Institutions of Conscience: Beliefs and Experience in the Procedure of Substituting Military Service with Alternative Service

Abstract

The article considers the role of the concept of conscience in the bureaucratic mechanisms of the institution of alternative civilian service in contemporary Russia. The field research was conducted in a St. Petersburg human rights organization in 2020–2024. The materials were methodological recommendations of human rights defenders, ego-documents of NCO clients, including statements with stated beliefs, and records of recruitment commissions. The analysis made it possible to describe the repertoire of means of ensuring the state’s access to the conscience of the conscript and to see how beliefs become an element of citizen-state communication and part of the formal procedure. Drawing on critical studies of human rights and the modern subject, I show how global ethical and legal doctrine is embodied in the actual work of the institution of military registration. The key thesis of the article is that the institutionalization of conscience inevitably leads to the delegation of the need to speak out on behalf of the subject to other people and institutions and the distribution of responsibility and authority among them.