Regular Army Highlanders
The Russian military command was prompted to take this step by the increasing incidence of hazing on the basis of interethnic contradictions. In fact, there is nothing new in this idea. In the Russian Empire, the practice of recruiting military units from persons of the same nationality or religion was widespread. However, as shown historical experience, this kind of approach is fraught with a loss of controllability by the army.
From the memoirs of an officer-cavalryman of the royal army, Anatoly Markov, who wrote the book “In the Ingush Horse Regiment”: “The personnel of the“ wild division ”were distinguished by low discipline and love for theft. At overnight stays and at every opportunity, the horsemen strove to quietly separate from the regiment with the intention of dragging away from the residents all that was badly lying. With this, the command struggled with all measures, up to the execution of the guilty, but in the first two years of the war it was very difficult to erase the Ingush from their purely Asian perspective on the war as a campaign for prey ... They considered every enemy of the enemy territory with all the ensuing consequences, and his property is his legitimate loot. The Austrians were not taken captive at all and cut their heads to those who had surrendered ... The Ingush’s attitude towards state property was no better. For a long time the regiment could not ensure that the riders did not consider weapon the subject of purchase and sale. "
Last week it became known about the mass disobedience of Caucasians in military unit No. XXUMX (Sokol Air Base), located in the Perm Territory. More than a hundred servicemen called up from the North Caucasus refused to carry out the orders of the officers. Colonel Dmitry Kuznetsov, who heads the military unit, was even forced to ask for help in restoring order to the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kama Region.
According to him, having formed “combat microcollections” in parts, Caucasians engaged in extortion and forced colleagues to do all kinds of work for them. An attempt by the command to bring order to the unit by the usual methods failed - Caucasians soldiers rebelled. According to rumors, in order to reason them, the army leadership had to use force.
And this is far from an isolated case of clashes of military personnel on a national basis. Perhaps the biggest scandal occurred a little over a year ago in the Baltic navy. Sailors called from Dagestan Vitaly Shah, Hajibahmud Kurbanov, Arag Eminov, Sirazhutdin Cheriev, Naib Taygibov, Islam Khamurzov, Jamal Temirbulatov repeatedly robbed and beat conscripts. Once they forced their colleagues to lie on the ground so that the word KAVKAZ was made from their bodies.
Rumor has it that these and many other stories made the Ministry of Defense seriously think about changing the approach to manning military units. The military department intends to take the “East” and “West” battalions in Chechnya as a model, just formed according to the mono-ethnic and mono-confessional principle.
In essence, experts argue, this is a return to the well-forgotten experience of the “wild divisions” that existed first in the tsarist army, and then for some time in the Soviet armed forces. At the same time, analysts do not get tired of reminding why the military leadership at one time refused this to this practice.
During the Russian Empire there was a so-called Caucasian native horse division. There were a lot of problems with it. And yet the authorities more or less successfully managed to control it. First of all, because it consisted almost entirely of volunteers. Secondly, the command staff of the division was mostly Russian.
At the dawn of Soviet times, this concept was considered successful. At the same time, at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, its hopelessness became clear - in June 1941, some mono-ethnic parts refused to obey the command.
Another attempt to create a mono-ethnic division was made almost ten years ago. This is the so-called Chechen company, which in 2001 was formed near Moscow in the 27 Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. It was invented by the then Chief of General Staff, Army General Anatoly Kvashnin.
To put it mildly, this strange formation was called a “sports company”, but in the Moscow Military District it was better known as the brigade of the General Staff. On the very first day of their service, the young Chechens refused to do any work on the house, stating that “this is not a man’s thing.” The command staff could not do anything - the officers were ordered to observe tolerance. It all ended with the fact that the sportsman beat an officer who was on duty in the canteen. As a result, it was disbanded.
Comments on Valentina Melnikova, Executive Secretary of the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees
I communicate with the president of the country, the minister of defense, the chief of the general staff and I can say: they never said anything like that. And during his recent speech in the State Duma, the Chief of General Staff did not say a word about the possibility of creating such units.
In general, it is difficult to physically form “wild brigades”: if, for example, a person is an atheist, where should he be determined in which part? And who in the "wild" units will command? What nationality officers? If such units are located in the region of their formation, then this may lead to an increase in centrifugal tendencies among individual republics, territories and regions.
Imagine what would happen if prisoners were grouped along similar lines. Would this improve the climate in the team? Discipline? The army, of course, is not a prison, but in terms of the accumulation of adults in one place, parallels can be traced.
In general, such a decision would be unconstitutional. Today in the Russian passport there is no “religion” and “nationality” columns. Therefore, it is even legally impossible to form mono-religious or mono-ethnic military units.
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