Remaking The Army.(Russia)(Statistical Data Included)

Sinking submarines, desertions within the ranks, suicides, corruption, decay and dissolution. Russia's generals are no longer running a superpower's military, but they still think Army life is fine--and are fighting fiercely to stave off anything that smacks of change.

For almost a decade, Russian leaders have been promising to reform a military machine that employs 3 million and drafts 400,000 young men each year into what can turn out to be a life of disease and neglect. But if the country's lawmakers and President Vladimir Putin have their way, that tradition may pass. America's swift victory in Afghanistan has underscored what a well-trained and -funded military can do, and the lesson has not been lost on Russian leaders. By 2010, Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov aims to re-create the Russian Army as a wholly professional force, complete with a slimmed-down career-officer corps and a fully volunteer rank and file--not to mention modern equipment, decent salaries and housing--and a war readiness that modern Russia has never seen. The first step is what the brass most adamantly oppose: the right of conscripts to opt out of military servitude and choose alternative service instead.

If passed by the Duma, new legislation would allow thousands of Army- age youngsters to fill labor-intensive social-sector jobs--working in hospitals, schools, public-works projects and anywhere else Russia's plunging birthrates have left little manpower for menial or heavy work. Socially and demographically, it makes good sense. It also dovetails with Putin's aggressive brand of socioeconomic and political modernization. Yet the Army balks at handing the Kremlin greater control over what is essentially a bloated and corrupt institution, living by its own Soviet-era rules. Losing the right to draft a multimillion-man Army would represent a striking symbolic break, a final rebuff to the old Red Army's glorious past. For Russia's old- style generals, the whole notion of alternative service and a volunteer Army smacks of treason. At the same time, they see NATO expanding eastward; they hear Putin talking about a new partnership with the United States, to the point of granting bases within the borders of the former empire. No wonder the military elite is trying to sabotage these plans, says Alexander Goltz, a military expert with Russia's Ezhenedelny Journal. "It's a question of their very survival."

Clearly, drastic changes are in order. Goltz likens today's Army to an inverted pyramid. "There are more colonels than lieutenants," he says. It's also not uncommon to find four to five officers for every 10 soldiers. Many of those "soldiers" are often in fact wives of the brass, "recruited on paper as machine-gun and mortar operators, when in fact they sit at home with the kids," says military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. Considering that officers' salaries are low and military housing is often decrepit and isolated, the perk of a second salary is an understandable bonus. Yet it's also an undeniable drain on the system.

Previous reforms have been half-hearted. In the 1990s, former president Boris Yeltsin made military reform a re-election issue--then promptly forgot about it. "Yeltsin didn't give a damn about the Army. He only wanted the personal loyalty of the top generals," says Felgenhauer. "He wanted them to fight amongst themselves and drink booze." Decay has been the trajectory ever since. Thousands of conscripts each year die as a result of brutal hazing, accidents, deteriorating health and living conditions and plain negligence. Hepatitis, ...