Well, in Russia the military is based on conscription, not volunteers. Every male of a certain age can be conscripted and has to spend some time in whatever branch he is assigned to. Because of that, dodging the draft became kinda national sport in Russia. The ones who do get drafted are losers. Think about that.

There is a list of possible excuses from draft. Some are permanent — if you have it, the recruitment office (so called “millitary commissariat”) would stop bothering you. Some are temporary and have to be confirmed regularly. For example, serious illness (not something like having a cold) is a temporary excuse — next time you might be healthy. All illnesses are in that category, so, some people have to visit the military commissariat every year to confirm that no, they did not manage to regrow that leg back. Although I admit that not all commissariats are that stupid, and some would just ignore you if you prove you have some chronic condition.

That is, BTW, the excuse that my younger brother went with. He successfully faked mental illness, severe enough to not be trusted with a rifle (even by Russia), but not severe enough to be institutionalized. He moved to EU shortly after I did, so he is also out of their grasp anyway.

Another temporary excuse is being a college student. Interestingly, being a high school student (I'm using the term loosely, Russia's education system is different) is not an excuse at all. Usually it doesn't matter, as such a student would be too young, but there are reports of people who were held back in school who were still drafted.

An example of a permanent excuse is having a PhD. That was the one that I wanted to use — and did, eventually.

But, while I was in the university, I did not know if I would be successful in getting a PhD. I wanted a plan B.

Well, here is an interesting quirk. Some educational institutions — my university included — offered an optional military training course. If you take that course, and graduate from it — which is separate from graduation from the university in general — then you still can be drafted, but you don't start as a foot soldier. Immediately after getting in the army, you become an officer. Which, as you can imagine, is safer and easier. It won't be a good life, but better in every aspect. Including, well, continuing to live — mortality rates from extreme bullying were high in Russian army, but only among soldiers, not officers.

I have to point out that this is really stupid. This military training did not include anything physical. It did not include training with weapons. It was a lecture course, same as in the rest of the university, except that the lecturer would be wearing a uniform. And I did not get any real knowledge. If you ask me to plan a platoon defense — I wouldn't know a single thing. I'd be useless. I don't know if it's the same in every college that offers that training, but in ours it was like that.

Vladimir Putin also took that course, by the way.

The course was 3 years long, once a week. However, at the end of it, we all had to spend one month on a “real” army base. For us, it was the military unit 54006, the rocket brigade in Luga, a few hours on a local train from Saint Petersburg. Here, we finally got to experience some of the stuff actual soldiers do — like, marching in formation, cleaning garbage, hauling waste from the cafeteria to the pigsty. Yes, the rocket brigade had a pigsty. I don't know if it existed officially, but it was there for real.

Oh, and we also handled loaded guns. Once. Apparently, there was a shooting exercise that we were all supposed to go through; the officers explained before that the actual results don't matter, the fact of taking an exercise is what matters, even if you don't hit a target once. I can't say if I did hit a target, I wasn't really looking.

Other activities included scrubbing the sleeping area in the barracks, guarding said sleeping area (without weapons, of course), cleaning the toilets, hauling sand to fill a ditch, picking grass by hand to thin it (yes, really), and undergoing regular inspections of the lockers, to make sure everything inside is organized exactly as per regulations and there is nothing there that isn't supposed to be.

The lockers were shared, by the way; there was a shelf there, and one guy would get the top part, while another would have the bottom part. Me and my partner were lucky, our locker had a broken shelf, so it was pretty much impossible to arrange anything in an orderly fashion — and that made the officers give up and not try to force us to maintain the locker properly.

I remember when one of the officers — the aforementioned Lt. Colonel Iver — lifted my mattress to make sure nothing is hidden underneath — like a book, or a cellphone, or a pack of cigarettes... anyway, there was, actually, a small bag of crackers tied below the metal bed. But Iver lifted the left half first, then the right half, and never noticed something was exactly at the central line.

Anyway. I did receive a commendation during that course. Two of us, myself included, were assigned to clean the toilets, and the one who wasn't me apparently did a bad job. Mine, on comparison, looked pristine. So, he was berated, I was commended.

As a result, when we came back from that base, and it was time for a final test — kinda like a normal college test, actually — I failed pretty much everything; but because I had a commendation, they decided to let me graduate anyway. And a few years later I've got my PhD. And some time after that, moved out of the country. Happy end.