Near the end of World War II, Soviet and American soldiers met at the Elbe River in Germany. Lacking a common language, they compared their boots.
The Americans wore socks and lace-up boots. The Russians wore something that boggled the minds of their allies from the West: pieces of cloth twirled around their feet and inserted into bulky, knee-high boots.
The cloth strips, called portyanki, have been a signature element of the Russian military uniform since the 16th century. On Monday Russia’s minister of defense issued an order for a militarywide switch to socks.
“I have an instruction for you,” the minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said to a gathering of the equivalent of the chiefs of staff and regional commanders in comments broadcast on NTV television news. “In 2013, or at least by the end of this year, we will forget foot bindings. I’m asking you, please, if there is need we will provide additional funds. But we need to finally, fully reject this concept in our armed forces.”
It is hardly the stuff to alarm a Central Intelligence Agency military analyst. But it sheds light on the Russian military all the same.
NTV in Russia, reporting the change, noted that foot bindings were a common solution in militaries predating industrial looms, though “Russia is just about the only country where new enlisted men still learn to twirl portyanki.” (The video below gives a sense of what twirling looks like.)
The bindings are not unique to Russia. Such foot coverings were known as puttees when they had wide-scale use in the United States, Canadian and British militaries before and during World War I. Then, they were worn wrapped around the calf, above the boot.
(The video below shows another variety of these sock alternatives.)
In the Russian version, a swath of cloth about a foot wide, cotton in the summer, flannel in the winter, is inserted into the boot, effective against trench foot and frostbite alike, if bound correctly.
In basic training, even before breaking down a Kalashnikov, a Russian conscript learns to twist the portyanki around his feet to form mummylike cocoons, fit for the inside of the standard-issue Russian infantry boots, made today, as they were a century ago, of blackened canvas on a sole of rawhide. Running in these heavy boots, former soldiers say, is all but impossible.
This system of footwear had its principal advantage in military-industrial planning and logistics, freeing up Soviet factories from sewing millions of socks and allowing soldiers to tear wraps from old sheets in the field, if needed. During the Afghan war, however, Russian soldiers soured on the heavy boots; officers allowed soldiers to shed them for nonregulation running shoes.
The switch to socks began during the never-completed military reform in 2007, so some units march at parades in socks and lace-up boots, others in portyanki and boots without laces.
The minister’s statement on socks to the assembled generals may also have carried a deeper meaning, said Ruslan Pukhov, an analyst with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. The cloth strips, almost a symbol of the Russian enlisted man’s life, are also emblematic of outmoded practices, he said.
Deeper changes, with higher stakes, are under way in the Russian military. Since 2007, the political leadership has systematically thinned the top-heavy officer ranks to alter the “egg-shaped” hierarchy of the army into a pyramid form. Mr. Shoigu’s order to complete the switch to socks, Mr. Pukhov said, signaled to the generals that they would not be exempt from following through with the reforms begun by his disgraced predecessor, Anatoly E. Serdyukov, who is under investigation for real estate deals involving the ministry’s property.
“We cannot fight the wars of the 21st century with the equipment we used 35 years ago in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pukhov said. “That is impossible to think about.”
