The price of victory is 500 rubles

The Ministry of Defense refuses to recognize former cadets as participants in the Great Patriotic War

There are one and a half hundred people left in the whole country (and once there were three and a half thousand): those who almost seventy years ago, as 16-17-year-old boys, took the military oath, carried weapons and guarded military facilities. But those who did not fight either ...

There are one and a half hundred people left in the whole country (and once there were three and a half thousand): those who almost seventy years ago, as 16-17-year-old boys, took the military oath, carried weapons and guarded military facilities.

But those who have not fought for a day do not recognize them - old people who have gone into their ninth decade - as participants in the war.

They were awarded orders and medals - including "For the victory over Germany" and "For the victory over Japan." They are former cadets of naval preparatory schools (and now retired admirals, captains of the first and second ranks), who have served in the Navy for decades. And, as Novaya Gazeta reported two years ago, they are unsuccessfully seeking the status of participants in the war: the Ministry of Defense is fighting to the death, refusing to recognize this right for them. Saves money: recognizing former cadets as participants in the war, they will have to pay them 500 rubles a month of the “presidential allowance”.

Let's calculate: all those who survived will need 75,000 rubles a month, 900,000 rubles a year - less than the cost of a car bought to service a middle-class government official. But the courts are to the death.

In November 2009, “on behalf of the survivors,” a group of former cadets turned to the president’s website, asking him, on the eve of the 65th anniversary of the Victory, for only one thing: an independent legal examination of their documents. The sailors reported that the St. Petersburg military registration and enlistment office offered them to accept the status of “pupils” and enter the category of “home front workers”, which entitles them to a 596-ruble increase in pension (even more than the “presidential one”). But to accept this proposal means to admit that they were not participants in the war, to which the former cadets categorically disagree: money is not important to them.

The answer came quickly. But not from the addressee at all: from the “consultant of the department of written appeals of citizens” of the Presidential Administration for Work with Citizens’ Appeals S. Suponev. The official said: the appeal was sent for consideration to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. After that, the Department of Social Guarantees of the Ministry of Defense sent a standard answer to the sailors: they say, “there are no grounds for classifying the periods of training of cadets in preparatory schools as military service” ...

Having received such an answer, the former cadets wrote to the president again - this time an open letter. We were told that “we didn’t particularly expect the officials of the Ministry of Defense to consider our appeal in accordance with the law and justice, and here our expectations, unfortunately, were justified - the same lie, the same falsification of documents, the same unsubstantiated base to justify the conclusions of the refusal.” They outlined all the legal arguments: they referred both to the law “On compulsory military service” of 1935, and to the law “On universal military service” of 1939 (according to which they were called up from the age of 17, and when enrolling in schools - from 16 years old), and to decision of the Council of People's Commissars of 1944, and on the orders of the People's Commissariat of the Navy, and on other documents confirming the legal right of cadets to be considered military personnel. And they asked the president, as also a "citizen of a country with a higher legal education," to judge whether they were military personnel and whether they were worthy of the "high rank of a participant in the war."