There was a response to the publication of the article “Army as an issue” published in our newspaper (#54, May 31-June 2). It related to the fact that there are no libraries in armies. According to the response there are libraries in armies. The problem is that that few young people read books.
That is the reason why many of the army servants are busy with gambling. In such cases people say, “there is date in Baghdad; so what?” For us the library, military hospital and laws in general are as remote as the date in Baghdad (from Einstein’s theory). The library is not a collection of books but certain attitude to books and literature in general as well as culture. I am not speaking of lofty things. All I am saying is the attitude of people to books and literature, which changed by 1800 degree in our lives. If one of our army generals didn’t shoot in the air for fun and spent at least 30 minutes on reading books there would be not only less fight in the army but also kids with higher education wouldn’t commit suicide or wouldn’t be alienated. The army has somehow turned into a bulwark between life and life; that is the life before and after the army service. The main age of army recruitment is 18. It means that army accepts young people, who are healthy, zealous and enthusiastic. However in two years at the age of 20 when these young men return from the army it is very hard to compare them with their counterparts, who haven’t joined the army yet. The young kids return from armies with no hair or spoilt teeth and even turned into some old men in terms of their mentality. This is not exaggeration. The student, who returns from the army, is accepted that very same way by other students. He seems somehow alienated and isolated from his counterparts. There is little age difference among them, only 2-3 years but they are having hard time communicating. Of course the army doesn’t take responsibility for such issues (besides the formal care). The army doesn’t care about the health, leisure future education. Moreover, quite often the army recruits kids with health problems. The military hospital only partly realizes its functions (here often the healthy ones are kept after taking bribe till the end of their military service). Indeed the process of fighting such negative phenomena has been quite restricted now and certain steps are taken in this regard. The army must be purified from such negative phenomena because the army is one of the cornerstones of our sovereignty and number one guarantee of the national security. The army often doesn’t care about the future of its soldiers, about their health and life. All they care about and take responsibility for is the two years the young men serve in the army. After that their destiny is of no interest despite the fact that the state spends money on them, buys equipment, etc. It means that in the event of war only the soldiers, who are in military bases, will be eligible to fight. I may be accused of dimming colors. They may say that I haven’t been to the army and am not aware of what’s going on there, however the witnesses can tell a lot and even the ones, who are in charge know better than anyone what is actually going on there. The young men recruited from the army stays in bed for ten years and cannot expect any support from anyone (not to even mention that he wasn’t to be recruited to the army). Even in such cases the young man is being ignored by the state and everyone knows how low the pension in such cases is. I am raising this issue with pain with the hope that it will be solved. In our country there are no children of others and in general there are no kids of other parents. The more sadness surrounds us the less we smile. We feel even guiltier and we shouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t reflect on us. We all feel that but we strangely enough never confess that but confession always helps us not to make new sins. For example, if the Turks had the will to confess the genocide just like the Germans did they would help themselves and be saved from the sense of guilt. “Not quite long ago,” says Dobrolyubov, “patriotism used to be glorification of the positive deeds. Now it is not enough to be patriotic.”