What was the experience of serving in the Soviet military like?

 I was lieutenant in reserve (leytenánt zapása) in the Soviet Army. This sounds bigger than it really was.

My experience in the military of the USSR was limited to two years of studies of wartime propaganda—spet spropagánda as they called it in Russia—in the Moscow State University, plus two summer months of tactical training in the field.

My top five memories from that time:

• The recurring feeling of hunger in combination with the revulsion caused by the smells in the soldiers’ kitchen.
• The bliss of falling asleep on the sun-warmed ground beneath tall pines to the sound of summer winds in the canopy of needles far above me.
• Waking up in the wee hours to the sound of the НСВ heavy machine gun going on at the shooting range half a kilometre from our tent. (We were all quartered in eight-man tents).
• The increasing weight of my Kalashnikov, the ammo and the rest of my pack throughout the night-long marching through the woods of the Kovrov district. At 01:00 sharp, we were given half an hour of rest in a clearing. The night was clear and still. I stretched on the ground, and it felt like I never before saw the starry sky with such clarity and meaning. Before they gave the command to get up and move, I thought if I sometime get killed in a war, I want my last moment alive to be exactly like this, filled with calm, star-filled, all-pervasive clarity.
• The sight of two girls that came to visit some lucky guys in the training camp. This happened in the very end, which means almost two months spent in unrelieved all-male company for us. We were marching in a column toward the canteen, and there came these ladies in their summer dresses. A sudden, overwhelming flash of otherworldly presence, a beam from a far universe filled with brilliant light and peace.

Below, me giving the military Oath of Allegiance as a fresh lieutenant of the Soviet Army.