What should be the age limit for conscript military service? The opinions of doctors and the military on this score were fundamentally different.
Deputy Chief of the General Staff Vasily Smirnov motivated the proposal to raise the draft age bar from 27 to 30 years by the fact that in "most countries of the world" thirty-year-old conscripts are quite a normal practice. The topic caused a sharp reaction in society, fueled by the comments of experts who say that it is unjustifiably early to be drafted into the army at the age of 18, and at thirty it is not too late to serve.
"Itogi" tried to find out whether the established draft age is optimal and what new surprises await potential defenders of the Motherland along the way.
Mature to footcloths
Soldier's service is hard work. It is not surprising that in all the armies of the world, the strongest, healthiest young people, as a rule, are not burdened with family problems, are attracted to it. The combination of all these qualities is characteristic of youth: a person is already physically and mentally mature, but destructive changes in the body have not yet begun. Theoretically, these criteria correspond to the age of 18-27 years. In the 60s, it was this age gap that was included in the law on military service as conscription. And so it happened.
It is another matter that the theory today no longer corresponds to the real state of affairs: the modern Russian young man differs significantly from his predecessor. And his eighteen years are not at all the same as those of previous generations. “Already 20 years ago, the process of acceleration of growth and development, which allowed young men to mature for military service by the age of 18, has ended,” says Valentin Sonkin, chief researcher at the Institute of Developmental Physiology of the Russian Academy of Education, Doctor of Biological Sciences. comes in 19-21 and lasts up to 30-35 years. In general, such a framework - 19-35 years - for the call would be more adequate."
True, the generals never announced that the Russians would be drafted, say, from 19 or 20 years old. But it is not surprising that experts consider such an increase in age as something logical and even self-evident. The Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Vladimir Lukin, has long been proposing to establish the draft age at 20 years, noting that the notorious eighteen is a legacy of the Soviet past, and clearly not justified.
The increase in the draft age is easy to justify with a whole list of arguments. From this: people should be given the opportunity to finish secondary education without nerves and have at least two attempts to enter a university. Before this: the boys simply do not have time to grow up to the service today. For example, by the age of 18, a young man is just leaving the walls of an 11-year-old school (if he goes to study from the age of 7), he does not have time to look around in adult life, to form as an independent person. In the army, however, he immediately finds himself in the conditions of breaking this very personality. As a rule, nothing good comes of it. Moreover, according to the director of the Institute of Developmental Physiology of the Russian Academy of Education Maryana Bezrukikh, by the age of 18, adolescents have not yet completed their maturation period, the state of the body is unstable, stability occurs at best by the age of 19-20. Simply put, the milk on the lips of most of today's 18-year-olds has not yet dried.
Young green
Recently, a lot of research has been carried out on this score.“It's no secret: today's draftees are poorly developed physically,” says Alexander Baranov, chief pediatrician of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, director of the Scientific Center for Children's Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. 60s.
In one of the special studies, the author of which is Irina Zvezdina, an employee of the Research Institute of Hygiene and Health Protection of Children and Adolescents, it is noted that older adolescence is characterized by a low level of physical health. It is explained by the influence of biological factors. In 18-year-old guys, almost after one, there is a weight deficit, high or low blood pressure. But the determining factor, as experts say, is delayed puberty, which leads to a significant decrease in the body's capabilities. According to Zvezdina, doctors note a connection between delayed puberty and the presence of functional and chronic disorders of the musculoskeletal system, ENT diseases, as well as abnormalities of the cardiovascular system.
Chronicles, in a word. Are guys with such data capable of defending the country? Unlikely. But will the situation change so fundamentally at the age of 19?
Alexander Baranov believes that this will change, although, according to WHO, children's age generally ends at 22 years old. "In older adolescence, there is a very intensive growth of various organs and systems," the chief pediatrician notes. growth slows down over the years, and system dysfunctions are less common. " And Valentin Sonkin adds that it is during this year, under the influence of hormones, that boys are actively growing muscles, and at the age of 19 they would have joined the army not as defenseless suckers, but as fully developed men, capable of self-defense, to perform heavy army service, - full-fledged fighters. Then, according to doctors, there would be much less hazing, deaths and disabilities.
Psychologically, modern young men are also much younger than their peers of yesterday, and most importantly, they are less adequate in reactions. The incidence of mental and behavioral disorders in adolescents has increased in some regions of the country by 84.5 percent compared to the 90s. "By the end of secondary education, many do not have a sufficient level of formation of important skills of constructive behavior," notes Dmitry Nadezhdin, head of the laboratory of psychophysiology and psychohygiene of the Research Institute of Hygiene and Health Protection of Children and Adolescents. to Army".
