In search of lost landmarks
The Russian army needs new spiritual and moral ideals
Something is amiss with us in education in the Armed Forces. The basic truth is that with the change of the political system in the state, its military structure should also change. But since 1991, some are nostalgic for the past, others see the exit of military priests at the institute, and others remain in prostration. There are also shy proposals for the modernization of the existing education system as a whole - although in fact there is nothing to modernize. The mistake of innovators in misunderstanding that a single or particular cannot solve a common problem.
Work with the personnel in the Armed Forces of Russia has become much more complicated - the state has been tasked with making the 12 months from the youth not only a warrior, but also a personality. A military educator should prepare a person for life in society, attach him to spiritual, material and physical culture. In essence, to fill in all that he was not given by his family, school, university. The task, let's say at once, is difficult.
Were on the ashes
The army now for this has neither the strength nor the means. Today, the very basic concepts of morality have changed: good, evil, virtue, vice, justice, duty. The priorities of enrichment by any means have come to the fore. These new values have acquired a specific monetary value and, thus, have approved in society far from the best postulates of Western morality. Uncertainty of the ethics category “the meaning of life” has eroded and such concepts as partnership, solidarity, integrity, a sense of the new, the value of the individual. In our country, a mature civil society has not been formed, which gives the personality the very necessary qualities for serving in the army.
It is in such conditions that the draft commissions have to work. Select the necessary human material for the acquisition of military units and divisions, special forces. And the commanders and the remnants of the defeated educational structures - to form an integral personality. But you can’t decide anything in fragments here, you need a coherent and harmonious system of working with people. The trouble is that the Soviet school of upbringing was destroyed, and instead a certain palliative was created, which, however, cannot fully solve this problem.
The Soviet educational system was born in the years of the Civil War and by that time was a brilliant find of the new government: a combination of education and political work gave a positive result. For the mass of illiterate fighters, the Red Army became a real school in the truest sense of the word. Until the end of the Civil War, the Soviet political departments were truly democratic organizations, which ultimately ensured the victory of the Bolsheviks. By the way, much of the practice of the work of the political departments of the Red Army was later borrowed by the British and the French.
A special concern today is the scientific support for changes in the spiritual and moral sphere of the state’s military organization. But, unfortunately, the leading scientific institutions of Russia stand apart from this problem. The Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB do not have their own research institutions in the field of military-humanitarian problems and military culture. At the same time, studies show that until 1917, the system of educating servicemen, primarily officers, was aimed at educating precisely the individual. It is not by chance that before the revolution, people in uniform left a significant mark on the development of Russian culture.
During the years of Soviet power, emphasis was placed on educating and rallying the military collective. Vivid individuals, with extensive knowledge, their own judgments, often aroused suspicion and wariness. As a result, the contribution of the Soviet officer corps to the development of national culture turned out to be much more modest. The costs of this model of military education are hazing, which has become a harmful tradition. Therefore, the new system should synthesize the best achievements of both previous systems.
Today, the officer’s private file is a faceless document with a bare list of biographical data, through the prism of which no man is ever seen. Likewise, they do not reflect the personality traits and certification of higher supervisors. Here, it is tempting to cite as an example of the characteristics of the subordinates of the famous General Mikhail Dragomirov, who by their brightness and imagery border on aphorisms: Lieutenant-General Domantovich - “was a horse, yes, went away,” Major-General Prince Putyatin is certified by one word - “is not normal” , Lieutenant-General Lesovoy- “zealous, but from the time of the rifled guns of the first type did not go ahead in training artillery”, Lieutenant-General Zass- “soft, not to say weak, mentally modest”, Lieutenant-General Baron Zedeler - “diligent, painful, more complaints than content”, Major General Oghfinovsky - “has long been in need of rest,” Lieutenant General Zverev - “honest, committed, conscientious. Scribe. Prays to the Germans. In the field is lost, "Major General Voinov -" persistent, soft. Cute ingratiate, tactful. To a gentle floor diligent. "
Comments are superfluous. Maybe in some ways it exacerbates the paints of Dragomirov, but even in these statements of the general, the persons being attested are certainly visible. Including his own.
