IN Once again, at the invitation of the press club of the Ministry of Defense, which regularly organizes press tours for bloggers, I went to study military life from the inside. This time the unit was not quite ordinary - the 28th separate DISCIPLINARY BATTALION in Mulino.
My dad, who served in the army in the 80s, said that soldiers were always afraid of disbats like fire. There was an opinion: a zone is better than a disbat. So I went to the unit in advance full of sympathy and compassion for the guys who found themselves in inhumane conditions. Now I can tell everyone frankly: there are no “inhuman” conditions, no one is torturing anyone. Discipline, a strict daily routine, work and an almost complete lack of free time - that, in fact, is all that distinguishes a disbat from an ordinary military unit.
And also regarding the comparison with the zone: only 5% of the guys who served their sentences in the disbat subsequently commit crimes. I think we all realize that the percentage of those released from prison who re-offend is very high.
Why do they end up in disbat?
First of all, I was interested in the fate of people caught up in disciplinary battalion. Who, why, for what term was sentenced, admits guilt or not, etc. Thanks to the unit’s leadership for permission to ask questions and talk with any of the soldiers, including the new arrivals.
This is Egor, he is 21 years old. He served in Tver in the air force. In the 7th month of service, I had an argument with a guy from the new conscription and hit him.
I ask: why did you do this?
“I wanted to show that I am better. Now, of course, I understand that I was wrong, but nothing can be corrected.”
For bruising a colleague, Egor will serve 8 months in the disbat. I don’t know whether he’s sincere or not, but he says that the conditions are normal, not much different from the army, “only they’re watching us seriously.”
“Here I became calmer. I realized that it is impossible to cause pain. Moreover, it is not worth losing 8 months of freedom. When I return home, I dream of going to university, studying to become a psychologist.”
Sergei has a different story. He just arrived at the unit and was sentenced to 10 months. He probably won’t admit his guilt, and he certainly didn’t expect to be punished for disobeying orders. But in vain...
Extract from the verdict (photo below):
"At about 11 p.m. on January 4, 2011, Private Grigoriev, being an orderly for the unit... had no good reasons and acting deliberately, evading a number of duties of military service and wanting to create easier conditions for himself to perform it,... openly and demonstratively refused to carry out the oral order of the duty officer for a given military unit to clean the barracks premises assigned to the orderly in the company..."
Well, there are many more stories that could be told, but they are all similar: failure to follow orders, leaving a unit without permission, not returning from dismissal, beating up a co-worker... I really feel sorry for them, but then you understand: they are being disbatted for a cause, and he’s right a unit commander who does not cover hazing among soldiers.
The number of people serving sentences in the disbat is not growing: now there are 200 people there (for comparison, in 2004 there were more than 700). This makes me happy =)
What do soldiers do in the disbat?
Disbat is, first of all, discipline. The daily routine is as follows:
6.30 - rise
6.40 - control formation on the parade ground
50 minutes charging
Then the morning toilet, making the bed
8.20 - breakfast
9.00 - formation, flag raising
9.10 - 13.50 - training sessions for people in quarantine (those who are here for no more than 2 weeks)
The rest at this time are engaged in socially useful work, working in a reinforced concrete workshop (photos will be below)
14.00 - lunch. Then personal time.
16.00 - control formation
until 17.50 - classes and socially useful work
18.00 - 18.50 - those who are in quarantine undergo a daily medical examination for the presence of bruises and marks from beatings (according to the command of the unit, this is nonsense in the disbat, but these are the rules)
19.20 - 19.50 - dinner
Then personal time
21.50 - formation and evening walk (20 minutes)
Work in a reinforced concrete workshop. The proceeds from the sold products go to the account of the part. The work is VERY difficult, but the education of fighters is possible exclusively through work, and nothing else. You have to work.
And this is lunch:
The food is good. Soup, buckwheat with chicken, vegetable salad, fruit drink. And about. The unit commander gave his word that this was not a show and this is the way the guys eat every day.
“Let’s go see our poodles and lap dogs,” they told us, and off we went. Cute doggies))
I had to stand aside, because I was very embarrassed by this huge dog, shaking the bars and howling heartbreakingly, and especially embarrassed by the soldier who was holding the shaky lock on the door of the enclosure with his hand. Then we were told that 3 years ago the convict tried to escape. It was the dogs that detained him. 16 bites + crossfire on the legs from the guards. No one else tried to escape.
Demonstration performances
The results are as follows
I didn’t have time to ask a lot, time was very limited, for example, how does one serve in a guard company (these are ordinary conscripts).
