The Ministry of Defense intends to return to the experience of creating "wild divisions" formed according to the mono-ethnic and mono-confessional principle.
The Russian military command was prompted to take this step by the increasing incidence of hazing on the basis of interethnic contradictions. In fact, there is nothing new in this idea. In the Russian Empire, the practice of recruiting military units from persons of one nationality or one religion was widespread. At the same time, as historical experience shows, this kind of approach is fraught with loss of control over the army.
From the memoirs of the cavalry officer of the tsarist army Anatoly Markov, who wrote the book "In the Ingush Cavalry Regiment": "The personnel of the" wild division "were distinguished by low discipline and love of theft. On overnight stays and at every opportunity, the riders strove to quietly separate from the regiment with the intention of taking away from the inhabitants everything that was lying badly. The command fought with this by all means, up to the execution of the guilty, but in the first two years of the war it was very difficult to erase from the Ingush their purely Asian view of the war as a campaign for prey … They considered every inhabitant of enemy territory an enemy with all the ensuing consequences, and his property is his legal prey. The Austrians were not taken prisoner at all and the heads of all those who surrendered were chopped off … The attitude of the Ingush towards state property was no better. For a long time, the regiment could not ensure that the riders did not consider weapons to be bought and sold."
Last week it became known about the mass disobedience of the Caucasians in the military unit No. 40383 (Sokol airbase), located in the Perm Territory. More than a hundred of servicemen called up from the North Caucasus refused to carry out the orders of the officers. Colonel Dmitry Kuznetsov, head of the military unit, was even forced to turn to the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of the Kama region for help in putting things in order.
According to him, having formed "militant microcollections" in the unit, the Caucasians engaged in extortion and forced their colleagues to do all kinds of work for them. The command's attempt to restore order in the unit by the usual methods failed - the Caucasian soldiers rebelled. According to rumors, in order to reason with them, the army leadership had to use force.
And this is far from an isolated case of clashes between military personnel on ethnic grounds. Perhaps the loudest scandal occurred a little over a year ago in the Baltic Fleet. Sailors Vitaly Shah, Hajibakhmud Kurbanov, Arag Eminov, Sirazhutdin Cheriev, Naib Taygibov, Islam Khamurzov, Jamal Temirbulatov, who were drafted from Dagestan, repeatedly robbed and beat conscripts. Once they forced their colleagues to lie down on the ground so that the word KAVKAZ would come out of their bodies.
Rumor has it that these and many other stories have prompted the Department of Defense to seriously consider changing the approach to the manning of military units. The military department intends to take as a model the battalions "East" and "West" in Chechnya, just formed on a mono-ethnic and mono-confessional principle.
In fact, experts argue, this is a return to the well-forgotten experience of "wild divisions" that existed first in the tsarist army, and then for some time in the Soviet armed forces. At the same time, analysts do not tire of reminding why the military leadership at one time abandoned this practice.
During the time of the Russian Empire, there was the so-called Caucasian native cavalry division. There were many problems with her. And yet, the authorities more or less successfully managed to control it. First of all, because it consisted almost entirely of volunteers. Secondly, the commanding staff of the division was predominantly Russian.
At the dawn of Soviet times, this concept was considered successful. At the same time, at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, its futility became clear - recall that in June 1941, some mono-ethnic units refused to obey the command.
Another attempt to create a mono-ethnic division was made almost ten years ago. We are talking about the so-called Chechen company, which in 2001 was formed near Moscow in the 27th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. This was invented by the then Chief of the General Staff, General of the Army Anatoly Kvashnin.
This, to put it mildly, a strange formation was called a "sports company", but in the Moscow military district it was better known as the security brigade of the General Staff. On the very first day of their service, the young Chechens refused to do any housework, saying that "this is not a man's business." The commanding staff could do nothing - the officers were ordered to be tolerant. It all ended with the sports company beating the officer on duty in the cafeteria. As a result, it was disbanded.
Comments by Valentina Melnikova, Executive Secretary of the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees
I talk with the President of the country, the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff, and I can say: they have never said anything like that. And during his recent speech in the State Duma, the chief of the General Staff did not say a word about the possibility of creating such units.
In general, it is physically difficult to form "wild brigades": if, for example, a person is an atheist, where should he be assigned, to which part? And who will be in command in the "wild" units? What nationality officers? If such units are located on the territory of the region of their formation, then this may lead to an increase in centrifugal tendencies among individual republics, territories and regions.
Imagine what would happen if prisoners were grouped according to a similar principle. Would this improve the climate in the team? Discipline? The army, of course, is not a prison, but in terms of the accumulation of adults in one place, parallels can be traced.
On the whole, such a decision would be unconstitutional. Today in the Russian passport there is no column "religion" and "nationality". Therefore, it is even legally impossible to form mono-religious or mono-ethnic military units.