It seems obvious that the personnel work with the officers today is also in dire need of reform. It is necessary to develop a system for assessing the personality of an officer, which would be fair and objectively reflect his inner essence. This implies a clear interaction of state power, the dominant ideology, society and the Armed Forces proper, which are the main vectors determining the development of military culture. Of course, this interaction should be based on the historical experience and national traditions of the people.
That is how Peter the Great acted. In military construction, he managed to extract from the Russian and European military experience all that was necessary, but in the spiritual sphere he relied solely on the national peculiarities of the Russian army and thanks to this he managed to create the best army in Europe. He revealed the secret of this in the masterpiece of world military culture - the 1716 “Military Charter” of the year created by him.
Unfortunately, in our stories It was not always so. The unique Russian military writer Anton Kersnovsky wrote bitterly that after the death of Suvorov, military thought in the country was inspired solely by foreign models. Therefore, its work and can be likened to the work of the machine, set at idle. Seeds, fruitful in the Brandenburg sands, on the Russian black soil give only tares. Carried away by foreigners, he stressed, we underestimated Suvorov.
We know what the attempts to negate the previous period of Russian culture and its historical heritage, the creation of the so-called proletarian culture, have led to. Nothing came of this in peacetime. And during the war, the new political formation was forced to take advantage of the achievements of the Russian military culture for its survival. This process was especially vividly manifested in the period of the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet government considered all questions of cultural construction through the prism of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and this was reflected in the development of culture as a whole. Even the collapse of the USSR was largely due to the fact that the culture created by the heirs of old Russia was not able to reproduce itself.
Teacher and educator
The importance of the development of the spiritual educational sphere has not yet been adequately evaluated by the political and military elite of the country. The humanitarian aspect is extremely poorly seen in the basic documents on military construction. After 1990, this issue has never been discussed at all at the state level. Meanwhile, the problem of military education has long required a radical solution.
We should start with the statutes. They were distinguished by the fact that the oath was at the head, which clearly indicated how a soldier should serve, that is, the document had a distinct moral principle. Let us compare the Petrine oath with the modern one, and its moral character will immediately become obvious. In the "Military Charter" 1716 of the year it is said literally the following: "In the same way, officers are soldiers, like fathers to children, for the sake of them they should be evenly fatherly, and of course the children before fathers are unconditional in all obedience, believing their hope from their fathers in everything for the sake of the fathers, they have a careless care about their condition, about their teaching, their food, and every supply. "
Here I would like to recall the Nikolaev Imperial Academy (the center of Russian military culture), the motto of which is: “The army that knows how to think wins”. A simple question: what was the main exam for admission to this academy? Someone will say - a strategy, someone will call tactics, someone with a smile - statutes. But the main exam was an essay. Time for work was not limited, the topic was chosen by the applicant himself. Then the professors from the read essays concluded that the applicants knew better how to think. Those were admitted to the entrance examinations. Such demands were due to the fact that the better a person knows a language, the better his thinking will work.
Another example worthy of emulation. Mikhail Kutuzov, who from the second class of the artillery engineering school taught on a par with the other teachers. This school had an original system of organization of studies. Upon admission, each teacher at the admissions tests noted the knowledge of the subject, the boy's ability, his interests, and compiled a special note that went to the head of the school, and he himself offered his own curriculum for them. So within the walls, each student prepared according to his own program.
And how was the certification of officers? A somewhat cumbersome but effective certification system was developed, in which all officers of the unit participated. It is democratic, even in our modern view. There was also a textbook on the education of the officer of the Russian army. The author of these lines on his search took 20 years. Modern authoritative experts express the opinion that it can serve Russia even today, taking into account the changed conditions. The main thing is that it does not say “must know” and so on, but simply says what should be done and how.
The Russian officer was a teacher and educator of his subordinates, which made his connection with the latter strong. Someone may recall that, they say, was the military clergy. This is so - one father to the regiment. During World War I, the 5000 priests helped to maintain discipline at the right level, until Kerensky broke this system. But the main educator, we repeat, was still an officer. Today, in the absence of a civil society, officers in our educational institutions have to take this work entirely on themselves.