For those who came here not by chance, but for a reason, it’s hard not so much physically as mentally. Barbed wire, 2 security systems, dogs also guard the area at night. Every two hours - building and checking the composition. The terms are quite long - from 3 months to 2 years. At the end of his term, the guy is sent to serve in the army, only in a different unit. Meetings with relatives are allowed (4 times a year), but only with the closest ones - parents, brothers, sisters and wives. One parcel per month is also allowed, but the list of items is strictly limited.
But if there weren’t such units (and we now have two disbats - in Mulino and in Chita), many would go to serve time behind bars.
Conclusion: if you serve, take the army seriously. Respect the rules and your colleagues. Although I didn’t see any horrors in the disbat, I don’t recommend going there.
A disciplinary battalion - disbat, or as soldiers also call it "diesel" - is a specialized military unit where privates who have committed serious offenses while serving in the ranks of the military are sent.
Disbat in the army is a unit formed to serve the punishment of soldiers, which was awarded by high-ranking managers for committing offenses. They can be varied, but mostly they are criminal offenses. Also, the disciplinary battalion is intended to house cadets from military schools or universities until they are awarded the ranks of privates in the ranks of the Russian troops.
Why do you get caught?
The reason for the creation of such units is due to the fact that during the service, some privates commit crimes for which they need to answer. It is provided that this period of time is not deducted from the year of service, with some exceptions, which are provided by the commander of the military forces of the locality where the private is serving. Consequently, after the end of the sentence, the soldier goes on to serve in those legal weeks or days that remain.
Reasons why employees may be sent to serve time:
- if the military court has rendered a verdict regarding which the soldier must be punished;
- if a private has committed a crime that will be criminally punishable.
In the event that a soldier served his sentence from beginning to end and was released to finish his service, there will be no documentary evidence that he committed a criminal offense.
The verdict that decides the fate of the offender can only be rendered by a military court. The disciplinary battalion can include soldiers whose offenses are not considered serious and cannot be punished for more than two years. The most common crimes committed by those liable for military service are desertion or hazing towards other soldiers.
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By the way, in disbat in the army they do not live according to the regulations of the Criminal Procedure Code, but adhere to the general military regulations. After serving the sentence, the person liable for military service must serve the remaining term of service in his unit. Only if the above points are met, the employee receives his documents back, without a record of his offense.
The differences between a disciplinary battalion and a regular military unit are as follows:
- unquestioning obedience to the charter;
- an extremely clear and strictly planned day;
- It is unacceptable to have dismissals.
Soldiers entering disciplinary units most often perform assignments and housework.
Features of the penal battalion
The formed disciplinary battalions are designed for 350 criminals. All the details of their stay and punishment are described in the document of the Government, then the USSR, Russian Federation, signed on the 4th of June 1997 - No. 669, as well as by Order of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation No. 302 dated July 29 of the same year.
The previously mentioned requirements are based on this document. For example, exclusions from the period of service of the period of service. If a soldier needs to record it as time served, it is recommended to send a petition to the command of the military unit to the main military representative of the area where the army and unit are located. The petition must indicate the reason why the soldier needs this decision and a request to count the time spent in the disciplinary battalion during his service period.
If the commander-in-chief approves the petition, the soldier, even while in the battalion special purpose, does not lose his rank as a military man and still wears the shoulder straps of a private. After completing a third of the punishment, if the soldier has distinguished himself by exemplary behavior, he can be reassigned to a correctional unit. Moreover, he may have the opportunity to serve as a worker or to perform the duties of a worker outside of military service. Also, the execution of the decision can occur under the supervision of a convoy or without it.
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The length of stay in the disbat is most often no more than twenty-four months. The reason for this may be: theft, hazing. In most cases, the soldier is sent to a disciplinary battalion for a period of 5 to 17 months.
When new soldiers arrive at a disciplinary battalion, they are required to undergo quarantine. After this, they are given 30 days of intensive training. If they pass, their distribution among companies is then considered.
Mode
As mentioned earlier, the special battalion has a strict daily routine with all the ensuing prohibitions. Meetings with loved ones are strictly limited and scheduled according to a specific schedule. They are designed only for a short time, most often from two to three hours, while this procedure will be monitored by a convoy.
All transfers from relatives, with only a few exceptions, are prohibited. There is no place for coffee, tea, and especially alcohol in disbat. No less strict prohibitions regarding stationery. The convicted person has the right to hold only one pen, two rods and no more than nine envelopes.
Disciplinary battalions should not be perceived as a place of imprisonment. However, in this place there are elements of the zone. Escape attempts were made repeatedly, however, they did not lead to anything good, but only to additional time being added to the prison term.
