Militarizing Men

Gender, Conscription, and War in Post-Soviet Russia

Maya Eichler

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780804778367
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Internationale Beziehungen

A state's ability to maintain mandatory conscription and wage war rests on the idea that a "real man" is one who has served in the military. Yet masculinity has no inherent ties to militarism. The link between men and the military, argues Maya Eichler, must be produced and reproduced in order to fill the ranks, engage in combat, and mobilize the population behind war.

In the context of Russia's post-communist transition and the Chechen wars, men's militarization has been challenged and reinforced. Eichler uncovers the challenges by exploring widespread draft evasion and desertion, anti-draft and anti-war activism led by soldiers' mothers, and the general lack of popular support for the Chechen wars. However, the book also identifies channels through which militarized gender identities have been reproduced. Eichler's empirical and theoretical study of masculinities in international relations applies for the first time the concept of "militarized masculinity, " developed by feminist IR scholars, to the case of Russia.

1 Gender and Militarization in the Soviet Union

ON MAY 8, 1967, Leonid Brezhnev presided over the unveiling of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Moscow’s Red Square. The memorial was dedicated to those who had died in the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), as World War Two is commonly referred to in Russian. The ceremony celebrated the feats of the Red Army, and reaffirmed its status as a pillar of Soviet state and society. It was also an occasion to highlight the heroism of the soldiers who had fought in the war and call for society’s deepest respect for them.¹ N. G. Egorichev, first secretary of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party, portrayed veterans of the Great Patriotic War as role models for the younger generation. He stated in his speech that these heroes had shown “wholehearted courage and patriotism, fidelity to military duty, steadfast devotion to the Communist Party, to the Socialist Fatherland.”² The Soviet leadership of the time constructed a heroic image of the Soviet soldier that was rooted in the experience of mass mobilization and sacrifice during the Great Patriotic War. The war and its heroes helped reinforce military service as a “sacred duty” of citizenship and an act of patriotism informed by the communist struggle and loyalty to the party. It was men who were imagined as the true heroes and model citizens in the official narrative of the Great Patriotic War, even though a great number of women had served in the Soviet military and many more had replaced men in the workforce during World War Two. Stalinist war propaganda had emphasized women’s motherhood over their military heroism, and the postwar period saw women’s swift demobilization. After the war, women’s role as patriotic mothers who had willingly sacrificed their sons for the defense of the nation overshadowed their wartime contribution as combatants.

This chapter examines the relationship between gender and the military in the Soviet Union from two angles. First, it places gender roles in the context of war and militarism, which centrally shaped the development of Soviet state and society. Militarization was a process that shaped not only the economy or educational system but also Soviet gender relations and notions of masculinity and femininity. Universal male conscription was a key organizational feature in the militarization and mobilization of Soviet society and established a firm link between masculinity and the military. Second, I approach women’s and men’s roles in the military sphere through an analysis of the Soviet state’s gender policies. The Soviet Union officially espoused a policy of women’s emancipation but never extended it to the military sphere. A policy of obligatory male conscription together with the political and social importance assigned to the military reinforced gender inequality in the Soviet Union.

Demographic developments during the 1960s called into question the policy of women’s equality and exposed anxieties over the balance of nationalities within the Soviet Union. Even more significant changes occurred during the late Soviet period, when the Soviet war in Afghanistan and Gorbachev’s policies led to a reduced status for the military and difficulties for the state’s conscription policy. Greater freedom of expression and organizing among soldiers’ mothers contributed to public discussion of problems in the military such as systemic hazing and deaths among servicemen. Desertion and draft evasion became more common, indicating challenges to militarized masculinity. The final years of the Soviet Union were accompanied by the partial demilitarization of notions of femininity and masculinity.

The Significance of the Military for Soviet State and Society: Sketching the Outlines of “Militarized Socialism”

The changes that took place during the late Soviet period questioned the centrality of the military logic that had shaped Soviet state and society. This military logic, it should be noted, to a certain extent preceded the Soviet Union. Scholars underline the long Russian tradition of “defense-mindedness,” which includes militarism as state ideology, comparatively high institutional autonomy of the military, and the state’s ability to extract huge sacrifices from the population.³ The traditional fusion of civil and military spheres of the Imperial Russian state was wiped out in 1917 but soon came to be re-established to new political and ideological ends, though “in a modified form and on a different social basis.”⁴

The Soviet state took shape in the context of a hostile international environment and multiple war experiences: defeat in World War One, the divisive and bloody Civil War, and the victorious but devastating Great Patriotic War. Manfred Sapper traces the origins of Soviet militarism to the state-making period after the October Revolution. He emphasizes the increase in societal violence that resulted from deserting and demobilized soldiers returning from World War One and the impact of the Civil War (1918–1921) that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power. The merging of military and civilian spheres rather than military dominance over politics distinguished this form of militarism. The early period of Soviet state formation saw the militarization of political, economic, and social life, as well as widespread violence and repression.⁵ The Civil War was not followed by a process of demilitarization. Instead, most aspects of daily life, such as work or education, remained militarized. Sapper argues that the Civil War provided the legitimating ideology for Bolshevik rule.⁶ The centrality of militarism and militarization to Soviet state and society established during Vladimir Lenin’s rule was reinforced by Stalin’s policies and society’s experiences of World War Two.

