# Army and People

Translation of a speech (Armii︠a︡ i narod) given October 1919
ARMY AND PEOPLE
The Soviet Government and the Corps of Officers
By G. ZINOVIEV
The Communist International Petrograd, 1920
page
ARMY AND PEOPLE
The Soviet Government and the Corps of Officers
By G. ZINOVIEV
The Communist International Petrograd, 1920
page
First State Printery, Petrograd
page
ARMY AND PEOPLE
(A lecture delivered by Comrade C. Zinoviev on October, 1919. to the assembly of military specialists. About 3000 officers were present.)
I. The Army and the Social Order.
Every people has the kind of army it deserves to have. It may be truly said: „Tell me what kind of army you have, and I will tell you what your country is like“. No more striking illustration of this can be found than is presented by our own army.
If we look back even but a short way, we shall see that the Russian Army played a worldwide part even at the time when serfdom existed in Russia. In those sad days the Russian Army influenced the course of the world's history, with the difference that our army then was a heavy weight cast in the scales by the reactionary landlords and the bourgeoisie.
In the revolutionary years 1848—49, our army interfered in international politics, but its intervention was in support of the landlords against the peasantry.
​It is not only in 1919 that Hungary played an important part in Europe. Seventy years ago that country also drew the attention of the civilzed world. At the time of the revolution of 1848, when the landlords were unable to cope with the insurgent people, the Hungarian Government turned for assistance to the Russian Tsar.
And seventy years ago the Russian Tsar was powerful enough to respond to this appeal. He equipped the serf-peasants, placed at their head a host of Russian officers of the landlord class, and sent this army to Hungary to crush the revolt of the Hungarian people. And the Russian serf army, commanded by landlord officers, seventy years ago crushed on the Hungarian plains the revolutionary movement of the peasants and workers of that country. For this Russia was ignominously labelled „International Gendarme“, because such was precisely the part in which serf Russia appeared before the world, supplying with counter-revolutionary troops not her own country alone, but Hungary also, and attempting to do the same for all countries. Yes, comrades, seventy years ago it could indeed be said that Russia had the army she deserved to have.
And naturally it could not be otherwise. Our people were living under the yoke of serfdom, and you know what were the delights of that. Serfdom meant almost universal illiteracy of ​the peasantry and indeed of the working city population; it meant that men were traded like cattle, that a small minority of landlords could order irresponsibly the fate of millions. And once Russia suffered such a state of things at home, put up with it, did not rise against it, her army of course could be turned in any direction, like a horse with blinders on its eyes. Such an army was hurled against the revolution in Hungary. Then, not fifteen years later, the Russian Army had again to play the part of international gendarme or international hangman; I mean in the repression of the Polish insurrection.
Comrades, at this moment the Polish bourgeoisie is waging war against our country, and we very naturally hate it for that. But we cannot forget that in the course of many scores of years, the Russian Tsar and the Russian landlords oppressed Poland and a whole string of forcibly annexed border lands. And so when, in the thirties, then in the sixties of the past century. risings began in Poland in which nearly the whole people took part, including the women, a number of Army Corps were sent off to Poland, commanded by exceptionally reactionary generals, in order to annihilate the Poles with fire and sword, and drown the liberating movement of that period in the blood of the Polish people. The Russian Army—the enslaved Russian Army—went without a protest, ​and butchered hundreds and thousands of the sons of the people who were then making only the fairest, most just demands. For the second time it could be said that Russia had the army she deserved to have.
In those days the best Russian men, such as, for instance, the famous writer Alexander Herzen, could not withhold their cries of indignation; it was a shame to be a Russian. It was horrible to see and hear how our armies, commanded by the Tsar's brute-sauled Generals, killed thousands of Poles for the offence of seeking to free their native land.
I repeat it. At every state of development, at every step of history. we had the army we deserved to have.
Principally from the moment when civilized Europe, from the old semi-feudal, semi-servile armies, passed to the standing armies organized on the principle of obligatory universal military service, armies everywhere became flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the people. And every people had the army it deserved to have. And in each army, as the sun is reflected in the tiniest drop of water, came to be reflected each country's political structure and social order.
If the country was ruled by the landlords, if serfdom existed or the bourgeoisie was the dominant class, all this reacted on the army at every step. So it was in Russia; so it was in the entire world.
​This is why the present Red Army, with its present command, reflects all that makes our country rich or poor, all her qualities both of strength and of weakness. It is the reflection of all Russia, of our entire social order, of our entire economic and political structure.
II. Can the Army be kept out of Politics?
And here it is first of all necessary to give a clear answer to the question, whether it is possible for the army to keep out of politics.
You know that there never was nor is there a more widely spread, and in my opinion more erroneous idea, than that the army stands or should stand outside of politics. Under the old regime Tsarist Russia and bourgeois Europe agreed that the Army must be non-political. I repeat that this is wrong; it is not actually so and cannot be so.
The bourgeois regime and the old regime generally, both assert that the schools too must keep out of politics; but we say they should not, and moreover that they never did.
The school is flesh of the flesh, blood of the blood, bone of the bone of the entire social order; it bears the stamp of it. Of the school it may be said, (with a slight adaptation of the saying): „Tell me what sort of school you have, ​and I will tell you what kind of social order you have“. The school never stood outside of politics: the universities, the parish church schools, the primary schools under the Tsars, were so directed as to serve the interests of the landed gentry, the bourgeoisie. So it was and is everywhere, even in the freest democratic countries, like France and America.
Beginning at five years of age, in that same democratic France, the child enters the spiritual laboratory of the bourgeoisie; he is given a bourgeois reader, is taught bourgeois baby songs; from infancy he is told that there is and can be no better order of things than that which surrounds him; the idea is instilled into him that there never were, and cannot be, any greater heroes than the great French conquerors who subjugated foreign countries, seized colonies by force, and so on.
In Russia politics were applied to schools with peculiar brutality. Only arrant reactionaries were placed at the head of the department of Public Instruction, such as Uvarov, Shirinsky-Shakhmatov, Dmitri Tolstoy and others of the same brand.
In France and Germany, in England and America, they go to work more subtly, more cleverly, artistically. The European bourgeoisie are cleverer than the landlords in deceiving their people; they proceed with greater skill. But everywhere the same picture meets the eye: ​both the elementary schools and the higher faculties everywhere serve the same social order, the same class, which, in this case, means that the schools serve the bankers, the bourgeoisie, the landed gentry.
The same thing may and must be said of the army. Many members of the army, many really cultured and well-informed men among the commanding officers, are to this day profoundly convinced that the army should stand outside of politics. The idea has permeated their very flesh and blood. Nevertheless there never was a greater mistake than this. Never for one instant has any army stood outside of politics; ever since the existence of armies founded on the principle of universal military service, they have been used to serve a definite political aim, possibly not always themselves conscious of the fact.
Under the Tsars, in the days of serfdom, in 1848—9, when the army was sent to choke the life out of the Hungarian revolution, did it not then carry out a definite political design? The serf-soldiers, when taken to Hungary, possibly did not realize this; in fact they surely did not. It may be that the generals and officers in command of the serf army did not all understand what policy they were serving, or, possibly even the words „politics“, „policy“. And yet that army in 1849 was playing a well ​defined political part—was serving the policy of the Russian Tsar and the Russian landlords.
