When the bell of the Zuyevs' small Moscow apartment rang one evening in December, 19-year-old Andrei was right to fear the worst. "It was 10 in the evening.
A man in civilian clothes appeared at the door and declared that he had come for Andrei to bring him to the army enlistment office," said Valentina Zuyeva, Andrei's mother, who was still in shock several days after the visit descended into violence.
A small, reserved woman, Valentina repeatedly told the recruitment officer that her son was exempt for medical reasons, but to no avail. She said the soldier demanded a bribe. When the Zuyevs refused, the officer called in reinforcements: a soldier in uniform and two police officers "half drunk" and armed, Valentina said.
The latter knocked down Nikolai, Andrei's father, who lost consciousness. They then seized Valentina and Konstantin, Andrei's 14-year-old brother. Catching him by the neck they tried to strangle the boy, she said. Andrei, who had remained in the background, then gave in and agreed to follow the four men to the recruitment office.
There, the soldiers pulled out his file and realised that his name was not actually on the list and that he had thus been seized illegally. The Russian army, which boasts just over a million soldiers, suffers from an atrocious reputation, damaged further by recent incidents of violent hazing.
In one, Andrei Sychev, 19, had to have his legs and genitals amputated after being abused at the end of 2005 by other soldiers in his barracks in the Ural mountains.
In mid-December the defence ministry said 22 soldiers had died from hazings and 193 had committed suicide since the beginning of the year. The military acknowledges there is a problem, but denies there is any particular crisis.
"Hazing starts right from kindergarten where some teachers abuse the children," Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said in the aftermath of the Sychev case. But with growing numbers of young Russians doing all they can to avoid the two annual draft drives, the authorities are set this year to introduce a conscription period cut from two years to one and a half, then from 2008 just one.
Yet the need to fill the ranks and strict limitations on alternative service mean that the authorities go to great lengths to chase down those trying to avoid the widely hated service.
Days before the end of last year's autumn draft, General Vassily Smirnov, head of conscription for the defence ministry, said that nearly 10 percent of those required to present themselves had failed to turn up.
Maria Fedulova, of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, a grass-roots group defending the rights of conscripts, said the Zuyev incident was "not an isolated case." "The enlistment officers make their sweeps regularly and do not look at the documents that the families submit to them to prove they are not liable to be drafted," she said.
Raids are not limited to apartments: it is not unusual to see soldiers stopping young men of enlistment age in the street to bring them to the enlistment centres. At the end of September, just before the launch of the autumn draft, several non-governmental organisations, including the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, denounced systematic violations of the rights of conscripts.
In a report based on the year's spring draft, the committee complained of misinformation given to conscripts and their parents, pressure exerted on them and violation of proper procedures.
"If the conscript suffers from a serious illnesses, if he has a family, the enlistment office does not care," said Fedulova. "One day, one of the soldiers beat a woman who came to explain that her son was to be exempted. They broke her arm," she said. Military analyst Alexander Golts said that hazing has always been an important factor of army life here, but that the comparative lawlessness in post-Soviet Russia has made things worse.
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