Defense minstrel

It has been noticed more than once that Sergey Borisovich Ivanov is poorly versed in military affairs. However, he apparently learned the walking wisdom about the offensive as the best type of defense - and went on the attack. From the Duma rostrum, the minister threatened the media, publishing speeches for the boycott of draft in the armed forces, checks for compliance with the Constitution. This statement shows that Mr. Ivanov’s legal knowledge is no better than the military. First of all, the Constitution about the call does not say anything: it is only indicated that "a citizen of the Russian Federation carries military service in accordance with federal law" (Article 54, clause 2). Thus, agitation against the call of the constitution, strictly speaking, does not contradict.

But even if the draft system were assigned constitutionally, speeches against it would not be illegal. The Basic Law (Article 29) proclaims freedom of speech and the media, limiting it to only a ban on propaganda of enmity or superiority on racial, national and religious grounds. Criticism of certain provisions of the Constitution, calls for their cancellation by law are not forbidden. There are a lot of precedents: for example, even responsible statesmen advocate the extension of the presidential powers and do not undergo any square for this.

They will say that in this case we are not talking about a proposal to correct the Constitution, but about calling for non -fulfillment of the requirements of the law on military duty, that is, to civil disobedience. But such calls also do not contain anything illegal. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for punishment only for public calls for a violent (italics, N.P.) change in the constitutional system (Article 280). The current Law of the Russian Federation "On Mass Media" (Article 4) prohibits "the use of the media in order to commit criminally punished acts, to disclose information constituting a state or other secret protected by law, for extremist activity, as well as for the spread of programs that promote pornography, a cult of violence and cruelty." The list is enough - perhaps even too long, but calls for civil disobedience do not fit into it.

The minister should not think about the attack on the media, but about defense - at least about the protection of his department from the accusations distributed from everywhere in connection with the unprecedented revelry of army crime. More recently, Mr. Ivanov disgraced the whole world, suggesting that in the Chelyabinsk tank school, where the soldier Andrei Sychev was mutilated, "nothing serious happened." Now he is thoughtful: "The army, no matter how trivial it sounds, is part of the entire Russian society, in which the crime rate, unfortunately, is not only not reduced, but also grows."

It really sounds trivial: the same simple thought about the so -called grandfather was recently expressed by President Putin, she was repeated at yesterday's meeting of the Duma defense committee. However, not all trivial is true. The army, of course, is part of the society, but the part is special. The Minister of Defense would be supposed to know that the army is different - at least should differ - from other social structures (say, from youth companies) much more ordinance, subordination to strict rules, norms and orders, in short, discipline.

So the attempt of Mr. Ivanov to explain (if not justify) the criminalization of the army with the growth of teenage crime speaks only of his inconsistency of his position. It is as if a surgeon who brought a dangerous infection during surgery was complained that our people were in hygienic skills, including the custom of washing hands, are not developed enough. Or if the driver who traveled to the red light and caused this serious accident began to argue that Daltonikov in the country's population was not so few. Or if the president of the country, who was ugly at a press conference to a foreign journalist, was justified by the fact that in the Russian life the rules of politeness are generally extremely rare.