The Stalinist period was characterized by the drive to catch up economically through rapid industrialization. This development strategy entailed “a massive extraction of resources from the population and their investment in heavy industry,” which favored the growth of the defense industry.⁷ In a 1931 speech Stalin linked Soviet development policy to socialist patriotism: “Do you want our Socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this, you must put an end to its backwardness in the shortest possible time and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building up the socialist economic system.”⁸ Stalin’s appeal to patriotism, rather than Marxism-Leninism, became central to his mobilization of the population for war.⁹ Soviet patriotism, as it became defined in the 1930s, meant loyalty to the Communist Party leadership. The one-party Soviet state equated loyalty to the state with loyalty to the party.¹⁰

The Great Patriotic War, which began with the German invasion of June 22, 1941, led to a further mobilization of people and resources by the state. It is well documented that broad sections of Soviet society—male and female—threw themselves into the war effort and that Soviet citizens suffered enormous deprivations and casualties (26.6 million dead). Roger D. Markwick and many others have described the war as a “watershed” in the history of the SU, which transformed the country into a “nation-state.”¹¹ The Soviet leadership continued the characteristics of the war-mobilized society such as “the war economy, central planning, military strength of the state, and patriotism of society” in the postwar period.¹² These features of war mobilization had been decisive in defeating Nazi Germany and thus were accepted by society as central elements of Soviet life. Lev Gudkov argues that “readiness for mobilization [became] one of the legitimising principles of power.”¹³ The Great Patriotic War replaced the Bolshevik Revolution as the main event legitimating the Soviet regime, which solidified a prior shift from the emphasis on international class-struggle to Soviet patriotism that had taken place during the 1930s.¹⁴ At the same time, victory against Germany elevated the status of the Red Army, establishing it as a “respected and trusted institution” of Soviet society for most citizens.¹⁵

Stalin created a narrative of the Great Patriotic War that portrayed himself and the party as the main heroes, and downplayed the role of Soviet citizens in defeating Nazi Germany. In 1947, the Soviet leader downgraded the Victory Day holiday (May 9) to a work day and eliminated most of the benefits for veterans of World War Two. With Nikita Khrushchev’s reassessment of the Stalinist legacy, the narrative began to change, and by the 1960s there was a full-fledged “cult of the Great Patriotic War.”¹⁶ In 1965, Leonid Brezhnev re-established Victory Day as a holiday, which became an important annual ritual in the military-patriotic mobilization of society. This was part of a deepening of societal militarization during Brezhnev’s rule (1964–1982) that included the expansion of military-education programs. In the context of declining economic growth rates and worries about the weakening loyalty and changing values of Soviet citizens, militarization became an increasingly important tool of domestic political legitimation. The 1960s also saw the expansion of welfare benefits for veterans, who now held the most privileged status in the Soviet welfare state. In exchange, the state and party leadership expected veterans’ loyalty and participation in the mobilization of society.¹⁷

The entrenchment of militarism as an “integral component” of Soviet party-state ideology and of militarization as a fundamental societal process¹⁸ gave rise to what some scholars have termed “militarized socialism.” The deformation of socialist ideals into “militarized socialism” can be traced to the period of early Soviet history and World War Two but was reinforced as the Soviet leadership struggled with economic stagnation and weakening political support during the 1960s.¹⁹ The emergence of the Cold War and superpower rivalry between the United States and the USSR further strengthened the importance of the military for the Soviet regime. The military was seen as a key instrument in achieving superpower status and balance with the U.S. The arms race was particularly important in reinforcing the emphasis on defense production and the subordination of the economy to military needs. One outcome of this was to skew the Soviet economy toward a focus on heavy industry. While Premier Khrushchev (1958–1964) attempted to reduce ground forces, citing the increased importance of nuclear weapons and the possibility of peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and the West, the policy was reversed under Brezhnev. During his rule the Soviet Union experienced a further military buildup.²⁰ The geopolitical context of the Cold War strengthened the centrality of the military logic in Soviet state and society.

Gendering Military Service in the Soviet Union

A standing army and conscription were established in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725). Conscription was based on a quota system that obliged village communities to supply a certain number of peasants to serve as soldiers. During much of the eighteenth century military service was for life, but the length of service was reduced over time. On the urging of military reformer...