When in 1904–5 millions of our soldiers were fighting the Japanese, many of them of course had no idea that they were acting a political part; neither had the commanders. Yet now, some fifteen years later, it is perfectly clear to all that the Russo-Japanese war grew out of a political conflict, that the Tsar and the bourgeoisie deliberately brought about this war: in the first place in the hope by this means to divert the people from internal questions, then in pursuit of plunder, gain and the conquest of new markets.
III. The Russian Army and Internal Conflicts.
In short, our army in the Russo-Japanese war carried out a well-defined political task; it did not stand outside of politics. And the moment you turn to our internal conflicts, it will of course become all the more clear to you—clear to vividness—that our army never for an instant stands or has stood outside of politics. The Russian Army was sent to put down the Polish insurrection. Was that not politics? Reactionary, dark, plunderous „Black-Hundred“ polities, such as would bring the blush of shame to the cheek of men like Herzen and others among the best of his time; but it was politics.
Take the eve of the first revolution, 1903–4, ​when arose the mighty wave of the peasant movement; when, in the province of Saratov, in central Russia and in the South, the peasant masses began to awaken, to rise with the demand „More land!“ Did not the government then hurlits punitive detachments over the face of thecountry? And in the province of Saratov, and all over Russia, began the flogging of the peasants who demanded land. How then? Was this, too, not politics? Was the then standing outside of politics? The army was carrying out a well-defined political task.
But of course a shameful, reactionary, anti-popular task.
IV. A Terrible Past.
It was told (and occasionally written) how in the province of Saratov, at the height of the peasant risings, several regiments arrived with the mission to flog almost the entire rural population; in the township of Balashov, Stolypin, one of the big local land holders and at the same time governor of the province, soon after to be named Minister in reward for this prowess,—Stolypin , I say, seated in a pleasant arbour, drinking tea, enjoyed the sight of our own soldiers, possibly themselves peasants, flogging the Saratov peasants by his order.
Is this not symbolic of politics? A Governor, future Minister of the Interior and future President of the Council of State, great land-owner, ​comfortably sitting at a table with a hissing samovar before him, amusing himself by watching the cossacks beat the peasants; and that because the miserable peasants wanted to shake off the yoke of the landlords, and for the first time had risen against them—ah! What a pretty picture! But you must admit that that is not exactly „keeping out of politics“!
No, the army did not keep out of politics! The army carried out the politics of Stolypin and the land-owners, who, by all sorts of tricks and manipulations, schemed to remain masters of that army—who knew how to make peasants beat other peasants. A monstrous system of lies and violence was created in order to set part of the workers and peasants against the people, to make them act, lay hands on their own fathers and brothers, and beat the people of their own villages.
Lastly you re member the revolution of 1905, stifled in the blood of our workers by the efforts of Generals Dubassov, Rennenkampf, Mina and others; punitive detachments ranged Siberia and indeed all Russia, and the Semionov regiment crushed the rising in Moscow, flooding with blood the city squares and suburbs. Who did that? Our own army did it, our peasants, partly perhaps our working men. Did they at that moment stand outside of politics? Alas, they were settling the fate of the entire revolution of 1905; the army was carrying out the ​policy of General Mina, Stolypin, Nicolas Romanov, who held the army in their hands.
Why is it, however, that the former government in Russia and the bourgeois governments in Europe keep on to this day asserting that the army must stand outside of politics? This is why: because their conscience is not at rest, because they cannot tell the people the truth, because their entire form of government is founded not only on self-delusion, but on deceit. They cannot openly tell the army, composed as it is of working men and peasants, that it is bound to safeguard the interests of the possessing classes, the bourgeoisie, the landed gentry and the bankers; they cannot comfort the people with such candid statements; nothing remains but to invent something plausible, if only external, and so that the labourers and peasants may swallow the pill whole, they gild it; so they hit on the hypocritical ideology which declares that the army is a thing by itself and standing to one side, or somewhere midway between; that it takes and must take no interest in politics.
The bourgeois government is compelled to be hypocritical; only a Workers' and Peasants' government is able to speak the truth to the people openly and definitely.
V. The Army and the Non-Partisans.
It is possible that in our Army, both in the rank and file and in the command, there may ​be many men who do not approve of our policy and would wish to follow another; nevertheless we do not hide in the bushes. Although from the stand-point of our immediate interests it might be of advantage to say that the army stands outside of politics, this is just where our government differs from others, in that it is not guided by momentary interests. Its policy is dictated entirely by the interests of right and truth. And were we to say that our army stands outside of politics, it would be profound hypocrisy on our part, and humiliating to the Soviet power.
Just as the army of the French Republic, which is at this moment conquering colonies in Africa and assisting Koltchak in Russia, is not standing outside of politics, but is carrying out a well-defined policy dictated to it by the bourgeois class, so our Red Army is not standing outside of politics, but is carrying out a well-defined policy defending well-defined interests; with this difference, that it is defending the interests of an immense majority of the working class, the interests of the workers and peasants.
This is why, comrades, we think it is necessary for the army command clearly to understand the fundamental idea underlying our present government, namely, that never and nowhere has an army stood outside of politics.
​This is why it is first of all necessary to come to a mutual understanding concerning this fundamental idea; there is no greater hypocrisy, no more deeply rooted prejudice than the opinion that any army, or any large part of one, can stand outside of politics. If anyone thinks this honestly, that person is a victim of self-delusion. The bourgeoisie never for one second admitted this honestly, but administered a pill to the ignorant people in order the better to deceive them, as the workers are fooled by the Non-Partisan. The Non-Partisans do not say to the worker „Go join a bourgeois Party“, because they know that no worker will do it. But they do say to him, „Be of no party“, and with that hook they angle for the people. Just so with the army. The bourgeosie can not well say to the soldier: „Go and serve the golden calf, the money bag“. To say so bluntly would be indecorous. But it is put like this: „Stand aside from politics; politics do not concern you; officers must not take any interest in politics; the army must keep out of politics“. This sounds rather well, and on this hook a fish may be caught here and there.
It goes without saying that an individual group may take no active part in politics. There are learned men, interested in some particular specialty, who love military science as such, for itself, and give their work to it from sheer abstract love of the subject. Such men as ​individuals do stay out of politics, take no active part in them. And no one says to them „Join our Party“ or „Support our policy“.
But since we are examining general questions, we say: every mature, intelligent man must understand that ever since the history of cultured people has existed, no army ever stood or could stand outside of politics.
VI. The Officer Class and its Various Strata.
Shall not the same be said in particular of the officer class? There is not and never was an officer class, any more than the masses, which could stand outside of political conflicts. It is not subtleties which matter, not details or particulars; what is important is the principle.
If we consider the destiny of the Russian officer class, and its development—and after all, it touches us most closely—we shall find that it never was a compact homogeneous body, and never stood outside of politics.
In our officer class there has always been a very distinct division into strata. One part of it thought this way, another that way. One part was in one camp; the other in another camp. This sort of thing began about a hundred years ago. One of the first revolutionary outbreaks at all in the nature of a mass movement, in favour of a republic as against a monarchy, came from the officer class. I refer ​to the December rising of ninety-five years ago. We have never forgotten or will forget that, side by side with the reactionary crimes which the officer class has committed against its own people in the past, and is committing at present in the „White Guard“ ranks, stand the names of those great men who a hundred years ago headed the December insurrection.
