Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/51

 Zinoviev to give a straight answer“ (doubly underscored) „to the question, why Is it that when anything goes wrong, the scapegoats are invariably the officers? Why are they shot, arrested? What Is the meaning of these arrests, and so-forth? You see, comrades, that the question is indeed an acute one, which many might ask where so many officers are assembled. That is why I select it. Yes—and this I declare quite openly—we frequently have to make arrests on a larger scale than we would wish, and of a more or less random character.

One comrade officer who has spoken here to-night mentioned that he himself, though innocent, had suffered four months imprisonment without being examined, and had grown a long beard during that time. He knows whole groups of such officers, who are even now in confinement, though innocent, and says they should not be shot, but released. This does happen pretty frequently, I admit, and I must say—believe me or not as you will—that we know of nothing so depressing, so painful as these arrests. But anyone of you who will carefully consider the conditions in which we are placed, will understand how such things come to pass.

Just call to mind such cases as that of Yaroslavl; a city on the Volga was snatched from us in a day by a few hundred officers, who killed all our comrades, seized the guns, kept the city in their hands a whole fortnight, and