To put it simply, at the age of 17-18, adolescents sometimes freak out for no reason, then fall into depression. Specialists of the Izhevsk State Medical Academy have specially checked the psychological status of the recruits of Udmurtia. Curious things came to light. A 15-year-old teenager is sociable, capable of compromise, prone to self-accusation, sensitive. At the age of 16, he remains sociable, controls emotions, but is overly excited, sometimes experiencing emotional discomfort. At the age of 17 - the last year before the call-up - the psychological state of a teenager is more even, young men are quite sociable, but sometimes they withdraw, they are afraid to show feelings, and in a state of stress they may not cope with emotions. By 18, the formation of a stable psychological personality is unlikely to occur, and the army is already on the doorstep.
As a result, as doctors note, at the age of 19-20 after conscription, a very large number of people are demobilized with mental disorders. However, the military are familiar with all of the above conclusions, do not agree and stubbornly bend their line.
Old guard
According to a representative of the General Staff, "18 is the very age at which a young man can, for medical reasons, perform military service duties, and we do not intend to increase it." In other words, the main principle here is to have time to "shave" the boys while they are still helpless, have not looked around in life. Actually, the joke that the only doctor in the world who will tell you that you are completely healthy is a doctor from the military registration and enlistment office, just from such a position of the army leadership was born.
Although, according to Itogi's information, back in the 1980s, by order of the General Staff, a large medical study was carried out on the scope of the draft age. And the doctors recommended raising the lower bar to 19 years, keeping the upper one by 27. But even then, the military did not make drastic changes, because they did not see any sense in them. The proposal to move the draft bar for another three years, as the military themselves admit, did not come from a good life. "In principle, the increase in the draft age can be called statistically justified," said Sergei Zakharov, deputy director of the Institute of Demography at the State University - Higher School of Economics. …
Indeed, if we now call on those who have not served and have no reason to postpone since the age of 27, the problem of this year's draft can be solved - only old people will go into battle. Just what next, how good will these soldiers be?
Purely physiologically, a person at thirty can be an excellent soldier - there are almost no contraindications on this side. Well, except that psychologists foresee negative consequences. "On a conscious level, thirty-year-olds are easier to accept the new rules of the game," comments psychotherapist Sergei Mikhailov. To begin with, an adult, an accomplished person, for example, is used to going to bed and getting up in accordance with his personal needs, he is used to managing his own time, in the end - to fulfill requests, not orders. And what orders are sometimes in depth and rationality - each serving will tell you this. It's no wonder to go crazy.
Gennady Antokhin, a psychiatrist at one of the capital's clinics, believes that for a person of 28-30 years old, the stress that military service always means will not pass without leaving a trace. "Among my patients there are many former military personnel, and the largest percentage are precisely the" older "conscripts, that is, those who were drafted at the age of 25-27," he notes.
However, such a psychological breakdown is just one of the problems that will inevitably arise. Judge for yourself. By the age of 30, people usually have families, children, and work. Leaving it all for a year is a problem. Demographers believe that before this age, men simply will not have families and children. Postpone. This means that for a while, the birth rate will fall again. For the country today it is catastrophic, in 18 years the draft age will have to be increased to 40 years … An adult uncle will have other troubles as well. “What is the point of taking a thirty-year-old man from work and sending him to wash dishes and peel potatoes in the Siberian Military District?” - 24-year-old programmer Alexei is indignant. “So he will come back, and who needs him here? and you have to start your career from scratch."
Deputy Chairman of the Military Bar Association Vladimir Trignin told Itogi that many young men aged 27-28 have already approached them over the past month, worried that they might be drafted into the army: “They have a business, children, and everyday life in military service does not in any way seduce them. " However, many are not particularly worried: the grounds for the "slope" are solid.
An employee of one of the Moscow military registration and enlistment offices Sergei N. I'm not at all sure that any advances in age can play any role in increasing the volume of the call - only the people will anger. “At the moment, more than 40 percent of young people aged 18,” he says, “are declared unfit for military service for health reasons. case, the percentage of health dodgers will only increase with age. 26-year-old oil trader Igor all this hype with age also seems superfluous. The only reason, he admits, for which he still does not serve, is money. In general, he doesn’t care whether to buy off another two or five years. And he does not understand at all: does anyone really think that those who successfully avoided military service until the age of twenty-seven will not be able to continue to do so until the age of thirty.
But no matter what the doctors say, whether potential soldiers are ready or not ready for service, someone must defend the Motherland. Therefore, the postponements are being removed: the army is already waiting for the soloists of the theaters and the first violins of the orchestras, the newly-minted dads and students. The military leaders, there is no doubt, will not stop at the proposal to increase the conscription to 30 years. It was not possible to build a contract, civilized army. And someone has to answer for this. Apparently, the people - after all, it is their homeland that needs protection.
