From The Audacity of Hypocrisy:
Russian Army Returns To Jesusfrom Audacity Of Hypocrisy by adminRecently Russian announced that, after an absence of nearly a century, chaplains were being reintroduced into the armed forces. This came after four years of negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which would have to provide priests to be military chaplains. While the Orthodox church agreed, in the 1990s, to provide religious services to military personnel and their families, this did not include chaplains. That’s because, despite the shortage of priests, it was possible to use lay people to provide some priestly functions (like counseling and organizing charitable activities). Chaplains, on the other hand, are typically assigned to military units, like other specialists (doctors and staff officers). There were not enough priests for that, because the communists had limited the number of men who could become priests during the Soviet period (1921-91). But the church worked out a compromise with the military, and chaplains will be phased in as priests become available.
Chaplains were eliminated in the early 1920s, when the Russian civil war ended, with the victory of the communists. The chaplains were then replaced with “political officers” (Zampolits), who served many of the same functions (looked after morale, and correct thinking). But the current move to bring back chaplains is part of an effort to stamp out the custom of older troops hazing and exploiting younger ones.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20100928.aspx
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