Siberia's oldest military institute was shut down with surprising speed.
As the new year began, civilian staff of the Irkutsk Aviation Engineering Military Institute and some of the students' parents held a hunger strike to protest its closure. But the protest proved of no avail. The oldest and only aviation institute east of the Urals was closed down and is now being transported by military planes to Voronezh. Few at the institute suspected such a development only six weeks ago. But things moved with lightning speed.
One of the deputies of the institute's head, asking not to be named, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that a Defence Ministry inspection team visited the school in October 2008. The inspectors announced that the school might be merged with a similar institution. Later it was reported that it was being moved to central Russia. The Irkutsk regional governor, Igor Yesipovsky, local lawmakers and the regional United Russia political council came forward in defence of the school.
On December 19, the governor sent a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, saying "the decision to close the school is seen in the city and the region as raw and unfounded, because the similar school in Voronezh has never trained specialists on aircraft maintenance for peace and war time." The Irkutsk regional legislature and the party's political council sent similar messages to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Regional deputy speaker Gennady Nesterovich, the head of Mr Putin's Irkutsk regional public reception office, in his letters to the government and the Defence Ministry proposed that the institute rather than be closed should be teamed up with the Stavropol Higher Aviation Military School for Pilots and Navigators, which could be moved to Irkutsk. If military schools needed a boost, he said, it was in Siberia and the Far East, not elsewhere. On December 19, 2008, institute instructors, graduates and parents of the students held a rally outside the city administration in Irkutsk. Between January 4 and 8, 2009 some of them (18 people) staged a hunger strike in the school club in protest of the closure. But Moscow ignored these arguments.
On December 24, 2008, Mr Putin signed a government resolution containing a point on the reorganisation of the Irkutsk institute and its moving to Voronezh. Guided by this resolution, the Defence Ministry on December 31, 2008 adopted a directive to do the housemoving. Early in January 2009, Vadim Volkovetsky, the chief of staff of the Russian air force, arrived at Irkutsk. On January 5, he attended a meeting chaired by acting Irkutsk regional governor Sergei Sokol, which set up a commission to oversee the move. Military transport aircraft began airlifting institute equipment despite Christmas holidays.
The local authorities and the Irkutsk branch of United Russia thus completely lost their battle to save Siberia's oldest military teaching institution. Surprisingly, their slogans in its defence were quoted not only by the local media, but also in the central press, and United Russia member Yesipovsky was convinced that Anatoly Kvashnin, former chief of staff of Russia's armed forces and now a presidential envoy to the Siberian Military District, who was expected to arrive in Irkutsk together with Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, would back Yesipovsky's appeal to the president. But Mr Kvashnin kept his silence, and Mr Serdyukov sent air force generals in his place. The Irkutsk lawmakers were also silent. Yelena Dmitrieva, deputy speaker of the regional legislature, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that although the deputies did not budge from their positions, Moscow already made the decision and any comments could now only be expected from the defence ministry and the federal centre.
At the studies department, Nezavisimaya Gazeta was told that only 20% of the officers agreed to travel to the new locality. None of the civilian teaching staff, many of them holding doctoral and other degrees, expressed a wish to go to Voronezh. Yet they are the cream of the teaching profession not only in Siberia, but also in Russia. "The closure of the military school is undermining the country's defence capability. Our students serve in air force units from the Urals to the Far East. It is they who keep our warplanes flying," said Alexander Bakhtin, the institute's lecturer. Most school officers agreed.
In an aside it may be noted that the closure of the Irkutsk institute is just one of the many closures planned for 2009-2010, as part of an all-embracing military reform across the country. Not fewer than forty military colleges will be shut down in this way, that is without much publicity and in a great haste which is hard to explain (and at crisis time, too). The Defence Ministry seems to have decided to pay no attention to the local authorities and the ruling party. So the odds are the protests held in Irkutsk will not be the last.
Vladimir Mukhin