‘There’s a wealth of choice, but no alternative," proclaimed one of the first Russian advertising slogans in the early ’90s. It’s a slogan that pretty much sums up the situation today regarding citizens’ right to alternative military service.

Under the constitution, young men whose religious or other convictions prevent them from serving in the military are entitled to perform civilian service, but this right has never been enforced for lack of a law setting out the conditions for alternative service.

A government draft law on alternative service introduced to the Duma this week is supposed to rectify this situation, but observers say it is obviously designed to leave would-be pacifists with little alternative but to head for the barracks. The bill is scheduled for its first reading in March. It will then have to pass two more readings in the Duma, a reading in the Federation Council and the president’s signature to become law.

Young Russians who don’t want to take up arms first have to prove their pacifist or religious convictions and then spend four years working in socially important but poorly paid, low-level jobs. This could be anything from being an orderly in a psychiatric hospital to working in a logging camp. Under the draft law, people doing alternative service won’t be allowed to work elsewhere on the side, which, given the meager salaries paid in the proposed sectors for alternative service, will create considerable problems.

"In a sense, this law could compromise the whole idea of alternative service," said Vladimir Rimsky, an analyst with the INDEM Foundation. "The four-year term set for alternative service worries me. It’s too long. And there are other problems, too."

But the original version submitted by military officials was even harsher than the draft eventually approved by the government. Duma deputies managed to persuade various Duma factions in the debate to reach a form of compromise and allow young men to combine their alternative service with evening or correspondence studies and let them serve in their home regions, rather than sending alternative-service workers far from their homes, as the military demanded in its proposal.

Col. Gen. Eduard Vorobyev, deputy chairman of the Duma defense committee and one of the draft law’s authors, admitted that military officials working on the draft law wanted to make it sufficiently harsh that it would put "imaginary pacifists" off the idea of alternative service. Vorobyev said the military’s concerns are understandable: Everyone knows that more and more people are afraid of military service these days because of violent hazing, increased crime in the Army and the very real prospect of being sent to serve in Chechnya.

"I can see where the military and the executive authorities are coming from, and I can understand their concerns," Vorobyev said. "But we need an overall solution. There’s no other way forward than to move over to a professional contract Army, and we can’t afford to delay these reforms. By May next year, the final plan for moving over to a professional army has to be completed, and by the end of the year a federal program has to be ready."

But Vorobyev said the military still prefers to put off resolving serious issues, concentrating its efforts instead on getting the draft boards to crack down and looking for ways to reduce the number of possible deferrals young men are entitled to.

"The military considers that reform is possible only by 2010-2011," Vorobyev said. "But this reminds me of the Eastern parable: By that time, either the donkey will croak or the Shah will die."

INDEM’s Rimsky also said that passing a draft law on alternative service wouldn’t solve anything unless it was accompanied by a general reform of the armed forces.

"Essentially, this law should concern a small number of people and regulate their situation," Rimsky said. "But at the same time, something needs to be done to put an end to hazing, let conscripts serve in their home regions, reduce the length of military service and arrange for people to undergo some kind of basic training while still civilians. As it is, this law just becomes part of the current corrupt system."

Discussions on the draft law on alternative service coincide with debate between the military and local authorities over an experiment in Nizhny Novgorod. Without waiting for a law to be passed, the Nizhny Novgorod local authorities gave 20 conscripts the chance to perform alternative military service as orderlies in local hospitals. But military officials saw this as a future threat to their conscription targets and took the local authorities to court over the matter.

Vorobyev visited Nizhny Novgorod this week in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting sides. Vorobyev said he thought the Nizhny Novgorod authorities had been hasty, and that the court should decide the issue, but he also said he felt concern for the fate of the conscripts who took part in the experiment.

"Whatever the case, the military should make a gesture of good will," Vorobyev said. "After all, these young men who became the first to perform alternative service didn’t think this up themselves. It wouldn’t be right for them to suffer now just because various state bodies didn’t coordinate their actions with one another."