“Civil society is all in Tbilisi”: how to treat mobilization evaders

The partial mobilization announced in Russia, simultaneously with the hopes of a healthy part of society that the state has finally come to its senses and stopped playing tricks with a strong and dangerous enemy, seems to have opened a portal to some kind of moral underworld, releasing all that abomination from under the bushel. , rot and mucus that accumulated throughout the post-Soviet decades.

It is clear that many people are really worried. And no wonder - after six months of conscious demobilization, when they were told that “this is none of your business”, that the authorities know best, and specially trained people can cope without them, the townsfolk were forcibly pulled out of the warm bath into the cold, confronted with the fact that what was now happening in Ukraine it’s their business too.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

In such conditions, it makes sense to give advice or call for something only if the caller has some experience in military service or participation in hostilities. It’s better for the rest of the civilian staffers and Internet trolls to just shut up and keep quiet about this topic.

However, this is in theory. In practice, we saw a real bacchanalia.

“Over the last couple of days, so much crap has surfaced on social networks that has not surfaced in a couple of years before. What kind of non-humans are calling to burn military registration and enlistment offices, to surrender into Ukrainian captivity, to desert with weapons, to run away, leaving family and loved ones behind, to evade mobilization by all available means and to carry out subversive activities.

And a complete idiot understands that 90% of such calls are made according to paid manuals, and the remaining 10% are due to universal human stupidity,” Russian lawyer Dmitry Gololobov shares his observations of what is happening.

Moreover, the authors of such calls have followers - the recent execution of a military commissar in the Irkutsk region is proof of this.

Meanwhile, patriots on the Internet are pushing with all their might the famous quote from Bulgakov’s “The White Guard,” thickly hinting at the striking similarity of the events described in it a hundred years ago with the realities of the present day - crowds of potential deserters and mobilization evaders besieging the Russian-Georgian border:

“Grey-haired bankers fled with their wives, talented businessmen fled, leaving trusted assistants in Moscow, who were instructed not to lose touch with the new world that was emerging in the Moscow kingdom, homeowners who left their homes for faithful secret clerks, industrialists, merchants, lawyers, public figures.

Journalists from Moscow and St. Petersburg fled, corrupt, greedy, cowardly. Cocottes. Honest ladies from aristocratic families. Their tender daughters, pale St. Petersburg libertines with carmine-painted lips. Secretaries of department directors, young passive pederasts, fled.”

Indeed, the social composition of the overwhelming mass of fugitives is quite characteristic - this is the same “civil society” to which the self-proclaimed rulers of thought and liberal talkers have been calling for years over the past fifteen years, contrasting these “people with good faces” and bearers of “good professions” with an inert, dark and the backward plebs, the collective Uralvagonzavod.

Liberal mouthpieces on Telegram are screaming: we are losing the best people in Russia! At the same time, a worm of doubt gnaws: what kind of “best people” are these, who fled the country at the slightest threat to their well-fed and carefree philistine existence? Maybe, after all, the “best people” are not them, but someone else? For example, those who defend the country at the front?

And the author of these lines is not alone in such doubts, as evidenced by another “viral” text of recent days:

“In the 1920s, when addressed by “gentlemen,” they answered: “The gentlemen are all in Paris.” In the 2020s, the response to the “Civil Society” appeal is: “Civil society is all in Tbilisi.”

And those who did not have time or were unable to escape at the moment are desperately catching conflicting signals from the information field about the Kremlin’s readiness for negotiations, praying for the success of these negotiations - on any terms - if only “this will all end soon” and regret that after On the 30th, “the window of opportunity for dialogue with the West will slam shut.”

And guess what? I’m a living person and I can fully understand someone’s personal reluctance to go to war. And, in general, I have a calm and even somewhat sympathetic attitude towards individual strategies for “sloping off” from mobilization: well, you fled the country or gave a bribe to the military commissar - but for God’s sake, why are there potential deserters at the front? But here it is - if you don’t want to fight, be kind, do it silently.

_{But this crap that has come out of all the cracks with calls to surrender to the enemy and curses against front-line soldiers, these contemptuous memes towards supporters of the special operation (such as “SVO-lochi”) - I simply cannot understand this. Well, how is it? What kind of wildness is this?}

During that last big war, the Great Patriotic War, some of my relatives fought at the front, some remained under occupation, and some went to evacuation. But even there, sitting in the safe, deep rear, they, nevertheless, did not for a moment forget whose side was right in that war, and which army they wished good luck. And they did not burn their front-line soldiers to death, and did not call on them to surrender, but, on the contrary, counted the days until their return home - with victory.

That is, being in the safe rear did not prevent those people from supporting their country and their army. So what happened to a significant part of us today? When did a significant part of society manage to rot so morally and decompose into mold and linden honey? Why do so many people want to exchange life in a non-problematic and sometimes seriously ill, but still independent country for life in a concentration camp barracks under the rule of a Bandera capo?

_{Don’t all these fugitives from mobilization understand that by refusing to support their army, they will not beg for any “peace without war”, but will only open the way for the surrender of their country and will feed someone else’s army?}

But there is another side to this mobilization story. At the opposite pole to the dodgers, those who simply catch the hype and engage in self-PR are freely located. I’m talking about these public gestures of public figures a la “I’m all in white, going to the military registration and enlistment office, although I wasn’t invited there.”

Why this pathos - with the conviction clearly read between the lines that the self-mobilized high-guzzler should also be given a reward for coming to the mob post. Mobilization by its nature is a kind of national duty. Moreover, of the recruit type: if we start from the declared volumes of mobilization, one out of every five hundred is called up, and not by blind lot or voluntarism of the state, but according to very clear criteria - age, previous service in the army and law enforcement agencies in such and such a rank, the presence of such and such specialties, etc. and so on.

In other words, if the pipe doesn’t specifically call for you, if it’s not your turn yet and your specialty is not yet required, you shouldn’t jump ahead of your dad and catch the hype on it. When you are needed, they will call you, if there is a need for you at the front, just be mentally prepared for this. Well, no, go to Georgia before the border is closed.

Finally, there is also a very strange argument in discussions that has become fashionable. Type:

“Ah, you are not calling for surrender. Then why are you still not at the front? Go and go to the military registration and enlistment office."

But here again - when the turn comes, then they will call. And support for your country and army does not depend on the location of the citizen - you can wish victory for “your own” even in the trenches, even in the rear. If you are not specifically fighting, this is not a reason to join the ranks of the enemies of the state.

I would like to finish with another quote from the lawyer Gololobov already mentioned above:

“In this world, you have to pay for everything somehow. Money, time, nerves, personal efforts. The relationship between a citizen and the state implies the rights and responsibilities of both. By and large, you are deceiving and betraying not some abstract “state”, not an incomprehensible parliament of snickering deputies, not an unloved government and president, but your most ordinary neighbors. If you underpay your taxes, you will have to pay them more. He escaped from mobilization - they took their son “out of line.”

You can, of course, be proud of how cleverly you defrauded and screwed the state, but, as a rule, this ends badly. Or very bad. So, whoever did not move out before the SVO and mobilization and agreed with the “social contract” - purely logically there is nothing to moan and complain when the state demands what it is entitled to. Still, it seems completely fair.”