"The authorities are always obliged to tell the truth, even if this truth does not always bring positive emotions."
D. Medvedev. Russian newspaper. 11 September 2016
Almost all of us were witnesses or participants in fraud. What is it about? Probably, most of us have seen old crumbling houses along the road where the highest officials of the country are planned to travel, hidden behind the banners with beautiful bricks and glamorous windows painted on them. This also includes fresh asphalt on the road before the arrival of important bosses, and original rehearsed performances with well-known high-level questions to bosses. Examples of fraud are reports on the fulfillment of the plan by 100%, when this is not true, on overestimated academic performance in schools and universities, on the disclosure of all crimes by law enforcement agencies in a certain territory, on voting in which 100% of the population took part, etc. …
In the explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, the following definition of eyewash is given: it is a deliberate deception in order to present something in a more favorable light than it really is. Fraud is based on embellishment of reality, i.e. in presenting it to another person in a more advantageous position than in reality, in concealing shortcomings or keeping them silent. The essence of "rubbing glasses" is in contrasting the shown and the real. Spectacular erasure is manifested in the form of window dressing, i.e. actions calculated on the external effect.
At the same time, lies in reports can be expressed not only in the form of deception, distortion of real data, but also in the form of silence. L. N. Tolstoy: "Not only do you not lie directly, you must try not to lie negatively - keeping silent." Bringing out some sides, hushing up others is a typical way of misinformation.
In all such cases, a specific characteristic of this type of deception is clearly traced - deliberately misleading officials or the population.
Why is this happening?
Let's start with the fact that many officials have a duty to prepare and send reports and reports of various kinds to higher and supervisory authorities at a certain frequency. These documents must contain real, objective information. When signing an official document, an official must be responsible for his signature.
Information received in such reports are necessary to his superior to exercise control. Reports of subordinates to the top represent feedback on the effectiveness of management, inform managers about the correspondence of the actual results of activities to the expected or desired. Otherwise, without a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of its decisions, power is torn away from reality and loses its meaning of existence, the system is "going haywire." The leader needs to know how well or how poorly he is doing. Therefore, reporting is needed by the head to improve the level of his management. Another thing is that sometimes reporting in itself turns into the main activity of an official, in comparison with which everything else pales.
What does lying in reports lead to? Let us explain with an example.
The regiment commander indicates in his report that all the equipment in the regiment is fully operational, complete and operational. Accordingly, the senior chief, studying such reports, decides that no funds are required to repair the armaments and equipment available in the regiment, to equip the regiment with equipment or to write it off. However, if there is faulty equipment in military units, then the combat readiness of the military unit is endangered, the military unit may not cope with the assigned tasks, respectively, plans for the combat use of interacting military formations may not be fulfilled, etc.
In the military environment, eyewash is even more dangerous than in ordinary life, since it is directly tied to the lives of people and the independence of the state. The mistakes of military command are scarcely visible in peacetime. They are really, and not on paper, will be visible only in a combat situation. I will give examples from the history of the Great Patriotic War.
This is how the commander of the 3rd Guards Brigade of the Marine Corps K. Sukhiashvili described the harm of deception in his reports: “Elements of fraud, false reports are carried out with impunity. 8th Guards Rifle Division (8th Guards Rifle - the famous Panfilov Division), bypassing the fortified unit of Sichev, gives me a situation: the road is open, Sicheva is taken. the brigade suddenly came under heavy machine-gun fire, and then mortar fire. The desire to report that, they say, I was moving forward quickly, forced, apparently, the division commander to deceive the higher command and me as a neighbor; as a result, unnecessary casualties, but not from him, and from a neighbor.
The case against the perpetrators of large losses is going on with impunity. From practice I was convinced that if the army commanders report: "The order is being carried out, I am slowly moving forward in small groups," this means that the neighbor is standing still and wants to deceive the unfired neighbor, and sends to his subordinates: "You are so, lie down, pretend, that you are advancing. " The enemy first pounces on one, the most active, and the most active are new, unfired units.
The junior should be more afraid of fraud and incorrect reporting than non-observance of an order. For non-observance of the order, they are frightened with execution by shooting, and with the wrong report I am wasting time. To say that I cannot attack, cannot, but not advance and report: "We carry out the order, slowly crawl forward in small groups" is possible, and no one will shoot."
