Lieutenant Colonel Oleg SKIRA, Editor of the Department of Culture and Science

Today I want to talk about culture. No, not about those old-fashioned feuds in the theater and cinema environment, not about the struggle for power in the Ministry of Culture and the Bolshoi, not about refined bohemians. I want to talk about military culture.

And, may the heads of clubs and Officers ' Houses forgive me, we will talk about the general culture of a man in uniform.

It is no secret that today the army environment does not have a spiritualizing influence on a young man who has put on a military uniform. We will not go into the jungle of the economic and social causes of this phenomenon and find out why the "slightly drunk and blue-shaven, smelling of" Martini "and" Chartreuse "Hussar, who knew everything from Bach to Feuerbach "turned out to be a modern" slightly shaved... " etc. officer. And even if this joke is already many years old, but I must say, the trend is quite stable.

I will never forget how a two-year-old officer who arrived from the reserve came to our division in the Far East. A former radio journalist and now a platoon commander was terribly surprised: "Guys, you know, in the army they swear so much, officers drink, sergeants are engaged in physical violence ." Less than a month later, he appeared on the horizon again. As he staggered down the editorial corridor, he bumped into a soldier printer who got in his way, and as a result, he almost dropped a briefcase filled with a fair amount of alcohol. The three-story mat that followed forced our proofreader-typist, who had seen a lot in her life, to look up from her work. We were numb from the transformation...

Unfortunately, such "mutations" in the army can be observed a great many. And then we start to grieve about the decline in the prestige of the officer service! Yes, you can find a lot of reasons that explain the low cultural level of military personnel: from the lack of footcloths in the warehouse to poor cultural and leisure work in the unit. Professor Preobrazhensky from M. Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog would have said: "Nonsense! All this is due to lack of culture in our hearts and minds." And he would have been right!

I recall the story of one veteran on this occasion. In the difficult thirties, General Alexey Ignatiev came to the special school where he studied with an inspection. "Tall, trim, elegant, he was admired by the entire audience. The uniform fit him like a glove. Suddenly there was music - the tango "Gypsy". The general approached the wife of our dance teacher, bowed gallantly and led her to the center of the hall. They danced classically. And then, as if giving the green "specialists" a lesson in good manners, the general took his partner to her husband, bowed and kissed her hand. During the break, the general, who immediately became our idol, was keenly interested in academic performance, especially in foreign languages. When he switched to German, I quietly retreated with my "Ryazan-Nizhny Novgorod" pronunciation."

Alas, today's boys have other idols. And you don't often meet an officer with a foreign language proficiency today. Here would be something to master in full. There is no need to talk about a gallant attitude towards the fair sex. My Department of Culture often receives letters from female military personnel. And they often complain about rudeness on the part of their commanding fathers. And the saying: "You are not a woman, you are a soldier" - has become an "iron" argument in the mouths of many bosses. By the way, it would be useful for such commanders to know that even in the XVIII century, the distinctive features of a Russian officer were not only courage and bravery, but also a chivalrous attitude towards a lady. There were even rules according to which, in order to invite a girl to dance at a ball, civilian cavaliers first had to introduce themselves to her father. Without this introduction, girls could only accept invitations from officers...

You can talk a lot about the personal culture of a serviceman. I have only touched on some parts of the protruding iceberg of military culture. But these small parts are used to judge us as a whole. Of course, in our army there are, were and will be educated, competent officers to match the author of the memoir "50 years in the ranks" Count A. Ignatiev. But I wish there were more of them. I would like society to see in a soldier of any rank not a rude soldier, but a highly erudite, cultured person. And to do this, we should not wait for the state to turn its face to the problems of the army: raise the salary to the proper level, create conditions acceptable for Life and service, finance enough military centers of culture, etc. Just remember the last time you picked up a book, visited the theater, the Philharmonic hall, kissed a woman's hand, gave her flowers, went out with your family to nature...

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