Cálculo y aplicaciones propias de la venta

In the mid-1990s, the Russian media represented the SOMO movement as “not violently angry but simple, gentle, peaceful mothers looking for their sons” (Caiazza 2002: 128). The horrible consequences of dedovschina were often revealed in the press through images of mothers who were indignant over the “heartlessness” of the military officials (Reif 1998). The unpopular character of military politics is illustrated by images of maternal grief of mothers of soldiers (Politkovskaya 2001). Other articles do not describe the Soldiers’ Mothers activists as grieving over their loss, but rather as strong, smart and capable of organizing to protect of their own and others’ children. Every tragic story of soldiers and their mothers become a matter of concern for the SOMO activists; they try to understand soldiers’ difficulties and to help. They also try to approach these problems from a larger political perspective on the army as a whole (Bogoslovskaya 2000).

The Mothers’ decision to found a new political party - the United People’s Party of Soldiers’ Mothers - is described as an unusual action. It is justified with a reference to an emergency caused by the current political situation. For example, this initiative is described as being “enforced” on and “squeezes out” the women (Politkovskaya 2004c). It has to do with the fact that the parties Yabloko and the SPS failed to be elected into the parliament in 2003. These were parties which the Mothers could mainly lobby for their military reform initiatives and receive help in cases when a Duma deputy inquiry was necessary to protect the soldiers. The major motivation behind the Mothers’ initiative is to represent the interests of ordinary people by putting an end to the universal conscription army system. The party is created ‘from the earth’ by the ordinary women, who in contrast to the political establishment, lack large economic and administrative resources (ibid.). The genuine grassroots character of this party is said to be proved by the fact that the activists follow their strong maternal feelings rather than a rational sense: “The

Soldiers’ Mothers employ primarily their passion for protecting our children and our trust

in them doing that sincerely. No any other political capital. Their joint pressure aimed at protecting children and sweeping off everything standing in its way comes from the very nature of a human being” (ibid.).

The SOMO are represented as mothers whose sons were in Chechnya and who sacrificed their own health for rescuing them. They are deeply inspired to put enormous

energy into their mission including a political struggle for peace and military reform (Politkovskaya 2004a). The mothers’ political activism is justified and defended from the officials’ accusations by referring to their biological maternal instinct.

The language of gender-based discrimination of women is rarely deployed when talking about soldier’s mother. It did, however, emerge in the articles that commented on women’s political party building. The first congress of the SOMO party is described as a “project based on the academic category of gender” marked by extraordinary emotional atmosphere: “If our men could not stop the terror, it means that women need to take care of that, we cannot let our children to be enemies, exclaimed a deputy from Dagestan” (Zakatnova 2004). One of the activists stressed that “until now all the conversations about the uniting of the democratic forces were hindered by the men’s refusal to give way to women“ (Kostenko and Melikova 2005). It is stressed that “women’s interests are not represented in Russian politics: we lack strong women’s parties and women’s organizations able to influence the official power” (Barabanov 2004).

3. The Legalist-Pragmatic Image of Mother-Expert

The SOMO human rights groups are presented in some articles, not only as opposing the government, but also as promoting a new ‘civilized’ mode of resolving conflicts between a citizen and the state via legal investigation. The activists are represented by an image of civic experts in the sphere of the draft law.

The human rights groups of mothers are praised for nurturing a new mode of behavior among citizens. Kulikov (2002) stresses that Mother’s Right encourages bereaved parents of soldiers not to keep silent if they believe that the commanders of military units are guilty of the deaths of their children. They should persecute the units legally and it is the last responsibility, which they can fulfill, towards their children: The state should be “punished by ruble.” The bureaucrats usually resist the claims and create special formulations of the causes of a soldier’s death which allows the units to escape legal charges. It is, however laudable that “citizens have learned to resolve the conflicts with the state in civilized legal way.” It is unlikely that court persecutions might help to stop dedovschina, but the fact that citizens initiate legal cases not only against other

citizens but also against the state organs is seen as a positive trend (Kulikov 2003; Babakin 1999).

