Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/84

 72 only to be lost to the community—it was tantamount to going over to the enemy of the people.

In the early days of the modern Russian army, soldiers actually had to be forced into the army. It was like the forcible recruiting of subjugated peoples in a conquered land. And it is only natural that the people were opposed, body and soul, to these recruitings. But even to-day, when conscription has existed in Russia for over half a century, people look upon enlistment as a misfortune or a calamity—still more as a degradation. This is true of the conscripts themselves, as well as of their relations. It applies equally to the town population and to the peasants. And up to the very last day (I mean before the war) the calling-up period, or, as it is called in Russian, "nabor," the levy, was always a time of mourning, not to say of outrages and disorders. The authorities always used to encourage drunkenness at these periods, and the people were glad to treat the recruits, considering that drunkenness would make it easier for them to undergo the disgrace and the calamity of becoming soldiers.

And yet, objectively, a soldier's life might have been regarded by the Russian peasant as rather a pleasant and useful experience. In the army, the young recruit generally had his first impression of townsfolk and town life; and often he obtained a little smattering of knowledge, learning to read and write. On returning to his village a peasant soldier might play the rôle of an experienced "man about town." But, in fact, it was seldom that a "former soldier" came into prominence. His reputation as a soldier excluded him from the trust and esteem of his fellow-peasants. In spite of his experience, a "former soldier" was seldom entrusted with any office in the village commune. All the more frequently did he fill the ranks of the hated village police force (the so-called village guard or "strazhnik"). The police in the towns and the infamous political police or gendarmerie were former soldiers almost to a man.

The Russian workers, the students, and the whole of