By the time I joined the Russian Army two years ago, I was much older than the average recruit. At 25, I had eluded obligatory military service for years. But being born into the family of a career officer and war correspondent, I had also continually endured a sense of guilt for failing to meet my duty in serving my motherland.
The main thing that kept me from joining was my girlfriend, Raisa, who left New York to build a family with me in Moscow. I did not want to leave her alone for a whole year of service, and so I enrolled in a graduate program just to extend my student deferment. But Raisa and I started quarreling. The tragic finale occurred when she showed up at my apartment with our mutual acquaintance to collect her belongings. It still surprises me how the man made it out unharmed.
A military academy or service academy (in the United States) is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps.It normally provides education in a military environment, the exact definition depending on the country concerned. Three types of academy exist: pre-college-level institutions awarding academic qualifications, university-level institutions.
After that, I made a free fall into Moscow’s night life. I earned money only to waste it in the city’s countless bars and nightclubs. I circled the streets on my motorbike, cajoling random girls onto its back seat. Moscow was a perfect city to have fun in, but the old sense of guilt began to ache somewhere deep inside me.
So, unlike many young men in Russia, when an officer knocked on my door one day with a writ to appear at the enlistment office, I didn’t try to hide. At the office I faced a draft committee, which after a brief questioning ordered me to be at the main recruiting depot in three days.
The decision to abandon comfortable life in Moscow was the toughest I’ve ever made. But there was one positive side effect: In an instant, I became immensely attractive to all the beautiful girls who, as it turned out, fantasized about pining away for a lover in the army. One of them was Angelina, my online girlfriend from St. Petersburg.
“You are my hero,” she exclaimed when I told her I was about to head off to a military base in the woods outside Moscow. The mischievous look in her eyes was transmitted onto my screen via her webcam. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
The night before I reported I could not sleep. I had no idea what life would look like. Like hell, as it became apparent. Along with my comrades — college dropouts, failed draft dodgers, intimidating brawny Chechens — I spent the days shoveling snow from place to place with no visible purpose. On particularly lucky occasions, we marched against time through the dense and snowy fir forest around our base. I spent the nights on my flimsy bunk bed with 150 snoring men, playing my old adventures through my mind. I missed my Moscow life so much that I felt I would sacrifice everything for just a brief romance.
I was busy with some routine one day in the base’s headquarters when a friend of mine waved me over. In the corridor, I saw a miracle in the flesh: She was young, maybe too young. I walked over slowly and greeted her.
“Zdravstvuyte,” a simple “hello,” she whispered in response. She seemed to avoid eye contact, which only increased my interest.
![Military Military](http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/photos/big/puBqcAVA2Xghmi7RVa9WCFAkXAr5GGAX.jpg)
Suddenly, a door opened, and the orderly’s voice echoed off the walls: “Attention!” We all formed a line just as the captain appeared. A quintessentially Russian officer (imposing, loud and well mannered), he escorted the girl out and then turned to us. He explained that she — her name was Irochka — was the colonel’s daughter. She would be working in the offices. “If any of you dirty dogs even look her way,” he informed us, “I will make your life so miserable you’d regret it till the end of your days.”
That night, as I lay in my bunk, Irochka was all I could think about. Over the following days, I tried to employ all my powers to resist this temptation. But despite the captain’s warnings resonating in my head, I began pursuing her. She was only 18 and very shy, but the attentions of a 25-year-old soldier must have been too intriguing for her to completely ignore, because she liked me. I seized every opportunity to see her in the garrison, and with each day, it seemed, I came closer to making a potentially fatal mistake.
Then one day when I was allowed a few minutes to use a cellphone, I saw a missed call from Angelina, my St. Petersburg web acquaintance. I dialed her. “I’m coming to Moscow for a day,” she said. “And I want to see you in the city, is that clear?”
I traded a carton of cigarettes with another soldier in order to go on leave, and I met Angelina in Moscow on Tverskoy Boulevard near the Pushkin monument. The poet was looking down at us, his hand on the inside of his jacket. I looked at Angelina, a stunningly beautiful girl, and I realized that I would not allow the captain to make my life miserable. I would not give him a reason; there would be no need.