As far back as a hundred years ago, the more highly educated, intelligent and cultured among the officers rose against the Tsar in favour of a republic. Scores of officers perished at the time, many families were ruined. But such names as Pestel, Ryleyev, Muraviov, Kakhovsky etc. shine as stars in a dark sky. Our people must know that, out of the ranks of the privileged classes. the wealthy aristocrats of a hundred years ago, issued a whole constellation of champions, officers, who attempted to overthrow Tsarism, depending on the Petersburg regiments and intending to establish a republic. This attempt failed, the people were too ignorant, the troops did not support it, there was as yet hardly a working class at all, the peasants were forgotten—the „Decembrists“ did not take them into account—so that this primitive attempt ended in utter defeat.
Thus, already in the beginning of the 19th century, our officer class was not a compact, dark reactionary mass; then already it was in a way divided into strata, and certain well-​defined groups within it were striving for a republic and the overthrow of me monarchy.
Take now the great writers, the poets, who also were officers at one time, and you will see that from their ranks also issued geniuses, talents of a high order, and the first harbingers of the revolutonary struggle. The great Russian poet Lermontov was an officer; Pushkin, the national poet, also was in touch with military spheres, and scores of years ago wrote these lines. which should be recalled to our officers' memory and which you probably know:—
Thou tyrant most iniquitous, Oh, how I hate thy race and thee! Thy downfall and thy children's death Would fill me with a wicked glee!
And these fiery words were wrung scores of years ago from the heart of one whose whole existence was bound up with the privileged classes. He hated Tsarism to the bottom of his soul, and was the first to create circles of young men, like himself haters of Tsarism. Later in the sixties, among the men who worked for the emancipation of the serfs, there were some few representatives of the officer class. Later, in the seventies and in the eighties, there were not a few noble representatives of the officer class, in that generation of revolutions, who perished on the gallows in the cause of the Revolution. Among others a whole group of Russian officers were killed in the eighties, who ​were closely connected with the well-known revolutionist narodovoletz Zheliabov.
VII. The "Narodnaya Volia" and the first signs of Revolution in the Officer Class.
Our people should know more especially about Zheliabov. Who was A. F. Zheliabov? He was the son of a peasant, a serf. He succeeded in getting some education, as his master found him apt, and somehow, by a fortunate piece of luck, the boy entered school. We now have a detailed biography of Zheliabov. While still a boy he had opportunities to observe the iniquities of the servile social order. In his presence the master ravished his mother and sisters. This outrage sank deeply into the boy's soul; he swore that when he was old enough, he would without fail kill that man. But when he grew up and was an educated man he thought to himself: „What is the use of my killing this most commonplace member of the landlord class? If I do kill, let it be the First Landlord of Russia“ meaning the Tsar. And Zheliabov became a revolutionist, the head of the first revolutionary groups (so-called „circles“) and organized the assassination of Alexander II (March 1881).
And so this Zheliabov, risen from the lowest depths out of the serf peasantry, became the ​greatest leader of the revolutionary party, one of the founders of the Russian Revolution, and was one of the first in Petersburg, in the seventies of last century, to gather around himself those officers who followed in his steps. From his new biography, which is being printed and will soon come out, it is known now that he carried on a regular propaganda among the officers. One cannot read unmoved the story how, though dogged on all sides by detectives and spies, having invited to his own rooms three officers whom he had hopes of being able to secure for the service of the Revolution, he addressed them in ardent, passionate words, and how he succeded in inducing them to form their particular circle and to take part in the work of freeing our people from Tsarism.
How much easier we have it now in our struggle, if we consider the nature of the present gathering compared with the conditions which that generation had to face; we can call together thousands of officers and soldiers and speak openly of our needs, while forty years ago the best leader of the Russian Revolution had to bring together three officers at a time to have a chance to talk to them. Zheliabov's fiery speech—he was, we must remember, a man not only talented and devoted to the cause, but of a great mind—had such an effect on the three officers that they at once joined hands and swore to remain for ever in the ​ranks of the revolution. These officers were at that time undoubtedly almost alone of their kind, but all the greater was their merit—the darker the night the brighter the stars. The darker is our revolution, the brighter burn the stars of such names as Ossinsky, Kovalik, Sukhanov, Mikhailov and other officers, who issued from the ranks of the higher command and passed over to the side of the people nearly forty years ago.
It follows that neither did the Russian officer class, as such, as a whole, ever stand outside of politics, and that there always were parts of it which sympathised with the people, and the majority which, as majority, went against the people. You can observe a similar state of things at the present time.
VIII. The Officer Class and Statistics.
Comrades, I could not say exactly, but it is my impression that at the height of the war with Germany, when the mobilised army exceeded ten millions, the officer class in Russia reached at least half a million; so that at the time of the October Revolution there must have been about that number. I am speaking approximately; my statement cannot even now be definitely verified. How then was distributed, and is now distributed, the sympathy of these half million officers? I believe that of five ​hundred thousand officers, at a rough estimate, about one hundred thousand (I am referring to the officers on the old officers' lists) are numbered in the ranks of the Red Army; and of these an immense majority are serving in the Red Army not from fear but for conscientious motives; about two hundred thousand scattered all over Russia, both Soviet Russia and the portion seized by the White Guards, are neither one thing or the other, and try in every way to escape the civil war, or remain outside of it all. Then something like two hundred thousand are to be found in the ranks of our adversaries, „White Guards“ and landed gentry (front and rear), and are fighting against the workers, and peasants.
You can see from the approximate figures that the officer class as it is now is not a compact, homogeneous body, but falls into various strata. And when I hear military specialists, officers, remark that officer-landlords should not be confounded with plain officers, I say that they are right. Yes, we must keep in view the fact that there are „officer-landlords“ and „plain officers“. The officer-landlord defends his privileges; he wants at any cost his thousand dessiatins of land (about 3,000 acres); he wants to preserve his orchard, his noble family's home-nest; the other former officer received under the Tsar not quite 100 roubles a month salary, lived poorly, came from the sphere of ​Government officials, and truth to say was in reality more nearly connected in his interests with the working population than with the land-owning class.
Our officer class of the present day is also divided into certain subclasses, certain layers, and we cannot dye them all with the same dye, we must not imagine them all as one compact homogeneous, black, reactionary mass. We do not, because it really is not so.
There are among the officers conspicuous representatives of both camps. Take for example the representative of the „White Guard“ the „White Finn“ Mannerheim a former Russian officer, who was educated here, grew up here. Such were Denikin, Koltchak, Yudenitch; in these men the fierce type of the officer landlord found its expression. They are the so-called „aurochses“, who defend their thousand dessiatins and refuse to recognise the Great Revolution. Yet, since the beginning of our liberating movement, the names of many officers who came from the people and who have served the people, shine forth with great brillancy; it is enough to mention these of Lieutenant Schmidt, or General Nicolayev, who perished at Yamburg, hung by the White Guards. With the rope around his neck, he cried: „Long live the Red Army! I declare that to my last breath I have served the workers and peasants!“.
