Russian Pacifists Serve in Hospitals By SARAH KARUSH Associated Press Writer
February 14, 2002, 3:48 PM EST
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia -- Lt. Gen. Lev Pavlov, a battle-hardened career soldier, says his own courage pales compared to that of 20 conscripts who have opted to serve as hospital orderlies rather than take up arms in the dreaded Russian military.
Pavlov commands a detachment of young pacifists on the front lines of a national debate over alternative civilian service -- a right guaranteed by the Constitution but long ignored in practice. That debate inched a step closer to resolution Thursday when the Cabinet approved a draft law on alternative service.
The Russian military has resisted making alternative service a reality, fearing it would cause its ranks to dwindle. The pool of draftees is already shrinking because of the poor health of young men and deferrals automatically granted to students.
A broader problem is that many Russian teen-agers and their parents are terrified of military service and routinely bribe draft commissions to avoid it. These young men are not necessarily devout pacifists, but they fear the vicious hazing and dismal living conditions that mark military life, and being sent to the guerrilla war with Chechen separatists.
While politicians in Moscow argue over the form alternative service should take, officials in Nizhny Novgorod, 250 miles east of Moscow, decided last fall not to wait for a federal law. The city's draft board allowed 20 young men to sign up for alternative service, and in January, Pavlov's soldiers donned hospital scrubs and began taking orders from nurses at the city's Hospital of Emergency Medical Care.
The conscripts do everything from pushing gurneys to emptying bed pans. They deliver lab samples and take out the trash, running up and down the stairs of the nine-story hospital with only one working elevator. They help feed and wash patients and deliver corpses to the morgue.
"This is enormous physical labor," Pavlov said, adding that the daily contact with death would be too much for many young men. "I personally would never have done it."
Russia's 1993 Constitution gives conscientious objectors the right to choose alternative civilian service, a practice adopted long ago by other European countries that rely on conscription to staff their armies. The United States has a similar system that would be activated in the event of a draft.
Over the past decade, some Russian courts have ruled in favor of conscientious objectors who insist on their right to alternative service. But in the absence of a civilian service system, those who win such cases have simply not served at all. In other cases, local prosecutors have brought criminal charges against conscientious objectors.
The government's bill, which is expected to be passed by parliament, would end this legal limbo.
Human rights advocates, however, have said the bill in effect turns alternate service into a punishment, because it would require young men opting for alternative service to serve four years, twice the time conscripts spend in the army.
Those who agree to serve in civilian positions in military units would have to serve only three years, Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko said Thursday.
She named the fire service, nursing homes and orphanages as possible places where alternative servicemen could work.
In fact, with a civilian service system in place, those without firm pacifist beliefs would be less inclined to abuse the system, activists say. As it stands now, a draftee could claim his right to alternative service without having to actually serve.
"I could have just closed the door on the draft officials and hid, but I wanted to honestly stand up for my right to alternative service," said Yevgeny Nagornov, who at 26 was less than a year away from becoming ineligible for the draft.
Nagornov, who has a degree in history, spends much of his time in the hospital helping elderly patients into wheelchairs and wheeling them to the X-ray room and back again. The patients on his floor lavish praise on him and the other conscripts.
"What would I have done without you?" 81-year-old Natalya Solodovnikova asks Nagornov as he helps her retrieve her coat before checking out.
The alternative service experiment has helped the hospital plug a gaping hole in its staff that has forced nurses to take on the work of orderlies. In recent years, few people have been willing to work for the equivalent of $16 monthly salary paid to orderlies.
The conscripts receive the salary, plus a stipend for food and transport. That totals about $50 and is well worth the cost, said Pavlov, chairman of the military affairs committee of Nizhny Novgorod.
"We are using this to address the city's needs," he said. Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
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