This kind of mass media images represents the SOMO activists as having specific expertise concerning the legal and procedural aspects of enlistment in the military service. The weekly Kommersant ɔ Daily and the magazine Profile refer to the SOMO activists as an authoritative source of information about draft campaigns and military reforms. Journalists refer to the SOMO’s critique about deficiencies in the work of local draft boards as an additional argument in favor of transforming the conscription-based army into a contract-based army (Barinova and Rudnev 2005: 32).

Non-activist mothers need information on how to act in situations of conflict. In the weekly Aif the readers’ letters are answered and commented in a regularly published column “Society -- The Army”. Current issues about the draft policy are debated in the column by lawyers, the military public prosecutor, and members of the SOMO NGOs. In the comment on a letter from the parents of a draft-aged man, who sued the local draft board for not accepting their son’s medical diagnosis, the lawyer stresses, that the courts tend to ally with the local officials. She advises the parents to undertake a more ‘offensive’ stance and to sue several state agencies in different courts. The lawyer points out that “complaints and legal prosecutions are the weapons for reassuring the rights of an individual.” A young man is allowed to stay home during the court case, which can take a long time (Borta 2004). The members of the SOMO NGOs advise the readers on how to find information about receiving deferments from army service on medical and other grounds (Vais 2005). They stress that mothers and relatives should not trust the medical examination conducted by the military-medical commission under the local draft board. They must arrange a medical check-up of the potential draftee in advance by competent specialists independently from the draft board. The relatives have to ‘fight’ for a correct judgment of the military-medical commission on the case. The SOMO activists explain how the unjust decisions can be appealed (Kochetova 2000). They point out what is legal and what is not. For example, the military draft committees illegally arrange raids on the potential conscripts in the streets (Markov 2004). The SOMO NGOs publish statistics of parents’ complaints on the local military draft committees. They show that the draft committees striving to fulfill the draft norms take advantage of parents who are ignorant about their legal rights. A failure of medical commissions to accept a diagnosis obtained

from the medical centers thereby enlisting chronically sick draftees might have tragic consequences (Tuchkova 2000).

The human rights organizations protest against deploying new, untrained recruits, who have not been examined properly by medical and psychiatric experts to a combat zone (Nikitina 1999). The military operations in the Northern Caucasus make serving in the army even less attractive. The previous decree by the president that the new recruits could be sent to Caucasus only after at least one year service and by a voluntarily agreement was changed. Conscripts could be sent to the hot spots after six months of military service and without consent. The human rights SOMO activists argue that this decree is only semi legal and that it violates human rights; it was signed under pressure from the Ministry of Defense (ibid.).

Summary

This chapter has shown that at least three kinds of discursive images of soldier’s mother may be identified in the sample of Russian newspaper articles. In the official discursive context, war and gender in the mass media were often linked with a sense of national belonging. The ideological-hegemonic image of a soldier’s mother is interrelated with this context. The mother is represented as courageous, selfless and patriotic. It is stressed that not the official authorities, but “simple people” and self-sacrificing mothers take responsibility for the problems in the army. This discourse supports the dominant cultural meanings of gender, class, nationality and political loyalty to the regime. There is consistency between this discourse and the feminization of the Third Sector of the NGOs. The second discursive image of the mother of a soldier is counter-discursive and is produced from the perspective of the regime-critical human rights groups. It describes mothers as biologically predisposed to protect the rights of her family and sons from an undemocratic state. The third discursive image is legalist-pragmatic. Mothers are represented as activists and lay experts in the sphere of draft law. They act as brokers between the official draft institutions and the families of draftees. In contrast to the counter-discursive image, this discourse represents mothers-activists not as opposing the state, but rather as promoting a “civilized” legal way to resolve conflicts in the state.

Chapter 12