If the convicts behaved exemplarily, they may be given the privilege of deducting this time from their service life. Many people try to prove themselves with the best side, in order to get out of the disbat as soon as possible.
End of punishment
Until recently, when a serviceman served his sentence, he was squeezed out of money and sent back to the unit where he completed his term of service. But in times Soviet power, it often happened that these citizens committed crimes on the way back, as a result of which the commanders-in-chief came to the conclusion that they must be accompanied when sent. But due to the fact that such responsible persons who are ready for this are rarely found, sending them back may take some time.
After taking the oath, the Soviet soldier assumed the duty of loyalty to serve his Motherland and criminal liability for misconduct. But this was not written about in the Soviet press, and only isolated high-profile cases began to appear in the press in the 80s of the 20th century.
The spleen is the cause of disbat
The second most common reason for serving a sentence is hazing. Fights often broke out among the recruits - for this they could be convicted and sent to disbat. One day, two paratroopers argued with each other, a fight ensued, as a result of which one of the former comrades was seriously injured - a ruptured spleen. A criminal case was opened, a trial was held - the guilty paratrooper was sent to serve his sentence. Sometimes the infliction of serious harm to health occurred due to negligence: two comrades served in the same unit, and soon they had to take a day off from demobilization. But the military personnel had a habit of making symbolic blows, signifying a transfer from one caste to another. This is the kind of blow his friend delivered to his colleague in the stomach - the spleen ruptured and urgent surgery was required. And military investigators opened a case against their former friend, for which he served time.
Dry rations dragged demobilization
There were frequent cases of theft in the Soviet army. Several dry rations fell prey to a group of soldiers, but only one of them paid with freedom: by the time the theft was discovered, the culprits had retired to the reserves, and it was not possible to convict them under military charges.
Military secrets are not for girls
Disclosure of military secrets is the reason why one could be locked behind three rows of barbed wire; usually this is how the punishment zone, especially guarded by Caucasian Shepherd dogs, was fenced off. Employees of one of the disbats recalled how they received a soldier who decided to show off to his girlfriend and called her from the warehouse on his office phone: he was bugged. In the conversation, the soldier, intimidated by the girl’s voice, said that he was guarding a warehouse with TNT of such power that it could destroy an entire city. Possession of drugs, causing death by negligence while on guard duty - for these and other crimes, soldiers were sent to disbat for up to two years, and from the late 80s - up to three years. Often, military personnel committed the same crimes as in their ordinary life, they were often brought to the police, and when it was time to serve in the Soviet army, criminal habits were introduced into army life.
Mulino - famous disbat
Usually the location of disbats was chosen in remote villages. In the summer of 1986, near the village of Mulino in the Volodarsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region, around which there were dozens of military units, one of the 16 largest Soviet disbats was formed. Here, Soviet military construction workers, marines, sailors and infantrymen, with their heads shaved and dressed in identical uniforms, served their sentences. Many of them hoped to be released from the army on parole for good behavior. The daily routine in the Soviet disbat was the same as in a regular army: wake-up at half past six, ten minutes to get dressed and a control check. It was carried out four times.
Disbat is not a prison
The Soviet disciplinary battalion was somewhat reminiscent of a prison, but it was not a prison, since at the end of the sentence for some military personnel, this term was counted and demobilized almost immediately. But not everyone was so lucky. According to Soviet law, after serving a sentence, a soldier was obliged to return to duty and repay his debt in full to his homeland. Information about the criminal punishment incurred did not appear anywhere in the soldier’s documents, with the exception of his personal file.
The investigation was led by the KGB
As a rule, the Soviet army tried to hide illegal cases that cast a shadow of shame on exemplary units, but if this failed, then military investigators and KGB officers got involved, depending on the severity of the crime committed. The case was resolved within a few days, no one tried to leave the criminal in the unit. for a long time, everyone tried to get rid of him. It must be admitted that Soviet military courts worked professionally and quickly: investigators immediately demanded from commanders all the characteristics of the soldier, documents were drawn up in a criminal case, which was forwarded to military prosecutor's office, and from there – directly to the leadership of the disciplinary battalion. The soldier was put in a car and taken to the wilderness, where such battalions were located: in the Chita or Rostov regions or in Novosibirsk. However, sometimes it came to anecdotal cases when soldiers themselves got to the place of serving their sentences. But this happened extremely rarely.
Disbat education lessons
It was especially difficult in the 90s, when the Soviet army became a mirror of many interethnic conflicts: the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh It backfired with the fact that in one of the units there was a massacre, as a result - several people went to the hospital for treatment, and several to the disbat. Interethnic clashes took place in military units and in the 80s, but they did not receive wide publicity. The perpetrators, according to military investigators, were sent to serve their sentences. Education by disbat became a lifelong lesson for some - people became extremely obedient and dutiful, while other soldiers were embittered by this measure of punishment - they became the main instigators of conflicts.