What has changed since then? Our country is not in a state of large-scale war, because of fraud, perhaps, people do not die, but the style of work of many leaders remains the same.
This is how the famous writer and defector, himself a participant in this test, Viktor Suvorov, describes the post-war delivery of the final check to the regiment:
“In the 5th company, the commission checked the training of drivers of armored vehicles. Everyone in the regiment knew that the drivers had mostly theoretical training. However, all ten managed to drive the armored vehicle over rough terrain and all received excellent marks. Only much later did I find out the secret. The company commander trained not ten, but only a couple of drivers. And only on their preparation all the fuel was spent. During the check, the drivers took turns getting into the armored personnel carrier, where one of these two aces was already hiding. As soon as the next driver closed the hatch, an ace took his place. That's the whole answer. If fuel and service life were divided equally among all drivers, then all ten would receive satisfactory and some good training. But this is not enough for us! Let's get excellent students! And they were given. This turned into the fact that the company was completely incapable of combat."
In all the above examples, it is clear that it is impossible to make decisions adequate to the situation on the basis of unreliable and delayed information. Therefore, of course, it is necessary to fight this phenomenon. Moreover, if such cases are left unpunished, then this management style can be applied by the same people in emergency regimes: in conditions of hostilities or a state of emergency.
Considering the above, it is necessary now, in peaceful conditions, to identify the causes of this harmful phenomenon, as well as the conditions conducive to it.
According to the author, there are many reasons (the desire to curry favor and make a career, to correspond to the behavior of a certain circle, etc.), but the main one is the fear of punishment that will be applied to an official for a truthful report. Moreover, the author of the report is not necessarily himself to blame for faulty equipment, unrepaired houses, poor academic performance, objective reasons are also possible (lack of funding and time, physical inability to comply with the requirements of the law, guilty actions of others, etc.), but the person who submitted the report still faces punishment with disadvantages. Therefore, the officials are lying. Therefore, not only such an unscrupulous official is to blame for the general lies, but also his superiors, and the already established practice of this kind around. And according to the laws of behaviorism, getting into a team, a person adopts the rules of behavior that are accepted in this team, even if earlier he was not going to engage in eyewash. Life in a bureaucratic management system sets the subordinate a certain standard of behavior.
Let us explain this position.
The activity of any chief is evaluated according to certain parameters. Ideally, it should be assessed by the skillful leadership of the subordinate organization and depend on the effectiveness of the organization itself.
The main purpose of any military organization is constant readiness to repel enemy aggression, armed protection of the integrity and inviolability of the territory, as well as the fulfillment of tasks in accordance with international treaties. This means that it is precisely according to these criteria that the functioning of a given organization should be assessed, according to the criterion: is it ready or not ready to perform a combat mission.
Similarly, it is necessary to assess the head of any military organization - whether he can fulfill the task in his position. Please note: it is the official purpose of a serviceman, it is his official duties (and not general, special, freelance, etc.) that have the greatest impact on the effective performance of a military formation of its combat mission. Consequently, it is the knowledge, skills and abilities of his position, his ability to lead subordinates that should be the main criterion for evaluating a serviceman, and not square snowdrifts and freshly painted fences at military facilities assigned to him.
However, the existing system of checks of military units is structured in such a way that an officer who is remarkably knowledgeable in his specialty can still get a bad mark or even be dismissed from service. So, during any inspection and verification, the appearance of the personnel, drill techniques, passage with a song, etc., must be checked. That is why the commanders emphasize the appearance and the drill, spending precious hours on training these activities to the detriment of planned exercises and issues of combat training. In the 21st century, when modern wars are no longer waged with bayonet attacks and pistol firefights, the combat training program of any officer of the internal troops includes precisely the fulfillment of standards from a Makarov pistol, and the general assessment of an officer's preparedness is not higher than an assessment in this subject. Examples of this kind can be cited further.
But this is not so bad. The system of socialist competitions that took shape back in the USSR with the establishment of the best platoon, the best company, the best battalion, regiment, brigade, etc. is still valid. According to the results of each training period, year, in the orders of senior commanders, places are determined among the subordinate units in military discipline, in the service of the troops, in injuries, etc. Such a system inevitably confronts every commander with a regrettable fact: it does not matter how prepared the unit or unit entrusted to you, it is important how you can show off the eyes of the commission, which checks how you can deceive or cajole them in order to further gain a place in the rating, and preferably one of the first. After all, the commander, who is in last place, is scolded at meetings and in orders, they take him for additional control, which can easily lead to his removal from office.
