Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/200

 punishments inflicted on the soldiers by their own comrades, having a greater moral effect, discipline has generally improved.

In what concerns internal administration, all the officers whom we questioned, especially Generals Broussiloff, Korniloff, and Nottbeck, did not hide their opinions that the authority of the Soviets, especially since it was limited to certain questions, constituted in their eyes a real advance on the old discipline. The domain in which their influence is most beneficial is the control of internal administration of units, participation in the control of the Commissariat, in the organizing of reliefs, sentry duty, recreation, and in the political education of the soldiers.

In short, it seems that this institution, after having been, during the first days of the Revolution, an instrument of dissolution of established authority, has gradually modified its character, tacitly abdicated from certain of its extreme ambitions, and may be in a fair way not to take the place of the hierarchical discipline, but by controlling it and collaborating with it, to become a useful organ for the maintenance