Hello dear readers.
I would like to talk about a terrible place for soldiers, where, fortunately, few find themselves now - about the disbat.
I wasn't there myself. My colleagues and a guy in the hospital who served a full term there told me about the disbat.
Disbat - disciplinary battalion, also known as "diesel". This is a special military unit to which military personnel who have committed serious disciplinary offenses in relation to their service are sent.
This part is surrounded by high fences with barbed wire. There are shooting towers along the perimeter. There is an armed guard, a canine unit and a horse department in case of escape. But, in fact, it is impossible to escape from the disbat.
Why do they end up in disbat?
The main reasons for being thrown into the disbat are beating with grievous bodily harm, a gross violation of the regulations (for example, while standing as an orderly, he was playing with a bayonet knife, and then suddenly the company commander comes in and the bayonet knife, as luck would have it, jumps out of his hands and sticks in his leg) , SOCH - unauthorized abandonment of a unit (to give SOCH - an army expression meaning escape from a unit), disclosure of military secrets (we had one shot - I called my girlfriend and said: “I’m sitting here in a warehouse, but there’s enough cartridges and TNT to destroy the city !”... in the end, guys from the FSB arrived and the guy went on demobilization a year later). Thus, you can get caught in a diesel engine either for running with a machine gun to scare the birds, or for not following an order. describes the nutrition of infants.
How they are sent to disbat.
A report is drawn up against the offending soldier, and commanders fill out a bunch of paperwork for him. On the appointed day, a car arrives and takes the soldier into the distant wilderness, that is, very far from settlements. Once in the disbat, the soldier surrenders his things. He is given a special uniform. Mobile phones are prohibited in the disbat.
Service in the disbat.
In general, speaking seriously, this is not a service, but simply hell. Cool demobilized peppers break in a week, or even earlier. The soldier must know the start date of service, the date of enrollment in the disbat and the end date of service in the disbat; he also memorizes the number of the article by which he was assigned to the disbat and the transcript of the article. In disbat everything is done according to the regulations, all movements are only by running and only in formation. The only place where you can relax is the dining room. The disbat includes correctional and forced labor. For example, making concrete blocks by hand or working on a sawmill. Every day there is complete tediousness in combat drills, physical exercises, and unrealistic jerking off while repeating the regulations in chorus. In winter, of course, the tedium lies in the fact that soldiers are forced to make unrealistically even edgings out of snow (an edging is a square of snow). If you mess up somewhere or refuse to obey, then you end up in the guardhouse. A guardhouse (also known as a “guba” or “kitcha”) is a closed room, where it’s freezing cold and you have to go gray on an iron chair, at an iron table. When opening the door, you must walk up to the person who opened the door and say everything that was described above, regarding the article and date, as well as the rank and surname. Convicts have only one rank in the disbat - private. Whether you are an officer or a sergeant, in a diesel engine you are a private. Only so-called free conscripts who serve here on conscription, as well as officers of this unit, have ranks in the unit. It is impossible to come to an agreement with either one or the other - since this is a direct road for them to diesel in the form of convicts. For this reason, the conscripts serving there are taciturn, because the first article of the charter says: “The guard is prohibited from: Entering into any contact with the convicted person...”. I know of a case where a convict asked a guard for a cigarette and he gave it to him, and the chief of guard saw this case. The result is deplorable: the guard received a sentence even longer than the convict to whom he gave the cigarette. There are known cases when guys were shoved into disbats for completely complete bullshit. Most of these cases, of course, were associated with the officer’s personal hostility towards the soldier. In rare cases, in such a barbaric way they demonstrated that there was discipline in the unit.
It is especially easy to get into disbat if the unit is statutory. On the Internet I read correspondence between Dagestanis about one such statutory part, so in it even the most harmful Dagestanis stand on the nightstand because they are afraid of getting into disbat. One told the other that they put you in a diesel engine for any nonsense.
But the hardest thing, undoubtedly, is for those conscript soldiers who serve in the military conscription service: any problem is clearly not in their favor.
Of course, now they are put in disbat less often, since officers do not want to do the legwork with paperwork, and they are also deprived of bonuses for violations identified in the unit, etc. In addition, there are now only two disbats left. However, if the officers want, they will put you in disbat.
So you shouldn’t relax or, especially, commit serious violations so that the service does not turn out to be longer than a year and does not take place for the most part in absolute hell.
The article was written by Alexander Terentyev, good luck to those who serve and are going to serve, and health to your parents.