Actually, it's just what I heard. When guys were complaining about doing military service in Sweden, people said "oh it's nothing compared with the Soviet Union...." And then they'd tell some horrible story about that. The biggest complaint of the guys were if they got sent North. Really cold in the winter and lots of mosquitos in the summer, and very isolated and rural. Of course, the weather in Russia is more extreme and it's even more rural and isolated. But I have no idea where they got the information about bad conditions from.

Speaking about that, Sweden has stopped compulsory military service, and Germany just did it too.
Does Russia have any plans for that?
I have read (here, I think) that it's quite easy to get out of it.