Life in the Soviet Army

A standing army is an army divorced from the people.

THAT statement by Lenin referred to the czarist forces of Nicholas II. The Soviet army of today is still isolated, though not much more so than armies of other major powers. Perhaps the greatest difference is that it enjoys far higher prestige and power within its country than its Western counterparts do in theirs. Though bureaucracy and inertia beset much of Soviet society, the highly trained military is less inefficient than many other sectors of Soviet life.

By law, every able-bodied Soviet youth becomes eligible for military duty at 18, and can be called any time until he reaches 27. Deferments are rare. In any army, a recruit's life is uncomfortable at best. The Soviet army is no exception. The new recruit sleeps in tents in summer. In winter he sleeps in bleak barracks where he has a bunk, night table and a tiny cupboard for toilet articles. Once a week, many platoons visit the nearby steam bath (the traditional Russian form of bathing).

With a starting wage of three rubles a month ($3.33), the recruit usually spends most of it at his unit's bufet on candies and cookies to liven up his nourishing but dull diet. Breakfast usually consists of kasha (cereal porridge), bread and tea. Lunch, the main meal, may include herring, onions, a bowl of potato or vegetable soup with a chunk of meat in it, macaroni or beans, and more bread. Supper may be mashed potatoes and perhaps cabbage or cauliflower--and more bread. A Russian soldier consumes an average 1 1/2 lbs. of bread a day, one reason that most draftees put on six to eight pounds during their tour of duty.

The soldier's day begins at 6 a.m., ends with lights out at 10 p.m., and is filled with rigorous training, physical exercise and equally vigorous political indoctrination. Each unit has a "Lenin room" in its barracks, where there are propaganda displays, such as pictures of racial troubles in the U.S. and political literature. The Soviet soldier is instilled with a sense of dedication to the Communist cause, a readiness to defend the motherland and a xenophobic dread of foreign subversion.

In their few hours of spare time, soldiers are put through a wide variety of well-organized activities such as acrobatics, choral groups, folk dancing and sports. Draftees are allowed to leave the camp on Sunday, and get a ten-day leave once during a two-year tour. While off base, they are forbidden to drink anything stronger than beer. The punishment for tippling is ten to 15 days in the stockade. Though the sentence may be sus pended after a day or two of confinement, the unexpired term is tacked onto the tour of duty. Heavy drinkers have been known to serve 50 or 100 days beyond their discharge date. -

Whereas the draftee returns to civilian life, the Soviet officer is a professional soldier. The officer corps tends to be proud, cliquish and self-perpetuating. There are special cadet schools for all services, where the sons of officers are trained to take their place in the military elite. Officers are paid about 25% more than civilians of similar age and skill. A senior lieutenant earns 140 rubles ($155) a month, a colonel 500 rubles, a marshal 2,000. Along with the money goes the right to shop in special military stores; some generals and marshals and their wives are also entitled to use the exclusive Section 200 in Moscow's GUM department store, which is reserved for top party and government officials.

Nearly 50% of all officers are either engineers or technicians, and the officers pride themselves on a high degree of competence. In Moscow the armed forces have their own theater, ice-hockey rink, officers' club and special park with basketball and tennis courts and boating facilities. Throughout the country, the military maintains special hunting lodges, ski resorts and summer vacation houses. The rigid strictures against drinking do not apply to officers. One marveling U.S. officer remembers a dinner in East Germany during which Marshal Grechko's first deputy, Marshal Ivan Yakubovsky, drank 18 successive vodka toasts.

The officer corps is itself highly stratified. Generals are given cars and drivers as well as large apartments and summer dachas at nominal rents. While Grechko was Soviet Commander in East Germany, for example, he and his wife Klavdiya had a town house in East Berlin and a secluded complex of five villas in the East Berlin suburb of Wuensdorf, attended by a small army of Russian maids and orderlies. Now he owns a spacious dacha in the Moscow suburb of Arkhangelskoye. When his schedule permits, he also indulges his love for hunting with frequent trips to military duck-hunting lodges. To be sure, the perquisites of the officer corps are no greater than those enjoyed by officers in many other armies. Still, the Soviet military is not doing badly at all for an organization that until 1946 humbly called itself the Red Army of Workers and Peasants.

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