Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/85

 aid of their army. At the same time both the Tsar and Kerensky (and that means the landowners and the capitalists) were oppressing the working class and the poorest peasantry as much as they could. In the hands of large property owners the army served as a weapon for the division of the world and for the subjection of the poor elements of the population. That is what the army used to be in former times.

How was it possible for the bourgeoisie to make of the workers and peasants (of whom the army is largely composed) a weapon against these very workers and peasants? What enabled the Tsar and Kerensky to do so? Why is it still being done by Wilhelm and Hindenburg and by the German bourgeoisie, who are turning their workers into executioners of the Russian, Finnish, Ukrainian and German revolutionaries? Why were German sailors who revolted against their oppressors shot down by the hand of other German sailors? How is it that the English bourgeoisie is suppressing by means of English soldiers (who are also mostly workers) the rebellion in Ireland, a country oppressed and trodden underfoot by cruel English bankers?

To this question the same answer should be given as to that of how the bourgeoisie manages to retain its power in general. We have seen that this is achieved by means of the perfect organisation of the bourgeoisie. In the army the, power of the bourgeoisie rests on two principles; firstly on the officer corps, consisting of nobles and bourgeois; and secondly on the special training and spiritual murder, i.e., on a bourgeois moulding of the minds of the soldiers. The officer corps on the whole is a purely class institution. An officer is ideally trained for the work of militarism, to inflict brutal corporal punishment on the soldiers and to cruelly mishandle them. Just glance at one of these brave officers of the Guards or at a Prussian dandy with the face of a prize bull-dog. You can see at a glance that like a circus trainer he has been long and persistently learning how to ill-treat and bully and keep the human herd in a state of mortal fear and blind obedience.

You can see that, since such gentlemen are picked and chosen from among the bourgeoisie and nobility and sons of landowners and capitalists, it is quite evident that they will lead the army in quite a definite direction.

And now, look at the soldiers: they enter the army as common men, with no common bond, from different provinces,