Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/114

 102 peasants and soldiers. The workers were struggling for political and industrial freedom; the peasants realised in the Revolution their age-long struggle for land. The soldiers rose in revolt against all the cruelty and degradation of barrack life and discipline. They had their own revolution, running parallel with the revolution of the people. Thus it was that the Russian Revolution brought about a definite and complete break between the soldiers and their officers.

It is true that, as soon as the Revolution triumphed, all the officers, from the high Generals to the lowest ranks, recognised the accomplished fact, expressed more or less boisterous delight, and took the oath to the new régime. But the wholesale transition of the officers was a grave misfortune for Russia and for the Russian army. Had the inveterate reactionaries and monarchists among the officers abdicated or been deposed along with the Autocracy, there might have been some hope for the regeneration of the army. But all the reactionary Generals and staffs were left in their places. The Revolution was a failure so far as the army was concerned. It did not eliminate the element of distrust. The old hatred between the officers and the soldiers, the hatred which had undermined the army of the Tsar, was preserved in the army of the Revolution, and was bound to undermine it also. And when the officers, especially the high officers, did join the Revolution, they did so in many cases under such monstrous circumstances that it only served to deepen the cleavage between them and the soldiers by sowing the seeds of further hatred and mistrust. Thus in one town the soldiers brought the high officers of the garrison into an open square and ordered them to take the oath under threat of machine gun fire. The incident would probably have ended in bloodshed but for the intervention of the local Soviet.

The officers in the rear adapted themselves more quickly to the new situation, and in fact many of the reactionary Generals were turned out. But the Generals at the front were more rigid and less pliable. Their