Dedovshchina and the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers under Gorbachev
This article provides an historical account of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers’ role in breaking the taboo on dedovshchina in the Soviet military in the late 1980s. I argue that soldiers’ mothers’ activism on this issue played a crucial role in opening up the military to public scrutiny and in in...
Guardat en:
| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/pipss, |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Français |
| Publicat: |
The Journal of power institutions in post-soviet societies
2004
|
| Matèries: | |
| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | This article provides an historical account of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers’ role in breaking the taboo on dedovshchina in the Soviet military in the late 1980s. I argue that soldiers’ mothers’ activism on this issue played a crucial role in opening up the military to public scrutiny and in influencing public perceptions of military service. The article also traces the military’s unsuccessful attempts to counteract the soldiers’ mothers’ exposure of barracks violence and to reinstate the old boundaries of acceptable public debates on military issues. It also examines the ways in which protesting soldiers’ mothers made use of public representations of maternal grief over peacetime deaths. This outpouring of grief is contrasted with the repression of maternal grief during the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I argue that the military’s failure to formulate an appropriate response to soldiers’ mothers’ grief was particularly damaging for the military’s public image under Gorbachev. |
|---|