Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/27

 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.