Before the revolution, the officers themselves had revealed the traits to the 48 personality traits. Familiar professors from the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior once told me that they had developed a list of 16 traits to characterize a person. At Moscow State University, Professor Yu. Shmelev and his laboratory developed a list of personality traits from 548. It remains to choose from it features, say, inherent to the border guard, sailor, pilot. It seems that our personnel officers will receive a very necessary auxiliary material.
It is time to raise the question of a single, effective assessment of the quality of educational work. It still does not exist. And we need strict, specific criteria. For this, it is necessary to conduct serious research in order to create a new system of military education.
Forget the "werewolves in uniform"
The highest was the concept of military honor in the Russian army. In moral terms, the corps of officers stood at a height above all. Educated in terms of knightly honor, the officers took care of the honor of the uniform, the honor of the regiment, their personal honor as the pupil of an eye. The guardian of officer honor was in each regiment a court of honor (there were also special courts of honor for generals), elected by the company of officers of the regiment. Elected the most worthy. The court of honor always tactfully and fairly dealt with misunderstandings and quarrels between officers (except for purely official cases that were to be considered in command order), ordered the officer to conduct this or that behavior in cases of incidents with non-military persons and was a constant reminder of the need to behave with dignity in all cases of life - in the military environment and outside it. The court of honor reconciled, forced the guilty to apologize to the offended, offended, or found a duel necessary. For people with a poorly developed sense of honor, a duel is barbarism, but for an officer, the readiness to stand under a bullet for the sake of defensive honor (his own or protected face, or his regiment, or his homeland) was a necessity.
The judgments of the court of honor were categorical: no power and no court could annul or change them. This right belonged only to the supreme leader, the king, but he never exercised it.
The court of honor judged the misdemeanors of the (unofficial) officer and, finding him guilty, could demand his departure from the regiment and even from military service: the officer could not tolerate dishonest in his midst.
What personality traits were characteristic of the officers of the Russian army? We name only a few: fearlessness, lukewarm, disinterestedness, prudence, nobility, piety, vigor, generosity, faith (loyalty), militancy, will, endurance, heroism, pride, humanity (humanity), discipline, valor, virtue, decency, , dignity, military spirit, spirituality, soul, idealism (ideology), initiative (private initiative), intuition, sincerity, martial art, diligence, culture (intelligence), eloquence, love of military affairs, wisdom, courage, perseverance st, resourcefulness, tirelessness, morality, caution, courage (courage), responsibility, memory, patriotism (fatherland), triumph, obedience, asceticism, understanding, decency, truthfulness, professionalism, courage, perfection (excellence), conscience (conscience), consciousness, justice, perseverance, partnership (fraternity, corporation), tradition, hard work, mind (intelligence), courage, honor.
Isn't it true that a warm feeling arises from this list of qualities in the mind, but the question immediately arises: what qualities of the officer’s personality from those listed are characteristic of today's officer corps? Unfortunately, not every officer can boast of them. Today, alas, there are a lot of cases when people in uniform lose military honor, or even turn into "werewolves in uniform". But the military organization is a hierarchical structure, it has the ability to adopt the qualities of the individual, which is at the head of it. If the Minister of Defense is not at hand, his subordinates will follow his example. How much time and effort, for example, will be needed to clear the legacy of “Serdyukovism” from the army, change the shaken attitude of society towards its army.
For the same reason, it is important to extract as much as possible from our military historical heritage, first of all, what will allow us to educate a person in uniform by a real person. This task should be solved jointly with the Ministry of Education and other interested departments. And, maybe, first of all, pay attention to educational subjects that form a personality: history, Russian language, literature, rhetoric.
The task is far from simple, and the Ministry of Defense will not be able to cope with its solution without the help of civilian specialists. Therefore, you should first deal with the history of military culture, then with its philosophy, and then take up a solution to the problem. It should be borne in mind that we completely lack historical consciousness, responsibility for the past, present and future.