​There are, indeed there are such individual examples, such heroes in the ranks of the Red Army command. Glory to them!
IX. There are Officers—and Officers.
One swallow does not make spring, that is certain. Such heroes as the late Comrade Nicolayev unfortunately are stilt rare, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But it is a significant fact that even one such exceptional personality could be born and assert itself. Certain external conditions, certain moral conditions of the masses were required for that. Still, we have more such characters in our ranks, such as for instance Comrade Yegorev, one of our most active at the Southern front, an officer of the old Tsarist service, who for the last year and a half has carried on an heroic struggle and showed a rare depth of self-sacrifice and noble zeal under most trying conditions. But along the many fronts of the civil war, it is possible to call the names of hundreds of officers very different from Balachovitch, Yudenitch, Mannerheim, Koltchak and others,
And if you place on one side Koltchak, Denikin, Balachovitch, and on the other Lieutenant Schmidt and General Yegorev, you will at once see that there are officers and officers. You will see that there can be no greater hypocrisy ​or stupidity than to assert that the officer class as a whole can and must stand outside of politics. Yudenitch certainly can not stand outside politics, neither can Balachovitch, They are making landlord politics, at the suggestion of a small, wealthy and privileged minority. On the other hand, men like Lieutenant Schmidt, Nicolayev, Yegorev also do not stand outside of politics; they also make politics, a well-defined line of politics.
They may not have disentangled the subtleties of the Party program, they may even never have read it, never have formally joined the Party, but they took a very definite part in the fundamental conflict between Whites and Reds, between Labour and Capital, between rough hands and manicured ones; they did not say that they were neither hot nor cold, did not stand between the two.
When we pluck such figures right out of life, it becomes clear to evidence that for the officer class as a whole there can be no question of anything like neutrality, non-partisanship, standing aside from politics.
It seems to me that the greatest impediment to our army command and our officers as a whole taking up a definite position, is the fact that not many of them realise what is going on and what the revolution we are going through really means.
X. What is this Great Revolution?
And really the answer seems so simple: a revolution is a revolution. Many believe that a revolution means—doing away with a monarch and putting in a president; discarding one Government and calling a new parliament. But that is not a revolution.
A revolution becomes „great“ only when immense interests, not merely political, but economic, are staked; when the masses are drawn into. tile movement, when not a crown alone is at stake, but daily bread, a dessiatin of land; when the question arises of who is to own the houses, the factories, and mills; when not thousands or tens of thousands, but millions begin to take an interest in such questions. A great revolution begins from the day when great strata of the people are heaved up, when such questions come to the front as the tenure of property, ,the question of bread, the most intimate fundamental interests of the people.
XI. The Part played by the Officer Class in our Revolution.
So it was here, with us. When the first February Revolution broke out, our officer class played on the whole a rather innocuous part; its attitude was distrustful, cool, it stood ​aside. It is a well-known fact that in those first days it was the soldiers who acted, not the officers.
The officers did not believe in the Revolution; they waited for events to develop.
The October Revolution was met by them in a more hostile spirit. To this day many hold the narrow minded view that the October Revolution was the work of one particular Party, that it was a so called „coup de main“ or sudden usurpation of power. It was not. The October Revolution grew out of the February Revolution; just as lightening is inevitably followed by thunder (only that the thunder is usually heard somewhat later), just so the October Revolution was bound to come after the February Revolution. The latter knocked down the crown, took the first step, did the preliminary rough work. The October Revolution raised the question, to whom should the land belong, to the gentry or the peasants; and who should own the factories and mills. The October Revolution said: We are not satisfied with having removed one Tsar; we do not wish to enthrone 130.000 little Tsar-landlords in the place of the big one; we want to be rid of them too.
In 1905 the officer class, almost to a man, was hostile to any kind of revolution; In February 1917 a considerable portion of it sided with the political revolution, the ​ice was begining to thaw, and by October when we brought to the front the question of the tenure of property, the officer class began to split most on that. The officer-landlord took a decided stand against the Revolution; the „plain officer“, issued out of the toiling portion of the people, the working peasants or the masses of town and city people (commoners, burghers)—this officer stopped at the crossroad to think; he was in doubt which way to turn, whether to the right or to the left. He stood there cogitating for several months, until at last, the one or the other course took more or less clearly defined shape in his mind.
What is most wanting in our officer class is precisely a clear comprehension of the modern spirit—it should learn to realise what the present revolution means. As soon as it understands that this is not a big plundering job, but a great popular movement, not a string of watchwords, produced from nowhere by some chance Party, but really and truly a great revolution—then it will stop standing at the cross-road, then an immense majority of it will definitively join us.
XII. Wars and Social Revolutions.
There can be no greater utopia than the assurance nursed by many that, after the present war, things in the main will stay as they were. ​And yet coming to facts, the entire policy of the bourgeois Government consists in the firmly rooted hope that after the four years of war, it is enough to assemble in Paris, write a peace treaty and end the war; for the river to retire to its bed and for everything to return to the old status, with possibly some alterations in the front of the building, but the foundations to remain unaltered. Many believe this. There is no greater, more hopeless absurdity. Even supposing there were not one Communist in the world, even then that world, our whole sinful earth would have to undergo a thorough change after this four years' war.
Take, let us say, the Crimean war. It was child's play to this one, and yet it ended in this, that a radical change took place in Russia—the emancipation of the serfs. Now we cannot even imagine what an immense step that was to take.
Take again the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71. That war, compared to the present or last one also was child's play, yet it resulted in the overthrow of a monarchy and the establishment of a republic. Yet what did the Franco-Prussian war amount to? It lasted about 9 months, only two countries were involved in it, and a lesser number of men took part in it on all its fronts than are fighting now on one of our fronts. Only forty odd years have elapsed since then, and here we have a world war, with ​several tens of millions of people tearing at each other's throats, with Europe continuously flooded with blood for more than four years, all her economic life sacrificed to that war, universal destruction in honour of it. And see: that war but just ended—what tremendous upheavals! Half a dozen thrones swept away, and a whole series of revolutions, victorious and semi-victorious. And the whole world in commotion, shaken with the fever of coming events.
Wholly hopeless, in truth, Is it to fancy that Europe and the whole world will be renovated after this slaughter. That cannot be. Every little war has brought most important social changes. And what you have just seen, that was no little war, but something never before known in history. All Europe one vast burying ground. and all the nations facing the spectre of famine!
Not Russia alone, but all Europe. In Vienna the tramways stop working, in Germany the mills stand idle, in England and in France the coal question is growing more and more acute, as it is here with us.
Could it be otherwise? During four and a half years men have been busy devastating their own countries.
XIII. Psychology of the Average Officer.
But the question is: To what changes will this war lead? I can understand the average ​officer. I can well imagine how strange and foreign all that is now going on must seem to him. Strange and foreign must Communism appear to him, strange and foreign the Soviets. He has never thought of these things. Let him, however, give some thought to the result for all mankind of such an unheard-of crisis, the result of four years' war. He will not surely deny that the greatest changes are inevitable. The great question is—what are these changes to be?
