# The World Significance of the Russian Revolution/Section 5

​V. The Personnel of "Bolshevism" and "Anti-Bolshevism."
We now approach the question: What are the opposing forces in the struggle? To suppose that the barbarous terms "Bolshevism" and "anti-Bolshevism" do any more than supply two very misleading labels which explain nothing, is to show a signal lack of power to appreciate the situation and to probe beneath the surface scum of verbal obscurantism. Before the long foreseen, utter, and inevitable collapse of the White Anti-Bolshevik Armies, the Red Army representing Bolshevism, and the White Army under Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenitch, were composed, for the most part, entirely of the same material, that is to say the Russian element in both armies was identical. The rank and file on both sides were Russians of the same class, with the same sympathies, and the same interests. They were ignorant and illiterate Russian peasants, whose only clear and all-compelling motive was to get enough food and clothing to keep them from death by starvation and cold. The very ​same men were fighting alternately first on one side, then on the other. When Kolchak or Denikin advanced, their recruits were drawn almost entirely from Red prisoners; and whole divisions and corps went over to them when they got the chance. When the Whites retreated or had their communications threatened by traitors and Bolshevik emissaries in their rear, these same troops passed over again to the Reds.
So much for the rank and file, Red or White, it was all the same. Even the officers on both sides were to a great extent officers of the old Tzarist Armies. The Soviet Government learned (better than the other side) that to fight you must have an efficient army, and an efficient army needs trained officers and an iron discipline. Gradually the Red Armies became more efficient.
The methods by which they had secured the services of the old officer class, or rather the proportion that had survived massacre and execution, was simple but effective. Their wives and womenfolk are held hostages, at the first sign of infidelity, the extraordinary commission consigns these women to torture and death. The Communist Party—so-called "Convinced Communists"—is splendidly organized, in fact the only party in the country which is organized. Although an infinitessimal fraction of the population, they have spies everywhere. The commissaries, mainly Jews, have perfected an organization by which the "convinced" communists are secretly distributed amongst the staffs and rank and file of the Army, and throughout the Soviet governmental and administrative machinery, on a plan analagous to secret masonic organizations. Every officer and every ​official is carefully watched. As long as they serve their Soviet masters the "employee's" condition is good, in fact in many ways his position is better than on the White side, for besides sufficient food and comfort for his family, officers are given absolute power over the soldiery; flogging and shooting are the only punishments. They realize, too, the hopeless and heart-breaking conditions under which their former brother-officers on the White side tried to lead an army under impossible conditions. The Whites, of course, were far too "democratic" to be either disciplined or efficient. Far too much a pot-pourri of incompatible and irreconcilable elements vainly trying to find a compromise, united only by a common hostility to another régime which does at any rate know what it wants, to be either thorough or purposeful.