Something is amiss with us in education in the Armed Forces. The basic truth is that with the change of the political system in the state, its military structure should also change. But since 1991, some are nostalgic for the past, others see the exit of military priests at the institute, and others remain in prostration. There are also shy proposals for the modernization of the existing education system as a whole - although in fact there is nothing to modernize. The mistake of innovators in misunderstanding that a single or particular cannot solve a common problem.
Work with the personnel in the Armed Forces of Russia has become much more complicated - the state has been tasked with making the 12 months from the youth not only a warrior, but also a personality. A military educator should prepare a person for life in society, attach him to spiritual, material and physical culture. In essence, to fill in all that he was not given by his family, school, university. The task, let's say at once, is difficult.
Were on the ashes
The army now for this has neither the strength nor the means. Today, the very basic concepts of morality have changed: good, evil, virtue, vice, justice, duty. The priorities of enrichment by any means have come to the fore. These new values have acquired a specific monetary value and, thus, have approved in society far from the best postulates of Western morality. Uncertainty of the ethics category “the meaning of life” has eroded and such concepts as partnership, solidarity, integrity, a sense of the new, the value of the individual. In our country, a mature civil society has not been formed, which gives the personality the very necessary qualities for serving in the army.
It is in such conditions that the draft commissions have to work. Select the necessary human material for the acquisition of military units and divisions, special forces. And the commanders and the remnants of the defeated educational structures - to form an integral personality. But you can’t decide anything in fragments here, you need a coherent and harmonious system of working with people. The trouble is that the Soviet school of upbringing was destroyed, and instead a certain palliative was created, which, however, cannot fully solve this problem.The Soviet educational system was born in the years of the Civil War and by that time was a brilliant find of the new government: a combination of education and political work gave a positive result. For the mass of illiterate fighters, the Red Army became a real school in the truest sense of the word. Until the end of the Civil War, the Soviet political departments were truly democratic organizations, which ultimately ensured the victory of the Bolsheviks. By the way, much of the practice of the work of the political departments of the Red Army was later borrowed by the British and the French.
A special concern today is the scientific support for changes in the spiritual and moral sphere of the state’s military organization. But, unfortunately, the leading scientific institutions of Russia stand apart from this problem. The Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB do not have their own research institutions in the field of military-humanitarian problems and military culture. At the same time, studies show that until 1917, the system of educating servicemen, primarily officers, was aimed at educating precisely the individual. It is not by chance that before the revolution, people in uniform left a significant mark on the development of Russian culture.
During the years of Soviet power, emphasis was placed on educating and rallying the military collective. Vivid individuals, with extensive knowledge, their own judgments, often aroused suspicion and wariness. As a result, the contribution of the Soviet officer corps to the development of national culture turned out to be much more modest. The costs of this model of military education are hazing, which has become a harmful tradition. Therefore, the new system should synthesize the best achievements of both previous systems.
Today, the officer’s private file is a faceless document with a bare list of biographical data, through the prism of which no man is ever seen. Likewise, they do not reflect the personality traits and certification of higher supervisors. Here, it is tempting to cite as an example of the characteristics of the subordinates of the famous General Mikhail Dragomirov, who by their brightness and imagery border on aphorisms: Lieutenant-General Domantovich - “was a horse, yes, went away,” Major-General Prince Putyatin is certified by one word - “is not normal” , Lieutenant-General Lesovoy- “zealous, but from the time of the rifled guns of the first type did not go ahead in training artillery”, Lieutenant-General Zass- “soft, not to say weak, mentally modest”, Lieutenant-General Baron Zedeler - “diligent, painful, more complaints than content”, Major General Oghfinovsky - “has long been in need of rest,” Lieutenant General Zverev - “honest, committed, conscientious. Scribe. Prays to the Germans. In the field is lost, "Major General Voinov -" persistent, soft. Cute ingratiate, tactful. To a gentle floor diligent. "
Comments are superfluous. Maybe in some ways it exacerbates the paints of Dragomirov, but even in these statements of the general, the persons being attested are certainly visible. Including his own.