No longer now can they consist in setting one Tsar in the place of another, or convoking some sort of a new Duma instead of the former one, even under the name of „Constituant Assembly“. The changes must be on a very different scale. It is the working classes who will take the helm in their own hands; they will make a lot of blunders, will go stumbling along, will learn from their mistakes. But all the same they will trust nobody but themselves to rule the country. After four years of war, when the men of toil have been laid low by tens of millions, they have become distrustful of the possessing classes; why should they not? The peasants and workers now trust only themselves.
This, then, is the meaning the substance of the revolution brought about by the war. This is where everything comes from which appears to us at first sight so unaccustomed, so ​strange—that offends the eye. The city just now seems a desert: closed shops, little light—we seem to have stepped backward. All this must be offensive to the average officer. He is used to seeing the Nevsky swarming with people, brilliant with beautiful shops and uninterrupted traffic. And looking on such abomination of desolation, he thinks we are ruining our country, and doubt seizes him—can he support such a state of things?
But the average officer, when he has done his thinking, will have to realize what has caused all this, and ask himself: Was it really, after all, such an ideal state of things when the Nevsky swarmed with people, when the shops were open, when choice eatables were exposed, accessible to some five thousand people out of two millions, and inaccessible even to him, the average officer? Was it really so very nice when some favoured officers paraded the Nevsky, feeling very well, but surrounded with an atmosphere of general distrust and hatred, and looked on by the people as strangers, as henchmen of the Tsar, as those who, on the 9th of January shot down the working men on the Winter Palace Square.
XIV. The «Whites» and the «Reds».
That which has happened for the last five years has been so unusual, so unheard-of, turning upside down all relations between men ​and things, changing all conditions of existence, that it has forced people to revise all their estimates of things, to think them over anew.
The Nevsky is deserted. But so is the world. And the world has split into „Whites“ and „Reds“, not in Russia alone, but everywhere. Comrades, who actually killed of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg? A few officers. They, with their own hands, killed Liebknecht and Luxemburg, And yet in Germany itself, under the heel of Wilhelm, who stifled all that was human in the officers as a class—even there there are „red“ officers.
Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, used to boast that no one could produce an imitation of a German lieutenant, that nowhere but in Germany was there such a lieutenant. And indeed it was quite a special breed; he was raised specially. Just as some particular breed of horses is bred in special studs, so in Germany under Bismarck and Wilhelm, there were, if one may so call them, human studs, for the training of a special breed of lieutenant with turned-up moustache. They looked down on the whole world with contempt, had no respect for anybody but their Kaiser and the Prussian hogs,
And yet even there we find dissension in the officer class. There are killers, and there are those who even now already support the workers, and look forward to the moment when they too will have a Red Army.
XV. A Profound Comprehension of the Spirit of the Time is an Absolute Necessity.
The world is divided. The officer not of the landlord class just now most of all needs an historical comprehension of the spirit of our time. He must not heed externalities, trifles,—possibly vexatious, offensive trifles—but concentrate his attention on essentials.
In the course of these four years the world has undergone tremendous ordeals, the entire world has been cauterized with war's red-hot iron, the entire word is changing; a crisis is maturing, some terrible general break-up is approaching; such changes as take place once in five hundred or even in a thousand years.
Such a change is taking place before our eyes—with mistakes, I admit, by fits and starts. Still, the working class is advancing; it will sometimes fail, but it will rise again; it will carry on the movement it has started. We are in the midst of this movement, waist-deep in snow drifts, jumping obstacles, knocking ourselves black and blue, but still getting head.
The average officer must use his brains. He must look impersonally at the root of things, not try to account for a fatally inevitable historical process by the evil will of individuals, or even parties; such an explanation would be silly. In this matter individuals or parties are ​of no account; what matters is the tremendous historical fact, the underground commotions which transform the whole world when the universe changes its clothes.
And all this is taking place right now, under our very eyes. What a great, proud, tragic, but beautiful time is ours.
If the officer class come to comprehend what is taking place, try to fathom the meaning of it, arming themselves with sound views, and will look at it all as a radical transformation, not as the wicked manifestation of this or that individual, this or that group, then they will shake oft their hard stubbornness, and will be able to struggle against the old inherited prejudices, the wrong notions grafted on them by education, and with their help there will occur a complete change in the attitude of the masses towards the officer class generally.
XVI. The Officer Class and the Soviet Rule.
The question which next calls for our attention is: the officer class and the Soviet rule.
Comrades, for two years now the Soviet rule has existed in Russia. And it seems to me that we now possess definite material in the shape of facts, which friends and foes alike must recognise; for facts are stubborn things, as the English say—they can't be denied.
​And the facts in the main are as follows: When the working class and the peasantry under our Party banner gained their first victory in October, 1917, then, notwithstanding that both in Petersburg and in Moscow part of the officers and all the cadets fought against us, still, on the morrow of our victory, our Government did not take vengeance, did not have recourse to repressions but on the contrary immediately offered all these elements an honourable peace—nay, more than that, offered them definite work, a chance to utilize their faculties.
Remember. Everybody knows that Krasnov, one of the most conspicuous reactionary generals, who had fought us near Petersburg, was taken prisoner and brought to Smolny. I saw him with my own eyes. Well, not a hair fell from this General Krasnov's head, not any insult was offered him, he left Smolny a free man, after pledging his honour not to fight us any more.
This is not a solitary fact, but typical of the policy of those days. Then in Moscow, after a whole week of the hottest fighting, after the revolutionary troops had been shut in the Kremlin and cannonaded by the cadets, guided by the „right“ Social Revolutionary Rudnov, after a week of the most terrible bloodshed, when the Moscow workers at last seized on the power, their Revolutionary Committee on the morrow or at the moment of the conclusion of the truce said: Return their arms to those who fought against us.
​On such conditions was the truce concluded. A book has lately been issued in which you can read the text of the treaty. This document is signed on the side of our Party by Comrade Smedovich, then President of the Moscow Soviet, an old revolutionist, grown white under our banner; on the other by the representatives of the cadets and the then existing „Committee of Regeneration“. The Moscow workers did not take vengeance on the cadets who had fought against us, but let them go free after returning them their arms.
These two facts suffice for future history and anyone not infected with „White Guard“ poison must say: At (he beginning of the October Revolution the Soviet Government did not use repressions, even against active enemies belonging to the officer class, The Soviet Government not only did not indulge in revenge; but what is far more important, it said: There are in Russia many hundreds of thousands of officers; they must be given a chance not alone to live, but to work in the liberated country,
And you will remember that, from the first moment of the formation of a „Red Army“, our Government addressed the officers in frank and friendly terms, saying to them: There is room and an honourable position for anyone who is willing to support the Worker and Peasant regime, anyone who comprehends that the greatest of revolutions has just taken place, ​and is willing to serve his people; go, use your knowledge which you have obtained at a high price, at the cost of the Russian people; apply your military science to the construction of the new „Red Army“, which will fight the German imperialists and the internal foes, the „White Guards“ and all those who would do harm to Soviet Russia.
Thus spoke, thus offered the Soviet Government, as both friend and foe must admit; this cannot be erased, as the saying is, and the axe cannot cut out what the pen has written. Such are the facts.
In answer to this began the cleavage of the officer class, of which I spoke a while ago. Some came to us with distrust, even with a stone in their bosoms, who later on grew more and more interested in the work of construction. Others, the majority, went against us, and now are in the ranks of the „Whites“, fighting their own country.
