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Conscription in Russia

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Employment of male citizens 18 to 30 years old is banned by the Labour Code of Russia unless military papers are provided to employers, who are required by law to keep records of all male employees. It is usually hard for draft-evaders to get employment and they are routinely discriminated against despite attempts by the Ministry of Labour to clarify that such discrimination is illegal. This severe and prolonged discrimination has resulted in a growing shadow economy in Russia.

In April 2023 the new law allowed the government to draft conscripts into Russia army via electronic notices, replacing previously old in-person notification system which was ineffective, making it legally hard to avoid conscription.

In 2023, during the Russo-Ukrainian war, Putin's government made it harder to avoid mandatory unpaid military service and tightened legal responsibility. Besides mandatory military service, the Russian government has tried to lure conscripts into signing military contracts which as of 2022 became indefinite.

As of 2025 conscripts in Russia have indirectly supported the war effort in Ukraine by way of logistics and border service.

History

Imperial Russia

Before Peter I, Russia's military was primarily drawn from the nobility and people who owned land on condition of service. During wars, additional recruiting of volunteers and ordinary citizens was common. Peter I introduced a regular army consisting of the nobility and recruits, including conscripts. The conscripts to the Imperial Russian Army were called "recruits" in Russia (not to be confused with voluntary recruitment, which did not appear until the early 20th century). The system was called "recruit obligation" (Russian: рекрутская повинность, romanized: rekrutskaya povinnost).

Russian tsars before Peter maintained professional hereditary musketeer corps (streltsy in Russian) that were highly unreliable and undisciplined. In times of war, Russia augmented its armed forces with feudal cavalry and peasant levies. Peter I formed the Imperial Russian Army built on the German model, but with a new aspect: the Army did not necessarily draw officers from the nobility, giving talented commoners promotions that eventually included a noble title at the attainment of an officer's rank. Russia organised the conscription of peasants and townspeople on a quota system per settlement. Initially, it based conscription on the number of households in a given area. Later it was calculated on population numbers. Conscripted serfs dramatically increased the size of the Russian military during the Napoleonic Wars.

The term of service in the 18th century was effectively for life, so long as an individual remained physically capable. In 1736 it was reduced to 25 years, with one male member of each family excluded from the obligation to serve in order to manage shared property. In 1834 the term was reduced to 20 years plus five years in the reserve, and in 1855 to 12 years plus three years of reserve liability.

After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War during the reign of Alexander II, the Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin introduced military reforms, with an initial draft presented in 1862. On 1 January 1874 , a statute concerning conscription was approved by the Tsar by which military service was generally made compulsory for males at the age of 21. The term of actual service for the land army was reduced to 6 years, followed by nine years in the reserve. This measure created a large pool of military reservists ready to be mobilized in the event of war while permitting the maintenance of a smaller active army during peacetime. Most naval conscripts had an obligation for seven years of service, reflecting the extended period required for technical training.

Immediately before the outbreak of World War I, the Imperial Government imposed compulsory service of three years for entrants to infantry and artillery regiments and four years for cavalry and engineers. After completing this initial period of full-time service, conscripts passed into the first class reserves for seven years. The final obligation for compulsory service ended at age 43, after eight years in the second reserves.

The large population of Russia permitted exemptions from military service on a greater scale than in other European armies of the period. Muslims and members of certain other racial or religious minorities were generally exempted from conscription, as were about half of the Russian Orthodox population. Only sons in a family were normally not required to serve. Until 1903 the Military of the Grand Duchy of Finland was organised as a separate entity.

Soviet Union

The first all-union conscription law of 1925 was tailored for the mixed cadre-militia structure of the peacetime Red Army after the Civil War. The draft-age was 21 years. Terms of service varied between one year in territorial formations and 2 to 4 years in the cadre army. Only "workers and peasants" were seen as worthy to serve in combat units. Men of other social backgrounds were restricted to rear or labor services or had to pay a military tax.

The 1936 Soviet Constitution declared military service a "sacred duty" of all Soviet citizens. The Constitution dropped any reservations regarding social or national background. A 1939 service law lowered the call-up age to 19. The Red army had adopted a full-cadre structure in the 1930s.

During the Great Patriotic War, all non-disabled men of ages 18–51 were subject to draft except specialists declared vitally necessary in the domestic military/defense industry.

Soviet Armed Forces completed post-World War II demobilisation in 1948. A 1949 service law set service terms at three years in ground forces and four years in the navy.

Late Soviet Union

The late Soviet Armed Forces were manned by a mandatory draft (with some exceptions) for all able-bodied males for 2 years (3 years for seagoing parts of the Navy and Border troops), based on the 1967 Law on Universal Military Service. A bi-annual call-up in spring and autumn was introduced then, replacing the annual draft in fall. The conscripts were normally sent to serve far away from their residence.

Men were subject to draft at the age of 18. The draft could be postponed due to continued education. However, since the early 1980s Soviet Union had a mandatory draft for students of most colleges/universities — the first mass student recruitment was in spring 1983, the maximum conscription fraction in 1987 — until it was abolished in the spring of 1989. Students were drafted for two or, if for the navy, three years of military service typically after termination (more seldom in the middle) of the first or second year of college.

Most universities had military departments which were in charge of military training of all non-disabled male students to become reserve officers of a particular military specialty depending on the university. At the moment of the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, there were 397 civilian institutions of higher education which had military departments in the USSR. There was the practice of the selective conscription of graduates of civilian institutions of higher education (universities, academies and, strictly speaking, institutions), who have graduated the military departments of their almae matres and received a commission as an officer, in the Soviet Union. Such a person could be conscripted from the reserve of armed forces to active duty, but until the age of 27 only; the period of active duty of such an officer was several years, and at the end of that period, he was due to be enlisted in the reserve of the armed forces again. Such officers were called "blazers" in army slang (for example, Anatoly Kvashnin was a "blazer").

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