But there’s much more on offer, too. For those coming back from the front, the state promises fast-tracked entry into civil service jobs, health insurance, free public transportation, as well as free university education and free food at school for their children. And for those who were imprisoned and joined the Wagner private military company, the state grants freedom.
Those promises aren’t entirely fulfilled, of course. Many soldiers have not been paid in full and their wives often complain about nonpayment in public forums. Interviews with three wounded soldiers and their families on the anti-Kremlin network TV Rain painted a parlous picture of life at the front: no pay, no training and high casualties. Even so, the interviewees still considered the war just and wanted to return to the front or support the war efforts as volunteers.
Another war provides the reason. Today’s soldiers live in the shadows of the generation that won the war against Nazism. In Russian public culture, no honor is higher than to be a veteran of the “Great Patriotic War,” something the regime has capitalized on by framing today’s war as a kind of historical re-enactment of World War II. The conflation clearly works. As one soldier wrote on Telegram in February, the war confers “a sense of belonging to the great male deed, the deed of defending our Motherland.”
The phrase is revealing. By allowing men to escape the difficulties of everyday life — with its low pay and routine frustrations — the war offers a restoration of male self-worth. These men, at last, matter. (For women, made to suffer the brunt of the war’s fallout, it’s more vexed; but despite the difficulties, many understand and support men’s decision to serve.) Feelings of inferiority, too, are swept aside in the fraternal atmosphere of the front. “It doesn’t matter who you are, how you look,” as one soldier put it. In the communal life of conflict, many of the distinctions of civilian life dissolve. War is an equalizer.
That surely explains its appeal to those from lower social classes. While some of the urban middle and upper classes have expressed their discontent with the war by emigrating, the poorer sections of Russian society see things differently. Mistrust of the rich, belief that sanctions actually strengthen the economy and disdain for émigrés all attest to a class-based experience of the conflict. By participating in the war, millions of Russians at the bottom of the social ladder can emerge as the country’s true heroes, ready for the ultimate sacrifice. The risk may be grave and the financial reward uncertain. But the chance to rise in esteem and respect makes the effort worthwhile.