What a surprise it was to me when I was not just enlisted, but also assigned to the border troops and sent to serve in the Far East on the border with China.
I was shocked, and my whole family as well, except for my dad. I had to leave for 2 years for 9,000 km from home, and I had never been to a youth camp or gone from my parents to my grandmother’s village for more than a week.
The situation was worsened by the fact that at that time the USSR waged a war in Afghanistan. Even our town saw some coffins returning home instead of lads sent to war.
Before going to the transit terminal in Syzran, I got a short haircut, cutting my curls for the first time in my life. They shaved me with a hair clipper in Syzran. And we started waiting for a «buyer», as they called them.
It was interesting to look at the process.
An officer would come out into the middle of the square and shouts out some conscripts’ names.
They would come out, and the officer would take them to the unit. There was a real chance to change your initial assignment by simply not responding to the call.
That’s what many did if the «buyer» was a navy officer (since the service in the navy took 3 years instead of 2).
But then the «buyers» got wiser, and some random officer came out at first, and then, when the group was formed, the real «buyer» revealed himself, and until the last moment you didn’t know where you are going to end up.
In general, I was «bought» by the border guards, packed into an aircraft and sent flying with warning that 90 percent of will be sent to the Afghanistan. We were terrified.
And then we arrived to the destination.
We got out of the plane and found ourselves into a completely different climate, the humidity was so high that there were droplets of water in the air, something I had never seen before.
They drove us into the barracks and told us to wait. There were wooden mattressless beds in the barracks, after 15 minutes of lying down the whole body was aching.
We were taken to a boot camp in Blagoveshchensk. As we were drafted after the first year of higher education, we were assigned to the communications unit, and based on the complexity and specifics of training, it had to last 9 months instead of normal 6.
Those were hard times. We were drilled like… I don’t know who, there was nothing to compare with.
I naturally like being clean and tidy, and there you were sleep, eat, run, train wearing the same field uniform, and it is supposed to dry on you. You can only wash in a washbasin with cold water only. Linen and clothes are changed once a week after the bath.
What I didn’t like most was the «political information» sessions, because they put it right after forced foot marches, and we had to sit down, listening and drying out slowly.
Meals… I’d hardly call that food.
Most days it was «wallpaper paste». I don’t know how to explain what it was, but believe me, it was some inedible shit.
At least we had bread to eat our fill. There were state holidays, of course, when we were allowed to go to the store and buy crackers and candy.
The most delicious food was a «sandwich»: two crackers put together and a candy in between.
And it could only be eaten at night, and if you don’t get caught by the sergeants. In this case they’d take all the sweets, and you had to wash the toilets until morning.