Comrades, I know that among the military specialists there are protests against wholesale accusations; they justly observe that a difference should be made between officers and officers.
Quite right. Also we must admit that at present, after two years of the most embittered civil war, there is a tendency among working men and Red Army soldiers to speak disdainfully of specialists generally, and especially of officers. ​This may not always be just, but officers should understand the reason for it.
To you I say: Citizens, you must understandwhence springs the source of this distrust of officers, and by what is fed.
In truth, while there are such men as Yudenitch, the organiser of a league of—assassins as Balachovitch, who after gaining the confidence of the «Red Army» went over to the Whites and sold districts of the province of Pskov to the Esthonian bourgeoisie, men like Koltchak, who flogged the peasants in all the townships, districts, even the provinces occupied by him, till the victims' groans reached Petersburg and Moscow—while there are such men, it is easy to see whence comes the bitter feeling towards those who were, so to speak, of the same skin as Koltchak, wore epaulets like his, had studied the same things that he had. And so long as there are such figures as Nekliudov such as attitude is inevitable.
By the way, I must dwell on this figure a moment. I made Nekliudov's acquaintance when I was at Krasnaya Gorka, where he was commandant. When I met him I could easily account for his being in the Red Army. He was still a young man, from a fine old family which had several liberal members under Alexander II and Alexander III, had had a part in the building of the fort, and it seemed to me that he loved every stone in it. Under the Tsar he was ​of very little account, he was kept under by the old officials, who were generally distrustful of the abilities of young men, while the Soviet government had placed him in full control of the fort; he could give fall play to his capacities. It was said that he was a great specialist, a learned artillerist, very fond of his work: one would think he had been given a sufficiently wide field of action; he was placed, like the majority of officiers, in comparatively tolerable material conditions; how could treason have been expected of him? Yet you know what that man did? He sold the key of our city! And to whom? To the Finnish bourgeoisie, which is sitting on a mound of corpses of Finnish workers, which about two years ago shot hundreds of Russian officers, not because they were Communists, but simply because they were Russians; the Finnish bourgeoisie, brutal, dull and narrow-minded, killed Russian officers for no other reason but that they were Russians.
Now after we were the first to recognize their independence, the Finns throw bombs into Cronstadt, fire on our frontier, mock their own people. And yet a Russian officer, entrusted with the key of that most important place, at a decisive moment presents it to that same Finnish bourgeoisie. Nekliudov sent a radio to Björkö, to the Finnish authorities there and partly to the English authorities and said to them: „Krasnaya Gorka is at your disposal. Come and take ​possession!“ Can one imagine a blacker treason, a more hideous downfall, a more dishonourable action that that perpetrated by the Russian officer and specialist, Nekliudov?
And so, comrades, I repeat; while there are double-dyed traitors like that around, ft is no wonder if among the peasants and workers, thrice deceived and thrice sold, we find wholesale aversion towards all military specialists whatsoever who have the littlest thing in common with such men as Nekliudov and Koltchak.
More than that, the Russian White Guards' chief crime consists in their carrying on conspiracies with foreigners. They do exactly what the refuse of the French nobility and bourgeoisie did at the time of the great French Revolution. With whom under the sun does not a considerable portion of the Russian officer class conspire, to whom does it not sell itself! First it was to Wilhelm, then to Skoropadsky, then to the French, the English, the Japanese, the Rumanians, the Turks, the Chinese, anybody at all.
Is this not the greatest ignominy? Is it not the blackest page in the history of the Russian officer class? Why, comrades, had our people even thrice erred, had they committed the greatest follies, they would still be our people, the masses of our workers and peasants. To go against them with French speculators, Rumanian landlords, Finnish White Guards, with ​Wilhelm, the Japanese and anybody at all, is that not the greatest crime? And yet this crime is continually being committed. Now Yudenitch and Koltchak do not consider it a shame to make known how much they have received from the English, nay, they boast of it. They say, We are preparing to march on Petersburg. To-day's radio, for instance, says, We have received tanks, money, bread. Officers serving with Yudenitch are smartly dressed, wear splendid English uniforms. You remember what a discovered conspirator wrote: „The Army of the South is gradually adopting the uniform of the English volunteer army“. A rank and file officer, wearing a splendid English uniform, of which every item, beginning with the epaulets and ending with the boots, is bought with English gold, is such an officer not ashamed of himself? Do not those epaulets burn his shoulders? How can he, fresh from the hands of a French hairdresser, find it in his heart to jeer at the poor Russian homespun-clad, sometimes half-clad peasant army, whole squads of which go barefoot?
So it is that the most monstrous treason goes on before the people's eyes. Men are clothed, fed, taught by Englishmen and Frenchmen, who cannot send their own armies to Russia, because their soldiers are sufficiently united and organized and refuse to go forth to kill Russian workers and peasants. But money the ​foreign bourgeoisie can give, tanks they can send, that our traitors may make mincemeat of Russian workers and peasants, plunder Russia, ruin the farms, try to throttle the Soviet Government. And of course the iron to a certain extent enters into the soul of the worker and the peasant, who are wasting away under the burdens of war, longing for rest. They have swept away the bourgeoisie and could rest, could put an end to the war, were it not for this portion of the officer class, the men who have given their swords, their honour and their conscience into the keeping of the French-English capitalists.
Under the Tsar much was said in the military schools about patriotism, love of country. But those were false, hollow words, for under the Tsars whole provinces were sold, whole districts given away as rewards for service rendered, or went to minions and favourites. Now, however, when Russia is no longer a stepmother but a true mother to her workers and peasants, we have the right to talk of country and native land. And who is it that now crucifies their native land, barters it away, sells it to the English, French, Chinese, Turks—to whomever will buy?
Alas, it is that portion of the officer class which is bound with hoops of steel to the landed proprietors, and which thinks that the wheel ​of history can be turned backwards, and that the old privileges can be restored.
This is why. I say, it is not to be wondered at if there is a certain tension in the atmosphere, and if it will take months, possibly years, before complete reconciliation can at last be effected on this ground.
Returning to my starting point I again assert that any unprejudiced person must acknowledge the fact that the Soviet Government offered peaceful occupation and tolerable conditions of existence to the officers as a class, stipulating merely that they should not dream of the land being returned to the landlords, the crown to the Tsar, in the guise of the Constituant Assembly or any other guise, and the factories and mills to private owners. This was the only demand we made, and this demand in reality was not made by a party or by individuals, but by history, by mankind.
XVII. Commanders and Commissars.
This is how the mutual relations between the command and the Red Army shape themselves in my mind. I know there are many roughnesses to be smoothed out, much that is even yet not stably settled, much experience is required before normal relations can be established. Take only the mutual relations between Commissars and the army command.
​The Commissar on one hand, is to work in harmony with the commander, on the other hand he is bound at times not to trust him. Hence arises a two-edged situation, at times a state of nervousness. The Commissars lean now to one side now to the other; some become assimilated, subordinate to military specialists, allow themselves to be turned into a sort of clerk to the specialist; this is all wrong, Inadmissible. But there also is the other extreme, when Commissar places the commander in an impossible situation, when there arises a state of constant bickering, constant misunderstandings, conditions on the whole under which it is Impossible for either to work.
