Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/87

 Rh "Vesioloic gore—soldatskaia zhizn" ("Gay sorrow, that is a soldier's life"): thus did the soldiers themselves map out their lives. There is another soldier's saying, which is difficult to translate, but which means the same: "Krasnaia nuzhda—soldatskaia sluzhba"—("the soldier's service is a feast of troubles and privations").

In effect, the life of a Russian soldier, though occasionally gay, even rakish and unbridled, was generally full of sorrow, anxiety and terror. This anxiety, this atmosphere of fear and frightfulness, was by no means accidental. It was the main factor in the discipline of the Russian Army. The method of Russian discipline was unmitigated frightfulness, and its aim was to reduce the soldier to absolute obedience. In order to be absolute, obedience must be automatic; and therefore the soldier must learn by way of frightfulness that no compromise is possible. Any order must be executed without delay or questioning—even the order to shoot one's own parents or sisters or brothers. In this country a soldier does his duty, and the better he understands his duty the better he is able to perform it. But the Russian soldier may not even know what duty means. Instead, he has to obey. His docility must be absolute and unswerving. He must not think, still less ask for any explanation. He simply must obey any order. He must not question nor consider, still less criticise the orders of his superior officers. There can be no such thing as a wrong order. "Nachalstvo," i.e., the "authority," is the highest embodiment of wisdom and virtue. Therefore the summit of wisdom and virtue in a soldier is to obey unhesitatingly the commands of the authority. "Nachalstvo," or authority, means every officer or non-commissioned officer; but in practice the lower the rank of an officer the greater was his power. The corporal, the sergeant, and above all, the sergeant-major—or to use his Russo-German name, the "Feldwebel"—he was the highest or rather the All-highest authority. The sergeant or feldwebel did not