Suvorov and military schools, the beginning of service

The climate of the middle zone, like the mentality of the people, differed greatly from the southern one. Strict military discipline and intense classes quickly got used to adolescents who came from all over the country.

At the Suvorov School, more often than civilian peers, we were engaged in military subjects: training with weapons, shooting and overcoming the obstacle course, preparing us for the basics of the military profession. As before, I devoted my free time to my favorite kinds of sambo and judo wrestling. Educational officers also introduced me to freestyle wrestling. My passion and successes were noticed, and soon I defended the honor of the school at the regional championships among youths and various sports days. The experience of the previous years of training and studies at the school made it possible to win prizes. Good academic performance and sporting achievements determined the further choice. I continued my studies at the Novosibirsk VVPOU.

At the school, military disciplines were the basis of training. I liked the lessons in firepower training, even in shooting training and fulfilling the standards with weapons, I found a lot of pleasant things. True, it never entered my head to connect these trainings and my hobby for wrestling into a single complex. There were enough various exercises that increase applied skill in combat and physical training, but there was no systematic and general algorithm for their study. He continued to engage in wrestling as before.

He performed at the championships of SIBVO, the region, universities, the zone of Siberia and the Far East, various other workshops and long-distance tournaments.

The time of study in Novosibirsk coincided with the peak of the popularity of martial arts. The outlandish art of hand-to-hand combat, covered with an aura of mystery, attracted us. But we could only judge karate or wushu by films with Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. From the scattered knowledge brought by cadets from different parts of the country, we collected "our" karate and trained strikes and blocks to the best of everyone's understanding.

There was also a section of hand-to-hand fighting at the school. Officers and cadets from the airborne companies promoted the so-called RB from the Airborne Forces, which included striking techniques of arms and legs, throws, sweeps and strangulation with painful techniques. Fights in this type of hand-to-hand combat presupposed the presence of protective equipment, which we did not have. This hand-to-hand fighting was not an official sport with a formalized system of competitions either. Everything was based on the enthusiasm of the supporters and was carried out in the form of extracurricular activities. The training was conducted by an officer participating in the hostilities in Afghanistan, which gave them the appearance of something absolutely necessary in a war.

In addition to this section, there were several spontaneous groups of enthusiasts, in which cadets interested in martial arts, based on various experiences, themselves searched for the best approaches to mastering martial techniques and their optimization. I enjoyed studying in one of these groups, because the time of training did not coincide with training in sambo, judo and freestyle wrestling. In these lessons, we tried to simulate real combat situations and looked for techniques that, in our opinion, would help in real combat. Our disadvantage was that the cadets did not have personal experience of combat operations, so we could not objectively assess what would be effective and what would not. But we had the experience of street or domestic fights, on the basis of which we built the concept of classes. By the time I graduated from the school, I had already completed masters of sports in sambo and judo, in addition to this, like many graduates of military universities of that time, I had several sports categories in various sports (obstacle course, 10 km running with live shooting, 20 km with combat shooting, etc.).

After graduation in 1985, I continued to serve in the Transcaucasus. It's nice to return to serve in the places where you spent your childhood. Once again he confirmed the title of master of sports in sambo and judo at the ZakVO competitions and the championship of the Azerbaijan SSR, but the officer service associated with the personnel did not allow him to regularly go in for sports. I had to do it in my spare time. This is how classes were held with officers of the 135th motorized rifle regiment in Baku. I was also engaged with reconnaissance.

On the soldiers of this unit, they checked the school developments and made demonstration performances for military-patriotic dates. This reconnaissance company occupied the first place among similar units of the district for combat training for several years. Not only officers, but also soldiers showed creativity and initiative. Some of the fighters suggested adapting LEDs to machine guns in order to shoot at night. They were used in place of the phosphorus-based night nozzles, which needed to be constantly illuminated. Then I began to think that it would be good to learn how to shoot without the use of sights, at least at close distances, but several more years had to pass before the implementation of these thoughts.

We had to work with reconnaissance companies all the time. While serving on the Iranian border, he conducted classes with the reconnaissance company of the Lenkoran tank regiment, we practiced hand-to-hand combat techniques, actions when raiding an object of a "conditional enemy", capturing a prisoner from an ambush. Demonstrated skills, again, at demonstration performances for any holiday. After being transferred to the command and intelligence center of the chief of intelligence of the 4th army, he worked with the officers of this center, and the 800th separate company of the SPN.

Once, by order of the leadership, he organized demonstration performances of a company in the Republic of Bashkortostan at the republican festival of DOSAAF. By this time, I was tired of doing demonstration performances and wanted to do combat work, but all the excuses did not pass, and the performance had to be done. The officers and men were in good physical shape. Some of the officers had experience of the Afghan war behind them, so they did everything seriously, bringing the show as close to reality as possible.

During the performance itself, there were some incidents. The participants in the "show" who got into the excitement went out of their way. One of the fighters, breaking a bottle on his head, ripped the skin on his head (blood flooded his face and clothes), and the group leader, working in a ligament one against three, knocked out the shoulder of one, broke another finger and injured the abdominal muscles of the third. Everything happened in the stadium with a large number of spectators, and our shortcomings were visible only to us. The end of the performance was drowned in thunderous applause. Nobody even noticed that a well-staged performance was malfunctioning. It got from the authorities, but they were no longer sent to the "show".