Both extremes must be avoided. It should be kept in mind that the Commissar is the representative of a class which has conquered power and is in power for good and all; at the same time respect is due to the dignity of the man who, though issued from another sphere of life, of different breeding and education, yet comes to work with us a with a stone in his bosom, and assists with his knowledge not a party but the people, Russia—that Russia which, just now destitute, starving, crucified on every side, still is our very own, beloved Russia. In this struggle for our Soviet Russia such a man should be respected, should be placed so he can work, give full play to his capacities and not feel himself surrounded on every side by hostile ​glances every step he takes; to meet the Red Army half way should be appreciated. It should be borne in mind that a great deal depends on our army command.
An army command must be created of workers and peasants, or else under conditions in which honest officers, not of the landlord class, can comfortably, candidly, work together with us. Then will our army at once gain tenfold strength, and we shall be able firmly to establish our victory. And the average officer must be told once and forever that the victory is ours, sure in any case; not because we ardently wish it—we wished it just as much twenty years ago—but because the course of the civil war has brought about things that way.
XVIII. Why we must conquer.
The struggle is a hand to hand fight. Once it has come to that, we cannot but conquer, and peasants of their own country. This it is that prolongs the war.
I am convinced, comrades, that the lessons pf the last two years will not be lost. The Red Army is gaining strength, the army command is growing more and more perfect. And this being so, it is of immense help in raising the descipline, the fighting quality of the men, assisting the welding of our army which, in the space of a year and a half, has grown as it would have ​taken other armies 25 years to grow. And so under conditions of general impoverishment and ruin, after four and a half years of imperialistic slaughter, we have the right to look brightly into the future. The number of honest commanders will increase, that of Judases, calling themselves Nekliudov, Koltchak, Balachovitch, will melt away. The number of men like the late comrade Nicolayev will increase, for men see that we are true, all the world sees it; the labourers and peasants of the world walk in our footsteps. They see that we, unshod, halfclad, struggle for the right, and the right cannot but conquer. (stormy applause).
Supplement to Comrade G. Zinoviev's Address.
I. Why officers are arrested.
Comrades, it stands to reason that we cannot in this one meeting exhaust one tenth of because there are a thousand times more workers and peasants that landed gentry and bourgeois and educated people, if the whole of them came to oppose us. While the Tsar held his position by deceit and by force, he could saddle worker and peasant Russia and pull the reins to the right or to the left. But now since power has passed into the hands of the working class and peasantry, and the hand to hand struggle has begun, and wall is opposed to ​wall, we may suffer defeat on this or that fromt, we may prolong the war a year or two, but we cannot fall to conquer in the end, because I repeat of the immense majority on our side. And the workers and peasants are apt at learning, they can produce commanders of regiments, brigades and divisions, they can fight and conquer.
Yes, our victory may be delayed by the help of liberal sprinklings of French and English gold, assisted by such traitors as Nekliudov, Koltchak, Yudenitch, Ealachovitch, and the civil war may be protracted; but this war which is ruining Russia, torturing the country. this war is protracted owing to the brutes in human shape who are selling themselves right and left in order to compel Russia to go on fighting, and to those lukewarm ones who, being neither hot nor cold, chew the old stale cud, deal in the old trash, instead of definitely taking their stand on the side of the people, of the workers those burning questions of the day which we are facing; but this is not our last meeting, it is our first. This is why I should consider it preferable to limit myself to general topics. It is Impossible for me to answer all the various notes which lie before me, but I pick out one, which concerns the most painful point and is hardest to answer, because it touches on the most difficult question. One comrade, who does not sign his name, writes: „I beg comrade ​Zinoviev to give a straight answer“ (doubly underscored) „to the question, why Is it that when anything goes wrong, the scapegoats are invariably the officers? Why are they shot, arrested? What Is the meaning of these arrests, and so-forth? You see, comrades, that the question is indeed an acute one, which many might ask where so many officers are assembled. That is why I select it. Yes—and this I declare quite openly—we frequently have to make arrests on a larger scale than we would wish, and of a more or less random character.
One comrade officer who has spoken here to-night mentioned that he himself, though innocent, had suffered four months imprisonment without being examined, and had grown a long beard during that time. He knows whole groups of such officers, who are even now in confinement, though innocent, and says they should not be shot, but released. This does happen pretty frequently, I admit, and I must say—believe me or not as you will—that we know of nothing so depressing, so painful as these arrests. But anyone of you who will carefully consider the conditions in which we are placed, will understand how such things come to pass.
Just call to mind such cases as that of Yaroslavl; a city on the Volga was snatched from us in a day by a few hundred officers, who killed all our comrades, seized the guns, kept the city in their hands a whole fortnight, and ​forced us after bringing up a tremendous artillery force to demolish half of it, as the only way to deliver it; remember that, as is now well known, this was only a link in a whole chain of thoroughly planned operations. Since Yaroslavl had to be seized In order to effect a junction with the troops of the Archangelsk group (and Savinkov and the other generals openly admit that this was their handiwork)—this example alone should be sufficient for you to understand in what abnormal conditions this treacherous officer-group placed us, by such performances as the seizure of Yaroslavl.
Nor was this a solitary case.
You have read of the Moscow conspiracy, when, in sundry military schools, the entire pedagogical staff, all the officers whose duty it is to instruct the cadets, in a body, made it their business to serve Denikin, buying up arms, pyroxiline, systematically attempting to blow up bridges and preparing openly to rise to Denikin's assistance.
You know that at Krasnaya Gorke not one or two detached officers, but the entire staff of the fort, with trifling exceptions, perpetrated the black treasonable act, preparing to surrender it.
Once such cases occur, and not solitary ones either, everybody must see on whom falls the blame, and it falls on those Judases who enter our ranks with the definite purpose of surrendering whole cities, military schools, and forts. ​This is what sometimes compels us to resort to measures which so greatly impede any friendliness between us and honourable officers, whom we so much wish to interest in the Revolution. From the conditions in which we work there is no escape, so long as treason and conspiracy enfold us all around, and they do, this fact cannot be denied!
Wholesale responsibility for that cannot, of course, be cast on the entire officer class, nor do we do so. The way we have been acting for the last two years bears. witness to the fact that we, In principle, do not.
But circumstances frequently oblige us to resort to mass arrests, and it does happen that innocent men stay in prison unexamined for considerable periods. Yes, when trees are felled, chips will fly; there is no way out of it. Still, all that can be done to minimize the evil is being done.
II. Why the Innocent Sometimes have to Suffer.
You will agree that any sensible representative of the Soviet power would prefer to see an officer fighting against the landlord gentry than sitting idle in prison, a burden to the State. To this most painful question I answer openly. candidly, that this cannot be radically altered at this particular moment, not until a radical mass ​change takes place in the officer class, until there are tens of thousands of new officers in the ranks of the Red Army. until traitors get to be as rare a phenomenon as white crows, to be pointed at, despised in their own families, by their own fathers, mothers, sisters, sweet-hearts, wives; until then we must make use of such measures as at present.
