Pre-Conscription Training

PRE-CONSCRIPTION TRAINING, the first link in the general system of military training of the Red Army and the population, having as its task the military, military-political, and physical training of the working youth with the least possible detachment from their productive activity and in the shortest possible terms. Pre-conscription training is undertaken by workers upon reaching the age of 19. Instruction is carried out in the places of residence of the conscripts at training points, through short-term assemblies for the entire period of instruction, or by daily mobilization for classes for 3-4 hours without complete detachment of the trainees from their main work or service. The duration of training assemblies is 1-1¹/₂ months over two years prior to conscription into the Red Army. Before being mobilized for military instruction, conscripts undergo medical examination to determine their physical fitness for this instruction. Medical-sanitary service for conscripts and other contingents of the population undergoing instruction outside the army (surpluses from conscription, reserves) is carried out by local health authorities on the basis of existing laws. Supervision over the preparation and conduct of this service is entrusted to local military-sanitary chiefs (divisional doctors, senior doctors of regiments, instructors-doctors in physical training). Expenses for the indicated service, according to the current "Regulations on Local Finances," are charged to the local budget (according to the estimates of the corresponding health departments). In serving conscripts, civil health authorities not only perform very important work on the sanitary preparation of contingents subject to conscription into the Red Army, but also carry out their direct duties on the health improvement and sanitary education of the local population; conscripts are that asset on which civil health authorities can rely in conducting health-improving sanitary-hygienic and physical culture measures among the broad masses of workers. The work of health authorities with conscripts, providing valuable material for the sanitary assessment of contingents conscripted into the Red Army and for the more correct selection and distribution of them among the arms of service, is at the same time one of the paths to studying the sanitary condition of the population of a given region. In connection with the service of conscript assemblies, civil health authorities have the following tasks: carrying out necessary sanitary-preventive measures and carrying out systematic sanitary supervision over training points and conscripts, medical control over physical training, carrying out sanitary-propaganda work and ensuring medical aid. All this work is carried out in the order determined by special decrees of the people's commissariats of health of the union republics. The beneficial influence of conscript assemblies on the physical development and state of their health (with proper organization of life and study) is evident from the data of repeated anthropometric measurements carried out in different regions of the USSR and concerning body weight, chest circumference, and chest excursion. Measurements Bes....... Chest circumference Chest excursion . . Irkutsk (according to Anshelovich) + 1.8% + 0.2% + 13% Crimea Vyatka (according to (according to Genki- Teplyanaya) shina) + 1.17 kg + 1.75 kg + 1.47 cm +1.3 cm - +0.4 cm In order to consolidate and develop the sanitary knowledge and hygienic skills acquired by conscripts during the assemblies and in order to raise the level of health of the contingents subject to conscription into the Red Army, civil health authorities, in the period between assemblies and conscription into the Red Army, involve conscripts in first aid circles, collect and systematize materials on their physical development and state of health for conscription commissions, involve the active in the work of local sanitary councils and commissions, keep records and take measures to cure conscripts suffering from malaria, trachoma, syphilis, and other diseases that do not exempt from service but hinder admission to regular units of the RKKA. The law on compulsory military service establishes pre-conscription training for students of higher educational institutions (higher pre-conscription training) and technical schools, which has the aim of facilitating the creation of contingents of the reserve command personnel of the RKKA. Pre-conscription training in higher educational institutions consists of a theoretical course of military science of 180 hours and a 2-month summer practice; in technical schools - 120 hours of theoretical course and voluntary summer practice. Pre-conscription training in higher and secondary medical educational institutions is aimed at preparing the medical reserve personnel (in relation to those subject to conscription into the army) and at preparing for work in wartime conditions (in relation to those unfit for military service due to health and women). The curriculum for theoretical classes provides, after mastering elementary military knowledge, the study of a number of military-sanitary disciplines (military-sanitary administration, military hygiene, military-sanitary tactics, military-sanitary service in conditions of air-chemical defense). In addition, the teaching of general disciplines must include the illumination of a number of questions from the point of view of work in wartime and the defense of the country. Students who have successfully passed pre-conscription training have their term of active military service shortened. In higher educational institutions, the position of military instructor has been introduced to guide higher pre-conscription training, which in a number of medical institutes has been replaced by doctors. In foreign states, analogous methods of preparing reserve doctors exist, for example, in France, higher military training (preparation militaire superieure) for medical students. In a number of faculties (or departments) of higher educational institutions of the USSR, students not subject to conscription for active military service, in particular women, undergo higher pre-conscription training according to the so-called "military-sanitary inclination," the purpose of which is the education of contingents which could be used in wartime to staff auxiliary medical personnel in hospitals.