By Russian standards, the nearly 7,000 strong division, which is based in the northwestern city of Pskov and was the first unit in the country's forces to turn fully professional in December, comes close to being heaven on Earth.

While conscripts receive about three dollars a month, men here are paid over 200 dollars, which is twice the average monthly salary in the region, and more than what many young officers make in other units.

Instead of being packed in dorms, they sleep in rooms for four to six, while the bathrooms are in the corridor. In two brand new buildings rooms even have their own bathrooms. The officers' apartments, where they can live with their families, are also much better than in other units.

This is a radical improvement over a conscripts' living standards, says 22-year-old Andrei Uzhegov, a former conscript who signed up in the 76th.

"During my military service, I slept in a bunk bed, I could take a bath only once a week, and, as in most Russian barracks, the food was pretty disgusting," Uzhegov recalls.

In Pskov, meals are prepared by professional cooks, as opposed to conscripts almost everywhere else, and waitresses bring them to the men's tables.

The results of such improved living conditions are easily visible. The men are well disciplined and well dressed, in sharp contrast with most conscripts, who are often not even fed properly.

The 76th is a pilot unit in the vanguard of what is supposed to be a much wider military reform, which should see the 1.1-million-strong forces recruit 147,000 more soldiers by 2008.

These men will serve in all-professional, so-called "combat-ready" units.

However, making the 76th division into a fully professional unit -- and recruiting some 3,000 soldiers to complement the 4,000 already existing troops -- was no easy task, and may indicate that reforming the forces could be even more difficult than expected.

While wages are higher than elsewhere in the forces, and are in line with Russian average monthly salaries, they are still not high enough to attract first-rate candidates, officers here say.

"We mostly get young men with no professional qualification, and difficult family situations. These are former recruits or young men who do not have a future laid out for them and are not economically stable," says Pskov deputy military commissioner, reserve lieutenant colonel Yury Basiyenko.

"If we want to attract better candidates, we should pay them more," he says, noting that a driver in the civilian sector, doing a much easier job, gets the same salary as a professional soldier in Pskov.

The same problem exists with officers. A third of young lieutenants leave the armed forces within a year following graduation from the military academy.

And while conditions in the 76th division are more attractive than elsewhere, the risk if the Pskov experiment is extended to other units, as it should be, is the development of a two-tier system in the Russian armed forces.

In that scenario, professional, well-equipped and combat-ready units will co-exist with impoverished groups where underpaid officers will command mostly conscripts.

"The consequence of the military reform is that two forces will co-exist within the Russian armed forces," respected military expert Alexander Goltz writes in his book "The Russian forces: 11 lost years."

Already, some officers are jealous of the comparatively good wages and living conditions the 76th paratroopers division enjoys.

"Many officers in other units complain about the special treatment that soldiers and officers receive" in the 76th division, says the military commissioner in Pskov, Colonel Alexander Nievmerzhitsky.

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