The conditions just now are those of the most furious, most desperate struggle; here, in this very city, there are hundreds of spies in the pay of the French and English bourgeoisie. Quite lately, a few days ago, a bomb was thrown at Moscow into a gathering of Party workers, who were discussing their Party affairs; several women were killed, some of whom were with child.
In a red hot atmosphere like this the innocent, naturally, sometimes have to suffer. And a military man, who knows what war is like, should be the last to complain of that, and he should patiently put up with such extra unpleasantness as falls to his share outside of the open war with the White Guards. A military man who is acquainted with the circumstances of warfare, should be the last to accuse us. It is hard to see one's friends, or people one is fond of kept in prison, knowing them to be innocent—desperately hard. I admit the legitimacy of bitter feeling in such cases; but one must make allowance, understand the cause of it. It ​is easy to complain and to criticize, but by no means easy to arrange things properly under such conditions as we live in now—most difficult, under such conditions, to bring the people and officers in close touch with one another. It is like Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nekiforovitch—in Gogol's story—quarreling because one called the other a gander, when all the two needed was a gentle shove from behind towards each other, to be reconciled. No, here is no question of „gander“; it is an historical conflict which has been going on scores of years—a dispute about who is to own the land, the gentry or the peasants, and whose the mills and factories are to be; a conflict waged through several generations.
This is what I have to say on this difficult and painful question.
Ill. The Cadet Nabokov and the French Admiral.
I had in mind to tell the officers issued from the working class and perhaps those of other spheres the following additional fact: Some time ago a document was published, taken from some „Cadet“ papers, in which Nabokov, a member of the Central Committee of the „Cadet“ (Constitutional Democrat) Party tells how he visited a French admiral on the Black Sea, from whom, in the name of his party, he requested assistance in money, food, equipment, ​etc., for Denikin's so-called „Volunteer„ Army, Nabokov describes how the admiral treated him with the utmost contempt—and him an aristocrat and representative of the C. D. Party—insulted him so that on leaving the ship he seriously contemplated drowning himself. You see, comrades, to what extent French generals, hirelings of the French bourgeoisie, despise those Russian White officers—even though nobles, who sell themselves to them.
But even to these White officers I say: Instead of begging and cringing to the French bourgeoisie and its hirelings, and striving for them to despise you like that—deservedly too, for anyone will despise a man who sells his own people, and goes to the French bourgeoisie, begging help to shoot Russian workers and peasants and crawling on his belly before Frenchmen and Englishmen—were it not better, gentlemen, to realize once for all that it is the People who are in power in Russia now, that you can never again see the old-time estates, the old-time palaces; so you had better go on your knees to your own people and beg their forgiveness of your many sins against them, (Applause, Cries of „Bravo! Bravo“),
IV. The Soviet Government is Averse to Petty Vengeance.
To every such officer the Soviet government will say, „there shall be more joy over one ​sinner that repents than over ninety and nine righteous persons“.
Nor are these empty words on our part. When Kerensky was minister there was an engineer Paltchinsky, former Governor-general of this city and province. He lived in the Winter Palace and shot at us to the last days, instituted the state of seige, and was the best fighter under that Government. We imprisoned him. He is a fine engineer, a gifted man. And when he saw that what had happened was a serious thing, an historical revolution, not a tempest in a teapot, he agreed to devote his knowledge and his sklll to the service of Soviet' Russia. He was immediately released by us, and now he is working in Moscow, applying his knowledge for the good of the workers and peasants.
There is no petty vindictiveness among us, for the class of the oppressed, which suffered oppression for hundreds of years, cannot while liberating itself and the world, indulge in petty vengeance. When Gutchkov and Miliukov were ministers, Paltchinsky was what comrade Trotsky is now. Let us imagine for a moment that the Whites had defeated us, would they have released Trotsky? Never. But we released Paltchinsky, we appreciated his knowledge and talents, and gave him an opportunity to apply them usefully.
No one has such respect for knowledge as the workers. We know perfectly well what it ​is to be an educated, well-informed man. Every officer, engineer, every sensible educated person who is willing to serve the workers and peasants, we invite to help us; we do everything that is at all possible, in the present state of general improverishment, to create for such men tolerable conditions of life. That this is so difficult is not our fault, just as it is not our fault if there is so much treason, if we have to resort to arrests. But to every conscious, honest, talented officer, whose breast holds, not clock-work, but a heart, who possesses knowledge, an active mind, we say that he has a chance of utilising his faculties on a wide arena in Workers' and Peasants' Russia. It all amounts to this; and the men of scientific knowledge and the military men should once for all comprehend this.
Military men sometimes object, „Well, and when the war is ended what are you going to do with us then?“ Some even jest about it: „I suppose all military specialists will be collected and drowned“. What narrow-minded people. From the point of view of their particular specialty it might even seem that they would be interested in having the war last as long as possible, since the Soviet government would have no need of them once it was ended. That is too childish a view. Every officer has made a study of something: every officer, as a man of discipline, will be of use to us. In the first ​place our object is not to deliver Russia alone, but with the assistance of our workers and peasants to deliver the world. The international Red Army will grow. Our Red officers and the former regular officers will live to have the great honour of helping in the struggle not alone of the Russian workers and peasants, but of those of France Germany and other countries. (Applause)
There can be no greater honour than that. And does not the French and English bourgeoisie send its sons to Taganrog, Novotcherkask, Odessa, to instruct the Russian wild beasts in the art of fighting Russian workers and peasants? Well, we with far better right will send our best men, that they may show the French and English workers how to build a Red Army, how to overthrow the bourgeoisie and take the power in their hands.
And when war on an international scale will be ended, army men will find a field of work for their hands in economic construction. There is nothing like the army to give a character temper, nothing that so trains self-possession, persistent energy, orderliness. Our Red Army, moreover, differs from other armies in that it is fighting for the abolition of war once and for all, that men may never again fly at each other's throats and destroy another. This is why military specialists, in the time of peaceable reconstruction which will soon be inaugurated, ​will find peaceable accupation, and will in this province also serve as models of discipline. Such are the perspectives which open before every honest man.
You cannot deny that these are high ideals, for which it pays to work, and to give not one life only, but ten lives, if one had them.
This is the work to which we call you, this the road you must travel.
(Long continued applause).
page
English Publications of the Communist International.
| 1. | Capitalist England—Socialist Russia. |
| 2. | Say! What are You? |
| 3. | The Truth about the Allied Intervention in Russia. By Philips Price. |
| 4. | The Work of the Soviets and the Unconfessible War. By a Communist. |
| 5. | The Shame of being a Scab. |
| 6. | Program of the Russian Communist Party. |
| 7. | The All-Russian Union of Workers in the Food Manufacturing Industry. |
| 8. | The Third International to the Workers of all Countries. (Concerning the Polish question). |
| 9. | The Food Policy of the Soviet Government. By A. Svidersky. |
| 10. | Central and Local Authorities. By L. Kamenev. |
| 11. | Program of Socialist Construction. By K. Radek. |
| 12. | Statement of the Peoples Commissariat for Health. |
| 13. | The All Russian Builders' Union. |
| 14. | At the All-Russian Trade Union Congress. A speech by Lenin. |
| 15. | The Trade Unions in Soviet Russia. By A. Lozovsky. |
| 16. | Why I Side with the Social Revolution. By René Marchand. |
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