It seems obvious that the personnel work with the officers today is also in dire need of reform. It is necessary to develop a system for assessing the personality of an officer, which would be fair and objectively reflect his inner essence. This implies a clear interaction of state power, the dominant ideology, society and the Armed Forces proper, which are the main vectors determining the development of military culture. Of course, this interaction should be based on the historical experience and national traditions of the people.
That is how Peter the Great acted. In military construction, he managed to extract from the Russian and European military experience all that was necessary, but in the spiritual sphere he relied solely on the national peculiarities of the Russian army and thanks to this he managed to create the best army in Europe. He revealed the secret of this in the masterpiece of world military culture - the 1716 “Military Charter” of the year created by him.
Unfortunately, in our stories It was not always so. The unique Russian military writer Anton Kersnovsky wrote bitterly that after the death of Suvorov, military thought in the country was inspired solely by foreign models. Therefore, its work and can be likened to the work of the machine, set at idle. Seeds, fruitful in the Brandenburg sands, on the Russian black soil give only tares. Carried away by foreigners, he stressed, we underestimated Suvorov.
We know what the attempts to negate the previous period of Russian culture and its historical heritage, the creation of the so-called proletarian culture, have led to. Nothing came of this in peacetime. And during the war, the new political formation was forced to take advantage of the achievements of the Russian military culture for its survival. This process was especially vividly manifested in the period of the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet government considered all questions of cultural construction through the prism of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and this was reflected in the development of culture as a whole. Even the collapse of the USSR was largely due to the fact that the culture created by the heirs of old Russia was not able to reproduce itself.
Teacher and educator
The importance of the development of the spiritual educational sphere has not yet been adequately evaluated by the political and military elite of the country. The humanitarian aspect is extremely poorly seen in the basic documents on military construction. After 1990, this issue has never been discussed at all at the state level. Meanwhile, the problem of military education has long required a radical solution.
We should start with the statutes. They were distinguished by the fact that the oath was at the head, which clearly indicated how a soldier should serve, that is, the document had a distinct moral principle. Let us compare the Petrine oath with the modern one, and its moral character will immediately become obvious. In the "Military Charter" 1716 of the year it is said literally the following: "In the same way, officers are soldiers, like fathers to children, for the sake of them they should be evenly fatherly, and of course the children before fathers are unconditional in all obedience, believing their hope from their fathers in everything for the sake of the fathers, they have a careless care about their condition, about their teaching, their food, and every supply. "
Here I would like to recall the Nikolaev Imperial Academy (the center of Russian military culture), the motto of which is: “The army that knows how to think wins”. A simple question: what was the main exam for admission to this academy? Someone will say - a strategy, someone will call tactics, someone with a smile - statutes. But the main exam was an essay. Time for work was not limited, the topic was chosen by the applicant himself. Then the professors from the read essays concluded that the applicants knew better how to think. Those were admitted to the entrance examinations. Such demands were due to the fact that the better a person knows a language, the better his thinking will work.
Another example worthy of emulation. Mikhail Kutuzov, who from the second class of the artillery engineering school taught on a par with the other teachers. This school had an original system of organization of studies. Upon admission, each teacher at the admissions tests noted the knowledge of the subject, the boy's ability, his interests, and compiled a special note that went to the head of the school, and he himself offered his own curriculum for them. So within the walls, each student prepared according to his own program.
And how was the certification of officers? A somewhat cumbersome but effective certification system was developed, in which all officers of the unit participated. It is democratic, even in our modern view. There was also a textbook on the education of the officer of the Russian army. The author of these lines on his search took 20 years. Modern authoritative experts express the opinion that it can serve Russia even today, taking into account the changed conditions. The main thing is that it does not say “must know” and so on, but simply says what should be done and how.
The Russian officer was a teacher and educator of his subordinates, which made his connection with the latter strong. Someone may recall that, they say, was the military clergy. This is so - one father to the regiment. During World War I, the 5000 priests helped to maintain discipline at the right level, until Kerensky broke this system. But the main educator, we repeat, was still an officer. Today, in the absence of a civil society, officers in our educational institutions have to take this work entirely on themselves.
