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- "Clad in full camouflage uniforms, children as
young as nine are put through a gruelling training course. It includes
mock clashes and ambushes, and lessons in how to use weapons such as axes,
knives and Kalashnikovs. Children are even taught how to handle a rocket-propelled
grenade launcher. "
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- By Mark Franchetti in Moscow
- link
- 9-3-00
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- Russian schoolchildren are to be sent to summer military
boot camps to learn how to dig trenches and fire Kalashnikov rifles.
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- The move is part of President Vladimir Putin's campaign
to restore a sense of national pride to the country's beleaguered armed
forces.
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- Basic military training was back on the curriculum for
the first time since the Soviet era as pupils began returning from their
summer holidays last week.
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- Alongside traditional subjects such as history and maths,
they will be obliged to attend marching lessons and special courses on
how to react to crises such as impending nuclear attack, terrorist bombs
or hostage-taking. There will be special drills with gas masks.
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- The climax will come at the end of each summer term when
all boys over the age of 15 will be made to spend a week at a military
training camp, where retired army officers will teach them how to assemble
and fire Kalashnikovs. They will also use mortars, practise various fighting
techniques and dig trenches. Girls will be taught first aid.
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- Alla Timokhovskaya, the deputy director of Moscow's school
number 620, said the classes in "military-patriotic education"
would turn pupils into better citizens.
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- "We will take our kids on excursions to military
bases and tank museums," she said. "They will receive lessons
in patriotism, will study at even greater length the history of the second
world war, and will meet veterans."
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- The Kremlin hopes the classes will help improve the poor
standing of the Russian army, which has been plagued by corruption, desertion
and underfunding since the collapse of communism and the break-up of the
Soviet Union.
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- Such military training is to become compulsory, reviving
a practice of the Soviet era Photograph: David King
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- The move comes as Putin, a Soviet-era spy and former
director of the FSB - the successor organisation to the KGB - prepares
to increase military spending in an effort to restore national pride in
Russia's crippled armed forces. They have been shaken by the Kursk disaster
and setbacks in the war against separatists in Chechnya.
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- Compulsory military training and classes in patriotism
were a staple diet in Soviet schools, where children were taught to fear
the West and prepare to fend off a Nato invasion. The practice was abolished
in 1991 by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, as he dismantled
the old communist system.
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- His successor, Boris Yeltsin, signed a decree in 1998
reintroducing the measures, but little effort was made to implement it.
Putin, however, has long been a supporter of the scheme and drew up detailed
guidelines on its implementation on December 31 last year - the day Yeltsin
resigned and Putin was promoted from prime minister to replace him.
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- While most European countries have abolished conscription,
in Russia all men above 18 are expected to serve a full two years. Thousands
of young conscripts have died in wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
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- Critics have seized on Putin's plans as reinforcing their
view of the president as a man of authoritarian leanings who regards most
issues through the needs of national security.
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- "Such initiatives to make children run around like
soldiers and play with weapons are a full return to a Soviet military state,"
warned Valeria Novodvorskaya, a human rights campaigner who has often clashed
with the authorities.
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- "But since it's coming from Putin this does not
surprise me. What else can we expect from a leader with a KGB mentality?
Unless people protest and mothers refuse to send their kids to training
camps, there is no doubt that our society will become more militaristic."
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- Some have also questioned the need for compulsory training,
given that there are special army training camps where parents can send
their children during summer breaks if they wish.
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- At Cascade, a summer boot camp close to Moscow, young
Russians already undergo training that differs little from that for special
forces serving in Chechnya.
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- Clad in full camouflage uniforms, children as young as
nine are put through a gruelling training course. It includes mock clashes
and ambushes, and lessons in how to use weapons such as axes, knives and
Kalashnikovs. Children are even taught how to handle a rocket-propelled
grenade launcher.
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- Some of the children come from broken families, and the
scheme is said to help them out of crime-ridden neighbourhoods and into
the army.
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- "I teach the kids here that you can use almost anything
at hand to kill an enemy: a stone, a piece of wood, a comb or even a spoon,"
said Gennady Karatayev, the commander.
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- "Our children should not be afraid of the army.
It is important to make them understand that it is prestigious to serve
in it.
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- "It is not normal that mothers should hide their
children from the army when they are called up, while terrorists are bombing
our houses."
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- Additional reporting: Dimitri Beliakov
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