A rchive Date
[ 19-08-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Russia ]
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[Russian stubbornness isn't surprising
By PAUL STANWAY
Edmonton Sun
August 18, 2000
There was a time when we in the West stood in awe and considerable fear of the armed forces of what used to be the Soviet Union. And for good reason.
So the unfolding tragedy of the submarine Kursk provides a stark lesson in how far the mighty have fallen. Slow to react and unable to rescue sailors from beneath relatively shallow seas (the submarine lies in only 110 metres of water), the Russian navy is clearly not what it once was.
Yet in some ways, perhaps it is.
The dissolution of Russia's armed forces is real enough. Although the army and air forces are clearly still able to wage war at least within Russia's borders, according to the experts the navy's role in a post-Cold War world is unclear and the rot has been deeper and more catastrophic than in other branches of the military.
Combine that with traditional disregard for the welfare and safety of ordinary grunts, a theme in Russian history spanning centuries. Soviet-era governments were as guilty in this regard as the czars, but careful to keep such shortcomings secret.
Back in the late summer of 1991, as the Soviet Union teetered on the verge of collapse, former Toronto Sun photographer Tim McKenna and myself were (as far as I can tell) the first western journalists to visit a Soviet military base without official permission or government minders. We just showed up at the gates of a sprawling base in a deep forest on the borders of Lithuania and Belarus and asked to look around. After some initial confusion, the commanding officer said yes. Glasnost and all that.
The equipment was impressive, all manner of armoured vehicles and weapons, but I've visited Canadian prisons with better accommodations. Much better. It was way beyond Spartan, with an air of official neglect, yet it was home to hundreds of supposedly crack troops.
When I mentioned this, the major showing us around, an educated and urbane member of the military elite, huffed that among the conscripts morale was bad. His contempt was obvious.
Even more contemptuous was an officer watching his men cross a small lake using amphibious armoured vehicles, which at one point were completely submerged. The quality of some of the conscripts was not good, he complained. Some crews panicked under water and some had drowned. It weeded out the worst.
On another occasion on that trip, McKenna and I were travelling on back roads some distance outside Moscow when we came across men in uniform picking potatoes in a muddy field. We piled out of our car and with the help of our interpreter we went to talk to the potato pickers.
It turned out they were air force personnel, members of a missile air defence unit stationed in the Moscow suburbs. What on earth were they doing picking spuds? Were they being punished?
Their commanding officer thought this was very funny, and explained that the work was voluntary. The men did it because it guaranteed a food supply for themselves and their families on the base for the coming winter. Without it, they would likely go hungry.
For a westerner, such careless disregard for the welfare of ordinary soldiers was shocking. To the Russians it was par for the course, and any reading of Russian history confirms that they were right.
We shouldn't be surprised that the Russian navy would seem to be more interested in its image than in pulling out all the stops to quickly rescue the crew of the Kursk. Or that the Russian navy appears to have spent little time and effort in developing equipment and systems to make such a rescue possible.
Despite Soviet secrecy, we know that a Soviet sub sank off the Spanish coast in 1970, with the loss of 98 sailors. Another was lost in the Pacific off Kamchatka in 1983, with 90 men on board. A third went down with all hands in 1989. And these are just the ones we know about.
The fact Russia has finally asked for outside help this time may suggest attitudes are changing, slowly. Too slowly for the men aboard the Kursk.
Letters to the editor should be sent to sun.letters@ccinet.ab.ca
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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