Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/30

 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.

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.