Men were subject to draft at the age of 18. The draft could be postponed due to continued education. However since the early 1980s Soviet Union had the mandatory draft for students of the most of colleges/universities — the first mass student recruitment was in spring 1983, the maximum conscription fraction in 1987 — until it was abolished in the spring of 1989. Students were drafted for two or, if for the navy, three years of military service typically after termination (more seldom in the middle) of the first or second year of college.