Grigory Pasko: In the Kingdom of Military Bureaucratism

Personally, I had no intention to go begging for a pension from the Putinite state:  if not the letter from Strasbourg, I would not have gone to the military commissariat.

But, inasmuch as I - am a law-abiding person (while a court's request - this is law for me), so it was that I went to the military commissariat.

 Moscow.  Prospekt Mira.  9:30 in the morning.  The building of the Mosgorvoenkomat [Moscow City Military Commisariat].  About five people there.  At 9:45 - already 20 people.  All - elderly pensioners.  They stand in the queue.  No place to sit.  At the table where they give out passes - three policemen and two military service personnel.  Why such a quantity of security in front of the entrance to a very peaceful establishment - the pension department of the military commissariat - is hard to say.  Okay, fine.  At 10:00 they started to let everybody in.  The building is new, large, beautiful.  Everywhere - good furniture.  All visitors - to office 208.  Such an impression that the other offices aren't working.  Before 208 behind a large table  sits a woman.  She asks of everybody for what reason they have come.

An elderly woman: - I need a document about how I together with my husband had served in such-and-such a garrison...  Reply: - Go to the military commissariat at the place of residence.

An elderly pensioner: - I would need a repayment of money spent on transportation on holiday.  I brought the tickets...

Reply: - You need to apply to the military commissariat at the place of residence...

An elderly man: - I'm here about a document...

Reply: - And why didn't they give it out to you in the military commissariat at the place of residence?

Not waiting for a reply, I went immediately into the office of the chief of the department.

A large spacious office.  In a large leather chair sits a not-large colonel - Andrey Vladimirovich Mironovich.  An the wall before him - a large portrait of the chairman of the government of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

I briefly set out to the colonel the essence of the matter:  I need a document about how I have ALREADY received a pension from them.

Reply: - Your question is complex.  Give your declaration and the letter from the court, and we during the course of two weeks will give you a reply.

I say yet again: - Where is the complexity here?  I have ALREADY received a pension from you.  Give me a document about how this fact has ALREADY taken place.

The colonel looks at me as at someone gravely ill.  He clearly doesn't understand me.  (Or he understands very well, and that's why he's not giving the document).  He says: - We must clarify, was the pension accrued to you lawfully; do we have the corresponding documents and so forth.

I make a final attempt to explain: - The fact is that they have ALREADY clarified all of this, long before you:  the pension was accrued lawfully, all the documents exist...  I'm not demanding an admission of the unlawfulness of the cessation of the payout of  the pension from you.  I'm asking only to confirm that which has ALREADY been.

The colonel replies: - I can't.  Come back in two weeks...

The past in Russia is unpredictable.  That's why the colonel isn't giving documents about what has been.

But then the future is predictable:  that's why in the office of the colonel there hangs a portrait of the future president - Vladimir Putin,  and not the current one -Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces Dmitry Medvedev.

And I can also predict:  they won't give me the document.  They'll send a letter about how «in connection with the sentence...the decision of a court...an explanatory memo of the pension administration...the minister of defence...the pension is not being paid out lawfully and with substantiation».

...At the exit I met the elderly pensioner, with whom I had stood in the queue.  He was walking with his head bowed.  I looked into his sad eyes.  He, taking a look at me, said: - So, they didn't give the document.  Now I've got to go again to my district military commissariat...

...At home I discovered that I'd forgotten to return the building pass.  I looked at it attentively:  its number - 3513.  I can say that on that day there were not three thousand and fifteen visitors.  This means that the passes were being given out merely for the sake of giving them out.  Without any sense at all.  And the fact that they did not demand it back upon exit - confirms this as well.

The matter, as you understand, isn't in building passes, but in the senselessness of the existence of such establishments.

On that same day in one of the newspapers I read:  «The Ministry of defense of the RF continues to elaborate a plan for the broad-scale reformation of the armed forces, begun at the initiative of president Dmitry Medvedev, likewise being the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.  In the meantime in officers' circles is ripening dissatisfaction with the transformations being carried through».

I'm thinking that soon dissatisfaction is going to ripen in the circles of military pensioners, too.