The Mothers Soldier On
by Swanee Hunt, Rocky Mountain News
February 25, 2024

President Bush highlighted this month his commitment to a well-paid, well-equipped, highly effective military, making several visits to military command centers to underscore his support. The President also has commissioned a sweeping review of all the armed forces--their strategies, structures, and weapons--to assess and plan for how the military can best deal with the challenges of the 21st century.

This review will most likely be a careful, thoughtful, systematized process. As Americans we expect nothing less than the utmost professionalism from our military. But it's easy for us to take this confidence for granted, forgetting that people in other nations do not necessarily have that assurance.

Last month, I met my friend Ida Kuklina in her crowded, tiny office just around the corner from the former KGB headquarters in Moscow. Ida sat at her desk, talking with the parents of a Russian soldier, jotting down notes. Across the small room, another staff person spoke with the mother of a soldier, who was giving her the particulars of his condition. In the corner, a volunteer took information over the telephone. A sponge and apron lay on top of rows and rows of office records. I tried to take notes but kept getting bumped as 15 people moved back and forth among five computers. Meanwhile, Ida's next appointment waited patiently just outside the door, as did her next appointment, and her next, with the queue stretching down the hallway.

The people in line wanted help from the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, which Ida helped found in 1989. The Union is an umbrella organization of 300 provincial Soldiers' Mothers Committees created throughout Russia after military campaigns in Afghanistan and Chechnya, but birthed really (the organizers say) because of the freedoms that accompanied the fall of communism. When Russians became empowered as citizens, such non-governmental movements were launched. As one mother said, she got involved to help Russians learn their rights, and how to protect themselves from the arbitrariness of those in authority.

Before the Union, there was nothing to hold the Russian military accountable. That's different now. The Soldiers' Mothers Committees challenged Russian officials on the number of Russian casualties in Chechnya. They say the official figures are only half the actual amount, a claim they can make because they constantly receive phone calls from the relatives of men killed, and they visit cathedrals to count up funeral services held for soldiers. "It's hard to hide such things in the provinces, where every soldier's death is a tragedy for the whole town," said one of the mothers.

The work is grim, but humor pervades the office. "Fit" reads the poster on the door, with a picture of a skeleton receiving his health certificate from a military doctor. Conscripts' certificates of medical problems are sometimes thrown away or put aside for bribes, according to the Union staff. To deal with medical trauma from the military experience, the organizers have set up a rehabilitation center for soldiers, some of whom are permanently disabled because of their experience. The mothers had been horrified by what they've seen and learned about conditions in the armed forces: beatings, humiliations, torture, hazing, lack of food or other necessities, and effective slavery imposed by the construction battalions. As a result, they are educating conscripts and parents, organizing public awareness campaigns and non-violent protests, pressing authorities on individual complaints concerning human rights violations, inspecting military units, devising legislative proposals, and advocating for the rights of conscientious objectors.

Their goal is nothing less than a thorough reform of the Russian military on a democratic basis, an end to forced labor in the construction battalions, demilitarization of the justice system, civil control over the military, and legislation to provide for an alternative civil service. Basically, they hope to transform soldiers from cannon fodder to military professionals who cannot be punished as criminals if they refuse to participate in atrocities.

They've had some success. The Russian Duma has adopted many of their legislative initiatives; 500 conscientious objectors who refused to participate in the first Chechen war were not punished as criminals. And perhaps most important, the Soldiers' Mothers have pushed ordinary Russians to confront their armed services on the basis of military law and have succeeded in amending laws--actions utterly unthinkable a few years ago.

The mothers have been evicted from their offices, pulled off trains, lied to by officials, and confronted by the Russian military. It clearly hasn't been easy, and Ida throws her shoulders back with pride as she shows me the German Human Rights Prize the Union received last year. "We aren't looking for money from outsiders," she insists in her husky voice." The personal stories behind 40,000 annual calls, letters and visits is enough to fuel their trailblazing work. "Every Monday, we have up to 500 draftees gathered in the hall, or outside on the sidewalk. Ludmilla here stands on a chair and speaks to them all," Ida waves her arms, with a broad smile across her face. "�like Lenin!"

more articles by Swanee Hunt

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