About military pensioners

- Tell me, why is the pension book only for five years? Then come - get a new one?

“I don’t know… no one has come yet…”

Joke.

The kleptocracy [ 1 ], which has usurped power in Russia, presents the ideal citizen as follows: he works three jobs, regularly pays all taxes, does not demand anything from the state, obediently votes for United Russia, and dies three days after his retirement. For civilians-military personnel, the last milestone is determined by the age of 40–45 years.

“Gratitude” to its defenders, the Russian state, apparently, shows permanently. To retell the whole story - the newspaper is not enough. Let us only remember how the great ones “thanked”.

Peter the Great made happy his soldiers - the winners of the Swedes - by building a great city on their bones.

Joseph Stalin also decided to keep up. As a child, my father told me that after the Great Patriotic War, the streets of Pskov were full of beggars - crippled front-line soldiers, armless, legless, who begged for alms. Then, suddenly, overnight, they all disappeared.

I learned the continuation of the story in 1996, having worked for the summer as a monastery guide on Valaam.

It turned out that all the restless invalids of the war, on the orders of Stalin, were collected and taken to the northern monasteries, cleared of monks, turning these monasteries into the so-called homes for the disabled. The cripples had no right to spoil the picture of "universal happiness" on the streets of Soviet cities with their miserable appearance. One of the last refuges of the defenders of the Motherland was Valaam.

Together with the disabled, young doctors and nurses were exiled to the island “by distribution”, who grew old there, many drank themselves. There, on Valaam, the disabled gradually died. In 1996, graves with rotten and half-decayed tombstones were already hard to find in the thickets of grass and shrubs in their abandoned cemetery.

The current veterans and invalids of new wars, military pensioners, are merciful to those in power: “only” does not fulfill social obligations, does not provide enough housing, pays miserable pensions. But he still does not exile on the reservation. Vladimir Putin in this regard, before Joseph Stalin, has yet to grow and grow.

But he tries. The latest innovation is the conscript's electronic passport. At first, it was planned to give it to ten-year-old male citizens. Now we decided to do it right at birth. To every boy. To not sag. Fattening of cannon fodder under electronic control. The ruling regime has money for this.

On the other hand, the pensions of military personnel who honestly gave the best and most of their lives to the service of the Motherland turn out to be below the national average. The regime came up with a trick. The military does not increase either official salaries, or salaries for military rank and length of service, but they pay all sorts of bonuses that are not taken into account when calculating pensions. Therefore, allowances for those who still serve are growing, with grief in half compensating for inflation, and pensions have froze at the same low level as many years ago.

The economic crisis has significantly exacerbated the situation of military pensioners, who in many cases have lost opportunities for additional earnings part-time - employers first of all get rid of older employees and part-time workers.

The usurpers of power in modern Russia need cheap, silent cannon fodder that will protect their oil and gas pipeline, stolen goods and palaces on Rublevka with their lives, and then, having given up their health, quietly live on a beggarly pension.

And if he gives his life, it is very profitable.

But such a situation categorically does not suit either the military pensioners themselves (and the active military), or us, the unwitting consumers of all the services of the "sovereign vertical", nor those few political forces that are not affected by the "vertical" decomposition.

For example, on January 30, 2010, the Bureau of the Yabloko Party adopted an Appeal to the President of the Russian Federation, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev "On measures to ensure the rights of military personnel to decent pensions."

“... The party demands the elimination of injustice in the issue of pensions for military personnel of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation and a revision of the system of monetary allowance for active military personnel. Its main part should be the monetary content according to the position and rank of military personnel, and allowances and other payments should be no more than 20-30% of the monetary allowance.

Then, after dismissal from service, the serviceman will receive decent pensions ... "

On February 18, 2010, the Pskov regional organization of the All-Russian Trade Union of Military Personnel addressed the President of the Russian Federation with a similar demand:

“... At present, a paradoxical situation is emerging when certain categories of military pensioners are forced to apply to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation with a request to pay them a social pension, since their military pensions turned out to be lower than the living wage officially established in the Pskov region - 4188 rubles.

What kind of prestige of the army and what kind of pride in military rank can we talk about with such an attitude of the Russian state towards us, military pensioners ?!

The government of the Russian Federation has repeatedly promised to solve this problem, but things are still there. Now, apparently, the president will also promise.

Meanwhile, the total number of military pensioners is declining. For understandable unfortunate reasons. And the state "saves".

I believe that now it is impossible to solve the problem of decent pensions for the military. The budget of the Russian Federation, under the current government and its habits, simply has nowhere to get such sums of money. These are already accustomed to living beyond their means, "throwing" everyone to whom they owe. In order to prolong their sitting on the oil and gas pipeline, the power "elite" inflated such a staff of officials and security officials that the ruined Russian economy can no longer feed and who eat it up, extracting themselves "to feed themselves."

To honestly settle accounts with all citizens, including military pensioners, to whom the state is indebted, there is only one way: a complete change of power, the trial of kleptocrats, the arrest of stolen capital in foreign banks and the return of the stolen money to Russia. The returned trillions will be enough for the development of the economy, and for decent pensions, and for compensating for the “burned out” (but in fact stolen) deposits of ordinary citizens.

And it needs to be done within the next year and a half. Otherwise, the "sovereign vertical" together with "United Russia" will plunder and corrupt the remnants of the country, destroy the army, and with it Russia itself.

Igor BORISOV , consumer

1 Kleptocracy (from other Greek - “to steal”, and “domination, power”, literally “the power of thieves”) is a political regime in which the main state decisions are motivated, first of all, by the direct material interest of a narrow group of people, these decision makers.