The New?

It couldn't have been scripted better. Having just passed the creaky communists, I resumed my awkward vigil by the entrance to the Gostiniy Dvor metro station. My friends were supposed to meet me here half an hour ago and I had run out of minutes on my phone so calling them was impossible.

It started when a few boys, ten-fifteen yrs old, emerged from the metro station and gathered in the center of the plaza. They were joined by a few more, and then half a minute later a few more, and they just kept coming. The invasion was underway. Within five minutes there were well over two hundred 5'5", baby-faced, fatigued boys massed in the center of the plaza. They pushed and jostled into two colomns. Five to ten older boys (no more than twenty), confidently herded the mass. I actually saw one of them practice his goose-step. If the communists symbolized the old Russia, do these kids symbolize the new? And if so, how many goose-stepping pre-pubescents are required before we can call on the Hitler Youth analogy? More broadly, what's going on with militarism in this country?

It alayed my fears a bit to learn that the little soldiers were students at a local military academy. I was always used to associating military school with deliquents and military families, but in Russia it's much more mainstream. Parents send their children to the military academy to get them a spot in the officer corps come draft time; better than with the grunts, where reports of abuse and suicide is chillingly common. So, in short, this is not the Hitler Youth (a nationlistic youth movement called "Nashi" ("Ours") exists, but I don't know much about them.)

Still, this legion of little soldiers sent chills down my spine. What if the little soldiers grow up to be big ones? What if the ones who look like children dressed up for holloween grow into their baggy uniforms? What if goose-stepping, for them, begins to feel like walking?