The Russian Revolution полностью

The other, no less weighty consideration had to do with internal security. Since the early eighteenth century, the Russian army was regularly employed in quelling popular disorders. Professional officers intensely disliked such work, considering it demeaning, but the regime had no choice in the matter since the police and gendarmes were inadequate to the task. During periods of widespread civil disturbances, the army was regularly employed for this purpose: in 1903, one-third of the infantry and two-thirds of the cavalry stationed in European Russia engaged in repressive action.† Furthermore, the government frequently appointed officers as governors-general in areas prone to violence. The government welcomed retired officers in the civil service, offering them equivalent chin and precedence over regular bureaucrats. While the security police concentrated on preventing sedition, the military was the monarchy’s main instrument of repression.

To ensure the loyalty of the armed forces, the authorities distributed non-Slavic inductees in such a manner that at least 75 percent of the troops in every unit were “Russians”—i.e., Great Russians, Ukrainians, or Belorussians. In the officer corps, the proportion of the East Slavic component was maintained at 80–85 percent.⁷⁴

The officer corps, 42,000 men strong in 1900, was a professional body in many ways isolated from society at large.⁷⁵ This is not to say that it was “feudal” or aristocratic, as it is often pictured. The military reforms carried out after the Crimean War had as one of their objectives opening the ranks of the officer corps to commoners; to this end, education was given as much weight in promotion as social origin. At the end of the century, only one-half of the officers on active duty were hereditary nobles,⁷⁶ a high proportion of them sons of officers and bureaucrats. Even so, there remained a certain distinction between officers of high social standing, often serving in elite Guard Regiments, and the rest—a distinction which was to play a not insignificant role in the Revolution and Civil War.

A commission required a course of training in a military school. These were of two kinds. The more prestigious Military Academies (Voennye Uchilishcha) enrolled graduates of secondary schools, usually Cadet Schools, who planned on becoming professional officers. They were taught by civilian instructors on the model of the so-called Realgimnaziia, which followed a liberal arts curriculum. Upon completion of their studies, graduates received commissions. The Iunker Academies (Iunkerskie Uchilishcha) had nothing in common with Prussian Junkers, enrolling mostly students of plebeian origin who, as a rule, had not completed secondary schooling, either for lack of money or because they could not cope with the classical-language requirements of Russian gymnasia. They admitted pupils of all social estates and religious affiliations except for Jews.* The program of study in these institutions was shorter (two years), and their graduates still had to undergo a stint as warrant officers before becoming eligible for a commission. The majority of the officers on active duty in 1900—two-thirds by one estimate, three-quarters by another—were products of the Iunker Academies; in October 1917 they would prove themselves the staunchest defenders of democracy. The upper grades of the service, however, were reserved for alumni of the Military Academies.

The military uniform carried little prestige in Russia. Salaries were too low to permit officers who had no independent means to aspire to a gentleman’s life: with a monthly wage of 41.25 rubles, an infantry second lieutenant earned not much more than a skilled worker. Officers of field rank could barely make ends meet or even feed themselves properly.⁷⁷ Foreign observers were struck by the lack of a sense of “honor” among Russian officers and their willingness to tolerate abuse from superiors.

The most prestigious service was with the Guard Regiments, commissions in which required social standing as well as independent income.⁷⁸ Nearly all the officers serving in the Guards were hereditary nobles: their system of cooptation kept out undesirables. Guard officers billeted in comfortable quarters in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Warsaw enjoyed certain privileges, among them accelerated promotion. These, however, were gradually whittled down, and abolished by the time World War I broke out.