ukraine and of the broad upsurge of patriotic feelings in support of the country’s men at arms, who are portrayed as defending Russia’s very existence under threat from the US-led West. To understand what is underway, you have to listen to the political talk shows on state television and not to the speeches of Putin and Shoigu.
One of the first to speak about restoring respect for the Russian military in general and for the officer caste in particular was Margarita Simonyan, RT editor-in-chief, in her recent appearances on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov show. She argued forcefully for raising compensation to officers from the paltry levels established back in the 1990s, when the Liberal political establishment treated with scorn the returnees from the Russian military bases in the Warsaw Pact countries that were being shut down. There was no housing awaiting them upon redeployment in Mother Russia; the pay packages were worthless; and the military as a whole became ragtag.
Simonyan called for substantial pay increases so that the Russian military could once again command respect in society. She alluded to the distant past, in tsarist times, when, she said, officers were considered prime candidates as bridegrooms by solicitous mothers of daughters living in the provinces. She spoke about what was then an officer caste, i.e, an hereditary cohort of the ‘officer and a gentleman’ typology which enjoyed universal respect. That was a time when it was de rigueur for officers to wear their uniforms at all times and, most especially, at balls and other social events. This particular observation was raised in connection with a recent scandalous expulsion of a Russian officer from a night club over his arriving in uniform.
Given that kontraktniki are now receiving pay packages on the order of 200,000 rubles per month (approximately 2500 euros), with officers presumably doing much better according to their rank, they are indeed approaching levels of the IT programmers, who are among the most highly paid professional employees in the country. Moreover, those combatants who distinguish themselves on the field of battle are now being offered by Putin prized parcels of land in the Crimea and Moscow region. No one talks much about this but it is a direct revival of Russian traditions going back far into the history of Muscovy.
I must admit that the ongoing discussion of the role played by the military in Russian society in the distant past takes me by surprise. When I was a graduate student of Russian history in the 1970s, our doctoral work was devoted to what were in pre-Reform Russia legally defined social castes, typical of the ancien régime everywhere in Europe, meaning especially the noble landowners and to a lesser extent the peasantry. Then there were the doctoral topics relating to the late 19th century industrialists and the industrial working class insofar as they defined the contours of Russian society heading into the revolutions of the early 20th century. Still other classmates studied the proletariat in search for answers to the question about the inevitability of a Bolshevik victory in the coming revolution. A very few among us studied the Church and clergy. I cannot think of anyone who paid attention to the Russian armed forces and its officer caste. More attention went to studying the career bureaucrats in the civil service at the national level.
By definition, the officer caste of the tsarist regime drew heavily on the nobility. In Soviet times, it drew heavily on the disadvantaged, on the peasantry, so that officers in the army were often rough-hewn characters. The only exception, I believe, was in the Navy, where good manners and gallantry were better appreciated in the line of command.
Discussion of military matters on the talk shows reveals a common thread with Russian intelligentsia discussions of all aspects of their country, namely a tendency to speak about Russia as if it existed in a vacuum, without reference to what goes on in the rest of the world.
Whether on Sixty Minutes or on Solovyov, what I hear now is that Russia’s history going back centuries was defined by its military prowess and wartime achievements. Of course, one could easily say the same about Great Britain, where cathedrals are cluttered with plaques and statuary celebrating past warriors. And here in Brussels I see marble monuments in public spaces paying tribute to generals who fought in wars from the Napoleonic period on the French side.
How this newfound admiration for Russia’s military will play out over time is unforeseeable. But, in closing, I want to stress that naming compensation as a key to the respect professionals in one or another domain receive from society also extends to other fields than the officer caste. Yesterday Moscow Mayor Sobyanin spoke to the press about his city’s achievements in leveling up the teaching profession, saying that the salary tables for teachers are now the highest in the country, having reached that very same figure of 200,000 rubles per month that I cited above for contract soldiers. And to put this into context, I may add that this level of compensation is well above that paid out to teachers here in Brussels, where the pay check, unlike in Russia, is cut in half by income taxes before it reaches one’s pocket.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022