The army, like any other professional community, has its own slang. First of all, ordinary soldiers become its creators. The vast majority of slang words of our time appeared in the army of the former Soviet republics during the years of the existence of the USSR. Many of them will be frankly incomprehensible to a civilian, despite the seemingly familiar sound with "normal" Russian.
1. "Milk"
Most people are still familiar with this slang army phrase. It is applied in relation to shooting from a weapon and denotes the entire space around the target (target). Thus, to shoot at milk means to shoot past.
2. "Citizen"
So in Soviet times they called those conscripts who had a few days left before demobilization, less often - a few weeks. As a rule, no one touched such servicemen and did not force them to do anything. In any case, if they didn’t sit on the officers’ necks at all. Of course, the attitude towards demobilization still depended heavily on the unit and command.
3. "For the River"
A very narrow slang concept that appeared in the Soviet army in the 1980s. Sending across the river meant a trip to serve in Afghanistan, where there was already a war with the Mujahideen. A slang expression appeared due to the fact that the boundary between the USSR and the DRA passed along the Amu Darya River.
4. "Brassiere"
In this case, we are not talking about an item of women's underwear, but about an item of equipment for soldiers-shooters. The word "bra" means a bandolier-unloading for convenient carrying stores to the Kalashnikov assault rifle on the stomach. The name came from the fact that both the women's bra and the bandolier are worn in front and fastened with harnesses on the back.
5. "Snot"
This word is called a strip on shoulder straps. The corporal has one. The junior sergeant has two. The sergeant has three. The name appeared due to the visual similarity between a thin strip on shoulder straps and smeared on the surface of the snot from the nose.
6. "Bury a cigarette butt"
A form of hazing and collective responsibility. Young soldiers are forbidden to smoke at any time convenient for them. If the newly drafted break the daily routine for the sake of nicotine, then the entire unit can be sent to a farce ceremony for the solemn funeral of a cigarette butt. The soldiers will be forced to put themselves in order, the cigarette butt will be carried through the entire unit to the raincoats, after which, with music (most often improvised with the help of the mouth) and salute (also improvised) will carry out the burial of a small cigarette butt in a full-size grave somewhere on the edge of the piece. The grave, of course, will be dripped by all the guilty unit. In general, the form of the ceremony depends only on the imagination of the grandfather sergeant.
7. "Takeoff"
As a rule, a barracks is a fairly long room, in the middle of which there is a free space for formations and seating of soldiers on chairs for professional and ideological pursuits. In some ways, this area of \u200b\u200bthe living space resembles an airplane runway. Hence the name.
8. "Visiting a fairy tale"
So in Soviet times, the traditional weekly viewing of the patriotic program “I Serve the Soviet Union” was ironically called. Considering that by the end of the USSR, agitation and propaganda had completely dilapidated and covered with mold, and a significant part of the population did not believe in pathos propaganda officialdom, watching such programs was akin to torture by the CIA. However, for conscripts to sit and just watch TV, it was already not bad. This event was called by analogy with the children's TV program of the same name broadcast in the 1970-1990s.
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9. "Disco"
That was the name of the kitchen in the Soviet army. The name was coined in honor of the fact that working at the dishwasher was akin to dancing. This area of work was considered not only unpleasant, but also the most difficult, since the dishwashers in the outfit were literally bombarded with dirty dishes and cutlery.
10. "Pheasants" and "Elephants"
The meaning of the term "Pheasant" has changed over time and depending on the place of service. At first, this was the name given to young soldiers who had just been called up. One of the calls was in the spring. The parallels are obvious: pheasants appear in the spring, they don't have a lot of brains like any birds, besides, they are constantly rushing about. Subsequently, "pheasants" began to be called those who served a year and "spread their feathers." The original meaning of this word was replaced by the term "Elephant". The fresh call was called so because of the inability to walk quietly around the barracks, the constant smell of sweat and regular classes in gas masks, which seem to resemble the physiognomy of an elephant.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about for which the soldiers of the Red Army scolded their helmets during the Great Patriotic War.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/290322/62555/