Work as a veteran

Sociologist Elena Racheva (University Oxford) says:

“Afghans began to include real veterans in the pantheon since the beginning of the 2000s. When I was talking to them, I noticed that they call veterans primarily those who participated in the Great Patriotic War. They also consider themselves real veterans, but not equal to the first. The Afghans do not consider the participants of the Chechen wars real veterans, as they participated in the war with the citizens of their country. But they believe that at one time veterans of the Chechen wars will take the place of Afghanistan veterans and will, for example, go to schools. Once I asked veterans about what would happen when there were no Chechen wars veterans. They answered me that there would be still new wars and new veterans.

I wanted to understand what the figure of a veteran in Russia is. I got the impression that being a veteran is a job. Partly the informants of my research joyfully agreed to this work. It allowed them to preserve the identity of the soldier, serve the state and fulfill the tasks. Veterans who are members of the official veteran unions are required to go to schools and talk with children, participate in veteran events, give an interview if they are asked about it. In all situations, they are obliged to talk about the war from the point of view of the state. Those who do not want to follow this rule are not included in military unions.

During the field work in Bryansk, I talked with local employees of the Ministry of Education, who worked on programs for the patriotic education of youth and the lessons of courage. They said that it was important for them to invite veterans of the Great Patriotic War to such lessons. But they almost all died. They had one woman who was stolen as an Ostarbeter to work in Germany. But she was not a very good veteran. Instead of talking about the war and exploits of Russian weapons, she talked about the horrors of German captivity. Then she was asked to talk about the military exploits of her sister, who was a partisan. And she began to talk about the horrors that took place in the partisan movement. As a result, she was removed from the "work" of the veteran. Veterans of Afghanistan were put in her place. But there were also problems with them. An employee of the ministry told me that sometimes they have only prepositions in their speech from censorship words. It is not clear how to let them in to the children. As a result, a "elegant" solution was found in the Bryansk school. They called veterans to school, but did not give them a word, but offered only to look at the performances that the schoolchildren prepared for them. "