Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/85

 Rh the intelligentsia hated the army consciously as the instrument of oppression and the tool of the autocracy. On their part, it was a frank and unsparing animosity, a glowing hatred. The broad masses of the people certainly could not share this animosity—and yet the fear of the army and the dislike of a soldier's life were even greater among simple people. It was the blind fear of a primitive man before a gigantic machine. The very mechanical nature of the army terrified the peasants. A soldier has no soul, no individuality. In the army there are no more Ivans, Peters, or Nicolas—there are only soldier parts of a machine which hems them in and crushes their individuality.

To be conscripted was almost the same as to be put into prison. The one and the other were God's punishment for one's sins. To be conscripted was to be lost not only bodily but even more mentally. So it was that women wept in the streets before a recruiting office almost as bitterly as at a funeral. In the National Museum at Petrograd there is exhibited a famous picture by Savitzky, representing the farewell to a recruit at the railway station. I fancy that during all these years of war there has never been at Victoria Station a scene even approximately suggesting that classical farewell to a Russian recruit in peace time.

I will not attempt to explain this dislike and fear of the army in Russia. I believe it to be an indication of the native pacificism of the Russian people: it may be something more complex. But I am concerned to point out the fact that the Russian army was never an object of popularity, affection or esteem to the Russian people. It was always only tolerated as an evil.

Let me make this clear by quoting a few popular proverbs and folk sayings:—

V rekruchinu—shto v mogilu.

Called up is buried.

Soldat domoi pishet, pominat' velit.

A soldier writes home, asking prayers for his soul.