#14
From: "Chris Kedzie" <CKedzie@fordfound.org>
Subject: Alternative Civilian Service in Nizhny Novogorod
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001
David -
The following will be of interest to some of your readers. For those would like more information or to know if there is any way that they can help, coordinates of three principals are also provided below.
Oksana Kuznetsova
Nizhny Novgorod City Administration
Tel: (8312) 39-16-82
E-mail: deporg@admgor.nnov.ru
Viktor Gursky
Nizhny Novgorod Peacemaking Group
603000 Russia, Nizhny Novgorod
p/o 455
tel/fax: (8312) 36-76-05
E-mail: gursky@vineyard.nnov.ru
Elena Zakharova
Sozidaniye
103918 Moscow
Gazetny pereulok, 5, office 189
Tel/fax: (095) 937-4630
E-mail: sozidanie@co.ru
Best wishes,
Chris Kedzie
--------
"Trud" newspaper # 207 of 9 November 2001
By Vladimir Dolgodvorov
A Local Version of Constitutional Rights
Nizhny Novgorod local authorities have made another attempt to assert the right for alternative civil service provided by Article 59 of the Russian Constitution
The city draft board received about 50 applications form young men who are ready to serve their Motherland, but not under arms. The first 9 men, ready to put on smocks instead of the military uniform and start working as corpsmen at First-Aid City Hospital # 1, have been selected. By the way, this hospital alone has 70 vacancies of lower echelon medical workers.
"Despite the fact that the State Duma has not yet determined a mechanism for alternative civil service (ACS), we decided to start this experiment. I am sure that it won't affect the estimate numbers of the draft", - says Lev Pavlov, a Chair of the City Administration Committee on Servicemen Affairs, a retired lieutenant-general. "Judge for yourself - this autumn about 1,500 young men should be drafted into the army in Nizhny Novgorod, while we have up to 10,000 of those who reached the age of conscription. A fair part of them are dodgers. I am sure that the majority of them would agree to alternative civil service".
The drafting commissions staff does not, to put it mildly, welcome the innovation of the city administration. But even they agree that given the imperfection of the current legislation, almost anyone can dodge the draft. To start with one should file a writ that military service contradicts the beliefs of a perspective soldier.
How can this be verified? In Nizhny Novgorod has been decided to hold an experiment. One of the draftees was invited for a "tour" of First-Aid City Hospital # 1 to see a morgue and rooms for the most seriously ill patients... He was also reminded that a salary of a stretcher-bearer is 354 roubles (~$12) per month. But the potential "alternativshik" was not embarrassed. The commission either had no doubts in sincerity of the other young man, a University graduate. Being a skilled computer specialist, he earns more than 5,000 roubles per months, but said that he was ready to work as a stretcher-bearer for three years.
As there is clearly a gap in legislation, the city administration itself developed a special set of documents for ACS. For example, the working day for those wearing smocks instead of the military uniform would last 8 hours. They would get 50 roubles (~$1.70) per day for food. In case somebody would neglect his responsibilities, military service would waiting for him.
It's interesting that both Gennady Khodyreg, the Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region and Yury Lebedev, the city Mayor, not to mention Lev Pavlov, the Chief Commander of Privolzhky Internal Troops District, who support the experiment, all served in the army. And they claim that if they had been given a choice, they would have opted for military service. This option attracts most of the conscripts, so the army won't be left without soldiers.
Comment by a military reporter
While Duma deputies are for several years devising the shape of ACS in Russia, the courts' stone mills crush bones of more than one young man. The Nizhny Novgorod authorities were brave enough to agree to solve in one particular city a legal collision with no visible civilized outcome.
We do have an article in our Constitution that gives everyone a choice between taking up arms and going to the army or being useful for your country in a much more peaceful way at the same age. But no one has decided yet how long the alternative service should last, what shall the "alternativshiki" do, and where should they serve. Close to their homes or somewhere in tundra? Who should feed them and how much should be they paid? So one can be absolutely sure that neither the draft board of Nizhny Novgorod, nor even the General Staff of Russia, who are sick and tired of proving the obvious to the deputies, human rights activists, and conscripts' parents, shall ever consider three years of work as corpsmen to be equal to two years in the army. They have no such a right provided by law. That's why it is possible that when the young men are done with their work in Russian health care, they will get draft papers: would you please come to the barracks. Would the city authorities be willing to share responsibility for such a turn in four dozens young lives? If not, the experiment is a mere populism or, even more - a lie.
However I believe that there is a good aspect in such a step of the Nizhny Novgorod administration. But merely in the fact that it is possible that, even in this scandalous way, it will attract attention of the State Duma to the problem of alternative civil service in Russia. Eight years ago the Russian Constitution provided this right. For how long the elected representatives of people would lead fruitless discussions about it?
Translation from Russian by Elena Ivanova
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