After exchanging greetings with our brothers and sisters in the small building, we go outside to talk with Yura. The young men have dispersed after what was clearly a deep conversation with the pastor and Yura enlightens us about the soldier boys� presence. That morning, Slava had gone to the base commander and requested the help of seven young men to build a new fence for the church. The commander acquiesced readily and surprisingly. He expressed deep despair and was at his wit�s end. The death rate of his charges was escalating due to murder and suicide and he simply didn�t know what to do about it. Maybe the church could help them � maybe, just maybe there was something to this religion stuff � nothing else seemed to work.
Russia has long had the practice of drafting young men at their coming of age to serve in the nation�s armed forces. At one time this may have been considered a duty performed with pride � now it can amount to nothing less than a death sentence. Mothers frantically look for ways to excuse their growing boys from this duty going from one government office to another, from one doctor to another in a frenzied effort to secure a certificate exempting their sons from service due to physiological or psychological infirmities. Few succeed and they must watch their precious children shackled into what is, to all intents and purposes, slavery.
Some young soldiers return home after their two-year service, many do not. Few if any actually witness an honorable battle. They serve as the common laborers and clean-up crews for the highways, building sites and communities doing what our prison chain gangs might do in the U.S. One day I observed a couple of the young men trying to sell the paint they�d been given to whitewash a building. They went from car to car, from one apartment to the next trying to get a few rubles to supplement their existence or to buy a mind altering substance to help them forget or feel alive and real.
