NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia -- Twenty orderlies working in a hospital in this Volga River city have become poster boys in a campaign to reform Russia's demoralized military. They mop floors, empty bed pans -- and threaten the way Russia has raised and run its army since it beat back Napoleon in 1812.
For centuries, Russia has defended and expanded its borders with conscripts. Whether ruled by a czar, the Communist Party or President Vladimir Putin, Russia has made military service an obligation, not a profession.
Now, to the fury of Russia's generals, the hospital orderlies in Nizhny Novgorod have launched a bold challenge, seizing what, in theory at least, is a constitutional right to avoid bearing arms and seek alternative civilian service instead. In doing so, they have triggered an unprecedented public debate on the future of the armed forces.
"Killing is a sin," says Vladimir Korochkin, a 25-year-old who has refused a two-year stint in the army demanded of all Russian men and opted instead to work in Nizhny's First City Hospital, "I still want to serve my country. I do that by working here." A Seventh Day Adventist, he says his faith forbids him from taking up arms.
Although small in scale, this revolt against conscription has attracted nationwide publicity, with television stations and newspapers reporting on the stand taken by Mr. Korochkin and others. All the attention has given new momentum to what, with Russia's economy and politics changed beyond recognition since the Soviet Union, is now the last important frontier of reform.
Revered for liberating the Soviet Union from its Nazi invaders, the army was once the most visible outward symbol of Russia's claim to superpower status. But these days, its reputation is at an all-time low. With almost daily casualties in Chechnya, around one in 10 recruits dodges the draft.
Reformers have long demanded a humane alternative, and Mr. Putin has himself embraced the rhetoric -- though not yet the reality -- of military reform. He has called for an end to conscription and the creation of an all-volunteer army.
Resistance, though, is formidable. Mr. Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, also took up the cause of army reform, but left the Kremlin with little to show for a series of bold, but mostly stillborn, programs for change. Troop strength and defense spending were drastically cut back, but little was done to alter the way the army was constituted.
Russia's generals say that ditching the conscript system won't work unless salaries are raised to levels high enough to attract volunteers, meaning a huge increase in the military budget. Critics dismiss these arguments as a ploy and say the army is scared of reform that would shrink its size, prestige -- and perks.
Russia's top brass, for example, are notorious for using conscripts as free labor to build or repair their country cottages. Reform also threatens a lucrative system of corruption that allows officers to exempt would-be conscripts in return for bribes.
All Russian men aged between 18 and 27 are required to do army service, and around 400,000 men are drafted each year. But many go to great lengths to evade the call-up. Would-be recruits fork out hundreds of dollars for fake documents to prove they are college students, homosexuals, psychiatric patients or fathers of young children -- all of whom are exempt from army service. Some bribe members of their local military enlistment office to declare them unfit to fight.
"The generals don't want to do anything," says Boris Nemtsov, leader of the liberal SPS party. "But if we don't do something, we'll soon end up with no army at all."
The SPS has come up with its own reform plan, and is organizing nationwide rallies, pickets and petitions to promote it. Mr. Nemtsov predicts a grass-roots protest movement to rival the mass anti-Communist demonstrations of the late 1980s. "Unless society starts putting pressure on the bureaucrats, we'll never get things moving," he says.
Most flee service in the army not out of religious conviction but fear of widespread brutality. Mr. Nemtsov says 150,000 Russian soldiers have died of hazing since 1945. Cases of desertion and suicide are rife.
Russia's 1993 constitution guarantees the right to alternative civilian service, and legislation to give it force is now passing through the Russian parliament. But the government-sponsored bill sets the length of service at four years -- twice what an army conscript serves. Liberals say it is an attempt by the military hierarchy to stifle the idea at birth.
"A young man who works for four years as a hospital orderly can't study, start a family, or find work afterwards," says Mr. Nemtsov. "He'll be practically excluded from normal life. Four years will destroy the whole concept of alternative service."
Despairing of any meaningful reform, the authorities in Nizhny Novgorod decided to go it alone. Last year, the city's mayor, Yuri Lebedev, adopted a plan that allowed conscientious objectors to opt out of the army -- if they could convince local enlisters their pacifism was genuine.
It was a hard task. "The mood was very aggressive," says one of the "alternativniks," Vsevolod Kurepin. "The military accused us of being homosexuals, traitors and deserters." Of 34 applicants, only 20 were finally allowed to do social work. All of them have been working as orderlies in the First City Hospital since January.
They have proved a big hit with the staff. "These people are not draft dodgers," says head doctor Valery Lipatov. "They're doing the toughest work in the hospital. It'd be hard without them."
But the pilot plan has proven controversial. President Putin accused Mr. Lebedev of indulging in cheap populism. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said last month that such experiments are illegal until the law on alternative service is passed. The 20 alternativniks would all be drafted, he said.
Many of the men have already received their call-up papers. But all vow to continue the fight. Mr. Korochkin says he has been resisting army service for five years, and isn't going to stop now. "We're not anarchists," he says. "We're law-abiding citizens. We just don't want to spill blood."