Service in the Russian army is officially defined as an honorable duty for Russian male citizens between the ages of 18 and 27. Few people argue that this is a duty today, but the epithet "honorable" does not evoke positive emotions in everyone. If a young man has passed the army hardening, then he can afford to declare that he carried out an honorable mission to protect the borders of the Motherland. However, not every conscript today, unfortunately, is ready to associate such concepts as “army” and “honorable duty with each other.
The fact is that during the years of timelessness, when we still continued to live on the ruins of the Soviet Union, the Russian army became a kind of scapegoat for all those fatal miscalculations that those in power made. This negative connotation still cannot disappear from the minds of the majority of Russians. Everyone, of course, understands that Russia needs a modern, mobile, effective and combat-ready army, but not every parent today is ready to give up their offspring in order for him to become one of those who will represent this combat-ready army in the future. The prestige of the military service is at a rather low level. This, sadly to realize, is a fact. Needless to say, nothing is being done in terms of solving the problem of increasing the prestige of military service by the state, but so far the pace of this activity remains rather low, and if they try to accelerate them, then this acceleration often resembles an unacceptable fever.
This is the problem that the Russian government, headed by Dmitry Medvedev, is concerned about today. On September 13, 2012, a very remarkable meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers is planned, at which an issue related to increasing the prestige and attractiveness of service in the ranks of the Russian army will be raised. At the same time, according to the Izvestia newspaper, the changes may affect Russian legislation, because, as they say, our people do not always trust the usual promises of ministers.
The purpose of new developments may be to ensure that Russian citizens who have served or are serving in the army or in the navy have the opportunity to receive some additional benefits, including benefits, so to speak, of civil jurisdiction. The following benefits have been announced today: grants for graduates of higher educational institutions who have passed the "deadline" to continue their studies at their chosen Russian or foreign business schools; benefits associated with the inclusion in the so-called personnel reserve of civil servants; benefits for those who have served in the army for admission to Russian universities; pre-conscription training of young people in military-technical specialties on a budgetary basis. The introduction of a new system of educational work in the ranks of the Armed Forces is also possible.
The goals seem to be good. Government officials say that the innovations should start working in Russia by the beginning of the autumn 2012 draft in order to realize all their positive potential in practice. By the beginning of the autumn draft …
However, it is precisely this haste that causes criticism from the experts. Many argue that the very idea of increasing the attractiveness of military service in our country is more than timely, but at the same time it is necessary to abandon the idea of starting to flog a fever. Fever again …
As you know, the pre-set deadlines for the implementation of the program can play a negative role, because in such a short period of time it will hardly be possible to bring the legislative basis for the indicated ideas to 100%. But even if we assume that the legislative framework will be prepared at the proper level, then not every autumn conscript will know about it. The fact is that the popularization of military service is, among other things, a psychological task, when a young man constantly receives information from the media about what preferences the same "deadline" promises him in the future. If the information campaign, which, in principle, can be called advertising, in the good sense of the word, is actively pursued, then positive results of innovations can be expected. But there are only 2 months left before the start of the autumn conscription, and if we take into account that the discussion of the draft will begin only in mid-September, then it would be too optimistic to talk about its full readiness by October 1.
In general, the government's concern about raising the prestige of the army service is, of course, a good thing. But it is impermissible to solve this problem behind closed doors, without involving the general public. Otherwise, even such a goal may acquire only bureaucratic thorns, due to which the final result may simply not be seen.