You can compare the work of the commander of a military unit and not with someone else, but with the same period last year, and again find a decrease in the results of service activities. And for this negative dynamics, too, scold him, demand explanations, raise him at meetings as the worst, etc. Objective difficulties in the explanations of such a leader are little taken into account, because regardless of them, he has responsibilities to skillfully lead, constantly support, take action and be responsible, be responsible for everything.
According to the author, the commander of a military unit has duties that are practically impossible to fulfill in full. And with strict control, there is always something for which, for failure to fulfill which particular duty, he can be punished.
The regiment commander has about a thousand servicemen under his command. But, unlike the head of a civil enterprise (institution) with the same number of subordinates, the regiment commander is always responsible for them: even when a subordinate is on vacation, outside of working hours. Injuries and offenses of a subordinate, received not even in service, will still be taken into account in reports and reports on the state of security of military service of a military unit.
How do commanders survive and even make their careers in conditions when they cannot fulfill all their duties in full, even with their best efforts? They try to establish an informal relationship with a senior leader, who also understands that, if desired, he can always find shortcomings in a subordinate and punish him. But this subordinate tries, works hard, takes measures so that there are fewer shortcomings in his military unit. And although there are always drawbacks, they can be overlooked. For the time being, until such a commander falls out of favor. Then you can strictly and fundamentally find many shortcomings, and such a commander can be quickly and legally removed as having failed to fulfill his duties in the position held.
Why, in such conditions, does the commander himself provoke the senior commander to negative things and show him in reports absolutely truthful, but hardly perceived benevolently above, information about the shortcomings that can be hidden at your level?
Senior executives are also happy with rosy reports without flaws, even if they know the reports are not true. After all, when in the subordinate units (judging by the reports) everything is excellent, then this is also the merit of the most senior chief. It was he who organized the work of subordinates, he directed their activities in the right direction with his orders, he, on the basis of the gallant reports received from subordinates, will compose his report to an even more senior boss that everything is fine with him. And for the skillful leadership of the military collective, for the absence of shortcomings in the entrusted area of work, you can receive encouragement, a higher position, a prize, etc.
But such a system of information exchange is harmful to the military command itself and the combat readiness of military formations (in peacetime), to the performance of combat missions (in wartime).
Summing up, I consider it necessary to offer my vision for eliminating eyewash in the reports of military leaders:
1. Since the principle of one-man command operates very rigidly in the army, and democratic principles are impossible due to the secrecy regime and the duty of a soldier to carry out an order even under the threat of his life, it is possible to change the current situation only from above. This requires the political will of the country's top leadership and military departments.
2. If a subordinate knows, feels that his biased information and flattery are perceived by the boss without any verification, and vice versa - truthful information causes a negative reaction in relation to its author, then the subordinate will almost always lie to the boss. To avoid this, it is necessary to build a system for monitoring the objectivity of reports, punish the commanders (chiefs) who have submitted false reports for this, and inform other military commanders of the corresponding rank about this.
3. So that the commanders are not afraid to tell the truth, to show it in reports, it is necessary to reconsider the responsibilities of the main officials of the military unit. These responsibilities must, firstly, be formulated more precisely so that the commander is not responsible "for everything." The responsibility of any leader should only come in accordance with the principle of his guilt and taking into account the fact that he has an actual opportunity to fulfill the duties assigned to him. The fear of punishment for objective shortcomings should not induce the commander to lie in his reports. And secondly, when defining the responsibilities of commanders (chiefs), it is necessary to take into account the time and human resources available to them. Ideally, it is necessary to carry out calculations of labor costs for the performance of specific job duties, the performance of general and special duties, activities of the daily routine, etc. and map them to a 40 hour work week. In addition, I believe that the duties of the main officials of the regiment in the Charter of the Internal Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation should be considered typical, while specific duties must be developed by the senior commander for each of the commanders.
4. Criteria for evaluating servicemen, and especially commanders, must be determined based on their job assignment, and not, as is often practiced, according to the ability to walk in formation and level the snowdrifts with the forces of subordinates.