Before the revolution, the officers themselves had revealed the traits to the 48 personality traits. Familiar professors from the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior once told me that they had developed a list of 16 traits to characterize a person. At Moscow State University, Professor Yu. Shmelev and his laboratory developed a list of personality traits from 548. It remains to choose from it features, say, inherent to the border guard, sailor, pilot. It seems that our personnel officers will receive a very necessary auxiliary material.
It is time to raise the question of a single, effective assessment of the quality of educational work. It still does not exist. And we need strict, specific criteria. For this, it is necessary to conduct serious research in order to create a new system of military education.
Forget the "werewolves in uniform"
The highest was the concept of military honor in the Russian army. In moral terms, the corps of officers stood at a height above all. Educated in terms of knightly honor, the officers took care of the honor of the uniform, the honor of the regiment, their personal honor as the pupil of an eye. The guardian of officer honor was in each regiment a court of honor (there were also special courts of honor for generals), elected by the company of officers of the regiment. Elected the most worthy. The court of honor always tactfully and fairly dealt with misunderstandings and quarrels between officers (except for purely official cases that were to be considered in command order), ordered the officer to conduct this or that behavior in cases of incidents with non-military persons and was a constant reminder of the need to behave with dignity in all cases of life - in the military environment and outside it. The court of honor reconciled, forced the guilty to apologize to the offended, offended, or found a duel necessary. For people with a poorly developed sense of honor, a duel is barbarism, but for an officer, the readiness to stand under a bullet for the sake of defensive honor (his own or protected face, or his regiment, or his homeland) was a necessity.
The judgments of the court of honor were categorical: no power and no court could annul or change them. This right belonged only to the supreme leader, the king, but he never exercised it.
The court of honor judged the misdemeanors of the (unofficial) officer and, finding him guilty, could demand his departure from the regiment and even from military service: the officer could not tolerate dishonest in his midst.
What personality traits were characteristic of the officers of the Russian army? We name only a few: fearlessness, lukewarm, disinterestedness, prudence, nobility, piety, vigor, generosity, faith (loyalty), militancy, will, endurance, heroism, pride, humanity (humanity), discipline, valor, virtue, decency, , dignity, military spirit, spirituality, soul, idealism (ideology), initiative (private initiative), intuition, sincerity, martial art, diligence, culture (intelligence), eloquence, love of military affairs, wisdom, courage, perseverance st, resourcefulness, tirelessness, morality, caution, courage (courage), responsibility, memory, patriotism (fatherland), triumph, obedience, asceticism, understanding, decency, truthfulness, professionalism, courage, perfection (excellence), conscience (conscience), consciousness, justice, perseverance, partnership (fraternity, corporation), tradition, hard work, mind (intelligence), courage, honor.
Isn't it true that a warm feeling arises from this list of qualities in the mind, but the question immediately arises: what qualities of the officer’s personality from those listed are characteristic of today's officer corps? Unfortunately, not every officer can boast of them. Today, alas, there are a lot of cases when people in uniform lose military honor, or even turn into "werewolves in uniform". But the military organization is a hierarchical structure, it has the ability to adopt the qualities of the individual, which is at the head of it. If the Minister of Defense is not at hand, his subordinates will follow his example. How much time and effort, for example, will be needed to clear the legacy of “Serdyukovism” from the army, change the shaken attitude of society towards its army.
For the same reason, it is important to extract as much as possible from our military historical heritage, first of all, what will allow us to educate a person in uniform by a real person. This task should be solved jointly with the Ministry of Education and other interested departments. And, maybe, first of all, pay attention to educational subjects that form a personality: history, Russian language, literature, rhetoric.
The task is far from simple, and the Ministry of Defense will not be able to cope with its solution without the help of civilian specialists. Therefore, you should first deal with the history of military culture, then with its philosophy, and then take up a solution to the problem. It should be borne in mind that we completely lack historical consciousness, responsibility for the past, present and future.
Information