My Close Friend, a 54-year-old Chain-Smoking English Teacher Was Conscripted
The Russian army has so lowered its requirements that now it just requires a beating heart
They only need from each soldier a couple hundred thousand beats of the heart. That will be enough to get him close enough to a Ukrainian defender to distract or kill him before the attacking Russian soldier himself is killed.
This is not official policy but it is the only way to explain the conscription of a friend of mine. We have been drinking beer and vodka and traveling, to find better beer and vodka, since 1992. If you are conscripting him, then things are looking really bleak for Russia.
I won’t name him for fear of his safety — let’s call him Vlad. Vlad is not the kind of person you want to defend your country. He is the kind of soldier you want fighting against you, though. Ukraine has a reason to be happy.
Vlad is the perfect example of homo sovieticus. The Soviet Union socially and emotionally castrated the Soviet man leaving him incapable of making decisions and fear-stricken by the idea of making decisions. The average Russian guy is a momma’s boy and usually can’t think without being certain his mom would approve of his thoughts. Most couldn’t boil water or toast bread to save themselves from hunger — they will sit and wait for a woman to come home and do it for them.
Vlad did learn how to cook, though. He now boils hotdogs and pasta and smothers both with mayonnaise. As a joke, I used to give him a case of mayo each year for New Year’s. He was thrilled! Everything else about the typical Russian man relates to Vlad.
He can’t make decisions and won’t fight back. Extremely educated, he probably could have talked his way out of being detained but once a stressful situation arises, the average Russian man goes into his cocoon and just waits to be abused.
He hates Putin
He was walking past the metro stop nearest to his home a week or so ago and one of Putin’s private army guys, the ones dressed in all black, stopped him to do a document check.
They saw that he had served in the Soviet army in the late 1980s and that he seemed relatively healthy. His passport had no stamps showing he was mentally unfit so they walked him over to a paddy-wagon-type truck and ordered him to sit down — “You have won the lottery,” one of the guys told him.
When the wagon filled up, they drove off to a military encampment outside of St. Petersburg. The next day he was permitted to call a friend and he told her that he had been conscripted. She has keys to his place and he told her that she was in charge of his apartment and affairs — there was nothing he could do but go to wherever it was they planned to send him.
This is the “hidden conscription” that is taking place all over Russia still — this explains why Putin hasn’t ordered the first round of conscription over even though he repeatedly says it’s over; and, why he doesn’t order a second one to start.
By leaving the first conscription in that state of limbo, the guys in the black uniforms can continue to steal thousands of them off the streets each week and month. These “thefts” of humans, almost like trafficking, create a steady limitless supply of heartbeats for the meat waves.
Vlad is in decent shape because he has been riding my good mountain bike for the past 20 years everywhere. I lost interest in riding around the city after about the 50th car almost hit me. Vlad probably earns only $100 a month and yet he has a nice apartment in the very center of St. Petersburg — his father was a well-known scientist and so the family was given a large apartment by the state.
His family eventually sold that one after his father’s death and according to the socialist laws of the Soviet Union, Vlad was legally entitled to a certain amount of living space. When the place was sold, that meant that his living space turned into money. With that money, a large apartment was purchased and that is where he resides alone.
He smokes, teaches the occasional English class, has never used the internet, and has never owned a computer. I tried to give him an old laptop but he refused it. On Fridays, his nephew pops by and they drink a few bottles of vodka and eat mayo-covered hotdogs and talk about how much they hate Putin — before the war, they just talked about TV and books.
He loves Bruce Springsteen because I treated him to a Bruce concert in Milan — I treated him to all of the trips because he never earned much.
He is the kind of guy who you either hate because he seems so superfluous or you accept him for who he is. When we met, I was new to Russia and he was eager to speak English. We hit it off and then my Russian overtook his English and we just became friends, brothers. I lovingly call him “piece of shit” shocking people around us. He responds with a “What, asshole?!”
In our darker moments, we agreed that whoever dies first, the other will go to that one’s grave, drink a bunch of beers and then urinate on the grave.
When I call him and ask how he is doing, he always says, “Kean, get our black suit ready.” He is always dying but never does. Now, I fear he will.
My concern is will there be a grave or will I have to one day travel to Ukraine and just piss on a tree and pretend that that was where the piece of shit was killed?
I kind of hope he makes it back, though, so I can punch him in the ribs for not arguing with the black-clad fascist stormtroopers — and also just for the hell of it.