"SHOW me a guy here who wants to go to the army. Do you think we're patriots?"
Ilya, a defiant 19 year old wearing a black bandana, spoke for the dozens of meeker youths who sat in a queue waiting for medical examinations at an army recruitment centre in southern Moscow early one morning last week.
With the war still raging in Chechnya despite Boris Yeltsin's efforts to extinguish it in time for June's presidential elections, few Russians want to serve their Motherland. The army, getting desperate for conscripts, is cracking down on draft dodgers and taking youths it would previously have turned down as unfit.
I was given access to the recruiting centre by a brave officer with liberal views. Instead of seeking permission from the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Defence, he simply let me in to observe his spring draft. So I can call him Colonel Y.
He opposes the war in Chechnya and believes conscientious objectors should have an alternative to the two years of compulsory military service, a right set out in the Russian Constitution but not available in practice.
"Personally I believe Russia should have a small professional army as in western countries" he said. "But orders are orders. I have a job to do. So this recruiting centre will make sure it gets all the lads it needs."
This is how the system works. When a young man reaches his 18th birthday, he can expect his first greeting from the army in the form of an invitation to appear before a commission of officers, doctors and civilians. Theses call up papers go out every spring and autumn and, if the young man does not serve immediately, hem will keep on receiving them until the age of 27, when he ceases to be liable.
If he is in higher education, the youth has the right to finish his studies before going to the army. The commission will exempt him from service if he has a child under three years old or dependent elderly relatives. He can also win exemption on medical grounds.
This is where the cat and mouse game between the army and the draft dodger begins.
"There are dozens of ways of making yourself medically unfit"
say Boris P, a man in his mid thirties who, because of the war in Afghanistan, back in Soviet times, learned every trick in the book for evading service.
"I know lads who have drunk cleaning fluid to give themselves stomach ulcers," he said. "The most popular way is to bribe a psychiatrist to certify you as mentally unstable. But that brings problems. If you get a white ticket (exemption) on those grounds, you can't get a driving licence afterwards."
BUT now the army, faced with a 20 per cent short fall in the ranks, is crack ing down. Doctors' decisions must be confirmed by other doctors. And even the range of genuine ailments taken into consideration has been narrowed.
The centre's chief doctor, Oleg K, shows me a new set of government guidelines. For example, hernia and dropsy of the testicles are no longer sufficient reason to keep a man out of the forces.
"I work on this principle", he said, "if a boy is fifty fifty, I try make him a bit more ill than he really is. For example I had a lad in here with a deformed face. He was otherwise healthy, but he would have been an easy target bullies, so I got him off. I try make decisions in the of the boys but not at the expense of the army.
Dr K gives me free access to the medical examinations, except the interviews with the psychiatrist.
The optician, Nina V, is a plump jolly woman who feels for the youths. "Who wants to die at that age?" she asks. Boris K, the ear, nose and throat specialist, is more brusque in his manner. "Your cold will clear up when you get in the army," he tells a sullen youth in a sports jacket. But both doctors said they made objective professional decisions.
I get the impression that the boys at the biggest disadvantage are the ones who have come accompanied by their mothers.
"Oh, these hysterical mothers. They are the bane of my life," mutters Dr K as he hurries down the corridor.
Apart from Chechnya, where conscripts can be sent only in the second year of service, young men fear being posted to the notoriously under funded Far East. Last week it was reported in Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that two conscripts had died there from starvation.
Another highly unpopular and unprestigious posting is to the "Stroibat", the battalion that builds roads. The television programme Vremechko, arguing that service here amounted to slave labour, recently interviewed conscripts who, in order to earn a few roubles for a smoke, were walking the streets near the Ministry of Defence offering themselves as male prostitutes.