Dedovshchina
Russia's brutal tradition of hazing.
Soviet troops are often but not always subjected to a severe form of hazing that may lead to suicide, mental trauma, injury or death. It's probably the most brutal hazing tradition of any military. Numbers are hard to estimate as western sources are inevitably biased or engaged in misinformation but GMs should consider whether a Russian soviet unit in the game has a history of dedovshchina.
It should be noted that not all units do this as it's well understood to be detrimental to unit performance and cohesion and some commanders make serious attempts to limit or eradicate the practise even during the soviet period. Battle experience in Afghanistan and later in 1st Chechnya proved that units allowing higher levels of dedovshchina performed poorly. Poor outcomes include desertion, fratricide, suicide and severe lack of unit cohesion and effectiveness. Another problem is the intra-unit animosity makes every task more complex; handing the Dragunov to a man and ordering him to cover the advance of a hated superior has to be avoided for instance. Dedovshchina was officially made illegal in 1982.
Dedovshchina is intimately associated with the grey market within the military, and this economy reaches from the lowest ranks into the officer corps which makes it difficult to eradicate. This has its roots in the hard facts that troops are paid very poorly (or not at all during the dissolution) and persons higher up the chain expected those below them to make up the shortfall in wages. This can lead to very poor behaviour when stationed in foreign areas on the part of the troops as they try and satisfy their superior's expectations while having less of a bond with the locals.
Notably dedovshchina was reduced to a large degree in what the soviets termed "The Great Patriotic War" (WW2). During this time command was far more vigilant, superiors had to watch their troop's performance or be replaced and possibly suffer severe repercussions. As the soviet troops enter the "survival phase" of Twilight 2000 it's unlikely that most units would persist in this behaviour, but it makes an interesting GM tool if animosities have persisted from an earlier period. It is also a perfect reason to incorporate former soviet troops into the game.
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