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Czechoslovakia Premilitary Training
In 1987 all male students had to take basic premilitary
subjects in the last three years of the regular nine-year primary
school. According to some critics, however, such training was
uneven and inconsistent among the various school districts, and
teachers at schools of all levels lacked sufficient training.
Military education took up only twenty-five hours a year and
included medical, civil defense, topographic, weapons firing, and
basic training.
Paramilitary Training
In 1987 the largest paramilitary organization in
Czechoslovakia was the Association for Cooperation with the Army
(Svaz pro spolupraci s armadou--SVAZARM). Established in 1951,
SVAZARM was a carbon copy of the Soviet Union's All-Union
Voluntary Society for the Promotion of the Army, Air Force, and
Navy. SVAZARM claimed a membership in 1985 of a little over 1
million; 60 percent of the members were under 35 years of age, 43
percent under 20 years, and 18 percent under 15 years. This
organization popularized defense training through special
interest groups that centered mostly on sports, some of the
groups having direct military application. As of 1987, for
example, SVAZARM recruited and trained pilot conscripts for the
Higher Military Aviation School in Kosice. The training included
at least twenty flight hours of advanced glider training and
thirty-seven to forty hours of basic training on motorized
airplanes, as well as the necessary aviation theory. Additional
skills taught by SVAZARM that had direct military applicability
included parachuting, rifleshooting, doghandling, and amateur
radio operation. Other activities, for example, automobile
driving and airplane modeling, were of dubious value to the
military. In fact, one Western observer has called SVAZARM "a
huge (and prosperous) sports and recreational organization, only
'paramilitary' in the broadest sense of the word."
Other organizations involved with paramilitary training,
including civil defense training, were the Revolutionary Trade
Union Movement, the Czechoslavak Socialist Union of Youth, the
Pioneers organization, and the Czechoslovak Physical Culture
Association. They appear to have played a secondary role to
SVAZARM in this regard. During the mid-1980s, Czechoslovak
military officers frequently complained that young draftees were
physically soft. They were said to lack basic military knowledge
and to regard service as an obligation to be endured rather than
as a patriotic duty. These complaints mirrored those made in the
1970s despite subsequent increases in the amount of paramilitary
education in the secondary schools, in the attention paid to
physical education curricula, in the activities of paramilitary
organizations, and in propaganda efforts that attempted to
instill in youth a positive attitude toward service in the armed
forces. Many adults were said to view paramilitary training as
useless or ineffective against weapons of mass destruction. Some
employers who were responsible for such training were said merely
to go through the motions of instruction and even to look for
excuses to prevent conscripts and reservists from participating.
Data as of August 1987
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