Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/46

 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.

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.