Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Maya Eichler is a research fellow in Gender and International Security at the Harvard Kennedy School. This is her first book.

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MILITARIZING MEN

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................................ixIntroduction: The Personal and Public Politics of Militarizing Men........................................................................11 Gender and Militarization in the Soviet Union...........................................................................................152 Militarized Masculinity and State Leadership in the Russian-Chechen Wars................................................................353 The Societal Crisis of Militarized Masculinity: Conscription, Economic Transformation, and the Russian-Chechen Wars.....................594 The Soldiers' Mothers Movement: Contesting and Reproducing Militarized Gender Roles.....................................................855 Veterans of the Chechen Wars: Questionable Warriors or a Model of Masculinity?..........................................................108Conclusion: Masculinity, Soldiering, and War in Post-Soviet Russia........................................................................136Notes.....................................................................................................................................145References................................................................................................................................195Index.....................................................................................................................................219

Chapter One

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. 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." 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. 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."

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. 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. 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...