The good old days of the Cold War

Russia's officer corps will soon be decimated in the name of military reform, Tim Whewell discovers as he travels from base to base with a former colonel who had his finger on the button in the glory days of the Soviet nuclear deterrent.

The Kamchatka peninsula is 1,250km long and boasts abundant wildlife

I have never been to Kamchatka, but the name is thrilling enough.

From that jagged spur of land, thrusting its line of smoking volcanoes far out into the icy north Pacific, came, so my father supposed, the mysterious tins of Chatka crab that were the only taste of the Soviet Union available in Manchester groceries in the depths of the Cold War.

On rafts down the raging rivers of Kamchatka, I discovered later, hurtle adventurers who need only stretch out their arms to shake paws with the bears that fish for leaping salmon.

And in deep holes under the peninsula's berry-laden wilderness are stashed nuclear missiles that could wipe us all out.

'Psychological endurance'

This I know from Colonel Viktor Tkachenko (retired).

For four long years, at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, he sat at the bottom of one of those shafts, keeping a rocket company.

At the far lonely end of the chain of command, his finger, not Gorbachev's or Yeltsin's, would have pressed the fatal button.

A lover of wild things, of mountains, angling and sea-eagles, Colonel Tkachenko volunteered for Kamchatka, and for the strategic nuclear forces.

He is proud of the five years he studied for the job; tested for his psychological endurance, intricate understanding of a missile's anatomy and, in the scrupulous ideological way of the old USSR, his grasp of the politics and economics of the countries he might be required to zap.

Army reform

In American nuclear bunkers, he discovered to his contempt, officers merely called a contractor if their deadly charges appear in danger of malfunctioning, unable to repair the rockets themselves as their Russian opponents can.

The colonel shared these confidences - along with his compartment and a large plastic bottle of home-made brandy - as our train rattled for night after frosty night between military bases at the other, western, end of his country.

He was helping me out (as a knowledgeable ex-officer) on a tour organised by Russia's Ministry of Defence, designed to show me the best of today's armed forces on the eve of the biggest military reform since the Bolshevik Revolution.

The reform is intended to transform today's sluggish, top-heavy army into a leaner, fitter fighting machine closer to Western models.

But the colonel's heart was not really in the job.

He left his heart on Kamchatka.

Unique existence

While he sat there in his gloomy shaft, lavishing care on his deadly charges and flicked his fishing flies in those shining streams, his nation was waking bitter and bewildered from the stupor of state socialism.

Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts at reform contributed to the end of the Cold War

In August 1991, as the coup against Gorbachev collapsed, the colonel - who had spoken out in favour of the conspirators - was called in by his commanding officer and given a choice.

He could leave the army quietly, or stay and face demotion. The army was his life so he chose demotion, but he felt humiliated and betrayed.

How could he have known he was backing the losing side? In Moscow he might have caught the heady whiff of change, but not nine time zones away on Kamchatka among the bears, the berries, and the ballistic missiles.

And now, nearly 20 years on, the colonel sees other officers made expendable, betrayed like him in the sanctimonious name of reform.

The overhaul of the military, conceived by a civilian defence minister who once sold furniture, calls for the elimination over the next few years of two-thirds of the officer corps. Of Russia's 25,000 colonels, 16,000 will go.

Retirement poverty

In the British popular imagination, retired colonels live in rose-trimmed houses in Kent or Dorset.

They play golf, dabble in good works, and write indignant letters to the Daily Telegraph. An outrageous stereotype, of course, but even the reality of their lives bears no comparison with that of their counterparts in Russia.

Colonels there earn the equivalent of £300 ($420) a month. What nest-egg can be carved out of that?

And what cosy retirement can you plan for when there are already more than 100,000 homeless officers, a number that most fear will increase as the "reform" progresses?

No wonder, as the snowy forests flash by, the colonel prefers to remember the old days on Kamchatka. No wonder, well past midnight, as we shake out the last drops of brandy and rouse the sleepy conductress for a final glass of tea, he tells me I should forget military reform and make a better programme out there amid the volcanoes, about the glorious history of the Soviet nuclear deterrent.

And maybe I will. Ballistics are not my field but I want to tell my father, before it is too late, that I tasted Chatka crab that was not from a tin.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 14 March, 2009 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service