Influence of social networks

As Meshcherkina (2000: 105) writes: ”[N]o individual can be seen as atomised – every situation in which s/he finds her/himself has been partially created by wider social factors”. In other words, people's choices are to a considerable degree influenced by their social environment. In the case of draft-avoidance, too, the young men's decisions have been affected by the expectations of their families, friends and immediate social environment.

Despite the massive reductions that the armed forces have been through since the break-up of the USSR, the military remains a major employer with a personnel of about 1 million people to date¹²⁵.

125 http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20091204/157098191.html

Hence, a great many Russian families have some kind of a connection to it, with the present interviewees being no exception. Several interviewees had older brothers who had served. In addition, Anton's father was a reserve officer and Ilya's a professional soldier. Almost all the interviewees indicated that their fathers expected them to serve. These family expectations were exemplified by Yurii as such: ”Because like everybody says, it's the second school where they make youngsters men. […] I had a feeling that father would have liked it”. Further, Ilya had been anxious of his father's reaction and tried to avoid discussing the topic with him. However, the service question was not eventually so important that it would have turned into a conflict and damaged the relationship between the two:

My dad's a professional soldier, and from his side there was a problem. He.. we did not tell him openly that with mom we..

work against voenkomat. But he guessed. I was of course afraid that it will ruin my relationship to him because he even suggested some options to me. That through his connections I could go to serve at the Black see, that it would be good there. But everything's OK with him now, we get along perfectly well.

Indeed, earlier studies by Kay (2006) and Eichler (2012) have shown that militarized notions of masculinity have not lost their meaning among men who have done military service or work(ed) in the armed forces. The interviewees' fathers had grown up and served in the Soviet period when, as Yurii put it,”the military had a totally different character than now”, and soldiering was a central component of male identity. This helps explain why they had hoped that their sons too would pass the so-called 'second school for men'. However, even though many of the interviewees had clearly acted against their fathers' will and expectations, none of them reported that this had led to harsh sanctions. Hence, the field returns appear to confirm Lokshin and Yemtsov's (2005: 16) previous finding that ”[p]resence of professional military personnel in the family shows no statistically significant influence on the probability to serve. This may suggest that having their children enlisted as rank-and-file soldiers is not an attractive option even for the families of military officers.”

The interviewees' mothers, on the contrary, never wanted their son to serve. Anton exemplifies this in the following: ”Mom was ardently against service in the military”. Dima grew up surrounded by women who, according to him, had a negative attitude towards military service: ”Everyone was in favour of me not going there.” In many cases, like in Ilya's above, mothers help young men with the draft process and facilitate service avoidance. Usually this means collecting medical documents that prove that the son has one of the illnesses that guarantee a postponement or deferment of military service.

According to Zdravomyslova and Temkina (2002), saving men – whether it is the husband from alcoholism or the son from abuse in the military – is often seen as women's social duty in Russia.

Women's (re)productive role thus implies that they provide active care and protection for the family members. In Caiazza's (2002) view, this gender expectation is also the reason why the Committee of the Soldiers' Mothers has won public support and sympathy for their cause; the activists have managed to utilize traditional ideas about motherhood and women, which suggest that mothers are supposed to be protective of their sons. Hence, it is not surprising that the interviewees' mothers and, in some cases, also girlfriends, had taken the role of defender and protector of the young men's interests.

According to Freire (1974: 7), ”[c]hoice is illusory to the degree it represents the expectations of others”. What was strongly emphasized among the interviewees was that the choice whether to serve or not had been their own, despite both resistance and support among their family members.

In Anton's words:

Yes, there are mothers [who do not want their sons to serve], but you understand, one does not want to feel like some kind of a mama's boy. That your mom defines your destiny. To join or not to join the military, I always made the decision myself.

Furthermore, what comes to wider social networks, most of the informants had had only a few, if any friends, class mates or acquintances who had served. As a rule, the topic – to serve or not to serve – was not discussed among peers because, as Ilya stated, the answer was clear: ”Everybody knows already that no, I won't go to the army”. Also Maksim indicated that not doing military service had become a normalized practice among his friends and acquaintances: ”Usually the question that is discussed is how to avoid it. […] It's already like an established fact that the army is, that it's a no.”

Taken together, the majority of the informants reported that they had gotten their families and social networks' support to their decision not to serve. According to Maksim: ”Most of my friends and relatives they all understand perfectly well that there's nothing good in it [military service], absolutely nothing.” In the interviewees' immediate social environment, it was the fathers that still, to a considerable degree, nurtured the traditional notion of soldiering as a masculine ideal.

However, their opinion or an interviewee's anxiety about losing his father's acceptance were not enough to actually motivate any of the interviewees to serve. Mothers were those whom the interviewees usually sought support during the recruitment process. Hence, the immediated social

environment did not punish but rather supported and encouraged the interviewees' choice not to serve.