The Moscow Times, No. 1076, October 25, 1996, pages 1-2

Alexander Seryogin, an 18-year-old conscientious objector, was convicted of draft-dodging in a Moscow district court Thursday for trying to exercise his constitutional right to alternative service.

After a one-hour trial, Seryogin was given a two-year suspended sentence for dodging the draft. In fact, he reported to his local draft board in Moscow's Sevastopol district in early March and announced his preference for alternative service, an option guaranteed by Article 59, Part 3 of the constitution.

"I made this decision at 16. With all the changes in the country, I realized that I personally could not serve in the army," Seryogin said after the judge and two "lay magistrates" retired to reach their verdict.

Bat the judge in this case, Ivan Ivanov, rejected Seryogin's defense out of hand. "If Seryogin were charged a second time and ended up in my court, I would throw the book at him," he said after the court adjourned.

Asked if Thursday's verdict signaled that the alternative service provision in the constitution was not currently in force, Ivanov said: "That's right. It is not in force."

The judge based his opinion, and his ruling, on a phrase in Article 59 which states that alternative service is available to conscript if their convictions, religious beliefs, or "other cases established by federal law" rended military service impossible.

The problem, which advocates of alternative service have sought to rectify for three years without success, is that no such law exists. And until the president signs the law, Ivanov said, conscientious objectors like Seryogin will have to serve their stint in the armed forces along with everyone else.

Sergei Sorokin, who defended Seryogin on Thursday, said the verdict came as no surprise. "The government should revoke this article in the constitution, so that it no longer plays a provocative role, or stop persecuting people who apply for conscientious objector status," he said.

Seryogin also took the court's decision calmly. "To get anything more from a local court is very difficult. At higher levels the floodlights illuminate these matters, but at the lower levels anything can happen," he said, adding that he would appeal the ruling in Moscow municipal court, where he was confident of a reversal. Sorokin and his organization, the Anti-Military Radical Association, have campaigned hard for the alternative service law and counselled conscripts like Seryogin to stand up for their rights in court.

In a much-publicized case earlier this year, Vadim Gesse, an ARA member who spent 40 days in a remand prison for his refusal to report for military duty, was twice acquitted in Moscow oblast courts. According to Nikolai Khramov, ARA secretary, the two cases were "completely similar". The judges, however, were not.

"Seryogin cannot forfeit the right to alternative service just because the lawmakers we elected have not done their job," said Khramov, who spoke on the draftee's behalf in court Thursday.

A bill on alternative service passed a first reading in the previous Duma in 1994, but got no further. When hardline communist deputy Albert Makashov moved to replace this original bill with a restrictive new version of the law this spring, advocates rallied to counter him.

Sergei Grushchak, of the liberal Yabloko faction, drafted a rival bill, and the defence committee responded by forming a working group to reach a compromise. The resulting bill, he said, has been approved by the Duma Council and should come up for discussion by the full house in December.

Grushchak said the chef opponent of the compromise bill, which includes a key provision freeing conscientious objectors from the burden of proving the legitimacy of their reasons for opting out of military service, is the Defense Ministry, which has created confusion by submitting its own bill.

"The ministry is trying to keep the army together by packing it with conscripts, even though it cannot feed and clothe all the soldiers. But the president has already decreed the transition to a professional army by the century," he said.

"It this became law, they would have to speed up reform of the draft, because many young men would choose civilian service, and they would have much more difficulty filling the ranks."

Sorokin said Russian now had hundreds of conscientious objectors, but thousands more, unaware of their constitutional rights, were simply told by their draft boards that alternative service was impossible and packed off into the army.