"…[The Soviet army] was an institution defined by systemic hazing, a practice so entrenched that it shaped the country’s entire cultural attitude toward conscription. Hazing—“dedovshchina”— was not a metaphor but a daily reality of psychological degradation, physical beatings, and, in the worst cases, fatalities. Young recruits were routinely subjected to violence by older soldiers who operated with near-total impunity. Stories circulated of conscripts being hospitalized, maimed, or driven to suicide. In many regions, parents viewed military service not as a civic duty but as a genuine threat to life, something to be avoided if one had the means or connections. Those who served were often assumed to be the ones whose families had failed to “get them out” (of the military), a phrase that carried both social judgment and grim resignation. Within this environment, evading service became not only a survival strategy but, for some, a form of ideological refusal: a rejection of becoming, as many described it, a cog in the system. One of the most common methods was to feign mental illness, a tactic so widespread that it had become an unspoken tradition. According to his family, [new spiritual movement leader Konstantin] Rudnev made this choice consciously after witnessing the brutality inside the barracks, including an incident in which a young recruit was beaten and raped before attempting suicide by slitting his wrists. Such events were not aberrations but part of a pattern of institutionalized violence that shaped his decision. By presenting symptoms that would lead to psychiatric hospitalization, he ensured he would not be returned to the army. The family argues that this episode— later used by prosecutors to imply underlying mental illness—was in fact a calculated act of self-preservation, a response to conditions that many Russians of his generation understood all too well. In their view, the psychiatric record reflects not pathology but a deliberate and rational attempt to escape an environment that routinely destroyed young men both physically and psychologically."