Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/5



(A lecture delivered by Comrade C. Zinoviev on October, 1919. to the assembly of military specialists. About 3000 officers were present.)

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.