The Red Officers

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Speech at the Military Administration Courses, September 1918

Comrades, I should like first to convey to you a fraternal greeting, and then my impressions, from those armies of ours with whom I have spent the last six weeks, watching from day to day how they grew in strength, solidarity and heroism. Two months ago, comrades, we were a great deal weaker than we are today: our Workers and Peasants’ Red Army has taken an immense step forward. To say nothing of our enemies, there were not a few among our friends who, two months ago, were doubting if we would succeed – in a country exhausted by four years of slaughter, a country around whose neck the noose of the Brest peace had been drawn tight, a country that had not yet eliminated the dreadful heritage of Tsardom and bourgeois rule – in creating a powerful revolutionary army. Well, it turned out that the new trials with which history confronted us engendered new forces. Under the lash of historical necessity and of a new war, a civil war, the Russian working class and peasantry strained every nerve, and we now see how, as a result of this effort, a workers’ and peasants’ Red Army is being built.

The army that fought before Kazan had been created in no more than a few weeks. Before Kazan it showed elements of instability, weakness, criminal deviations. There was the case when the Revolutionary Tribunal, with the approval of the whole army, sentenced to death a regimental commander who, though considering himself a Communist, shamefully deserted his regiment and set off on a steamboat, aiming to get away to Nizhny-Novgorod. In connection with this case the Revolutionary Tribunal said: ‘Cowards and self-seekers in general deserve stern punishment, but those who, while holding posts of command and bearing the lofty title of Communist, behave as runaways and traitors must be punished doubly and trebly.’ And despite its youth, the whole army understood, grasped with its sense of morality the complete justice of this stern, ruthless punishment. The regiment concerned became one of our best, and fought splendidly after that, with genuine courage.

Thus, comrades, in our Red Army, despite the very brief period it has existed, there is already at work in full force that revolutionary consciousness which rallies everything honorable and valiant and throws out everything impure and corrupt. Yet, not long ago, we were being told, on all sides, that we would not succeed in building a disciplined, solid army. Truly, those who talked like that failed in two ways to understand our army. In the first place, with the working class now in power, there is a profound moral basis for the army, and in the second place, there is realisation of this profound moral basis, the fact that we are fighting for the highest aim of mankind: this justifies the sternest, most ruthless measures in relation to those who undermine the foundations of the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army. If the Tsarist generals could establish discipline in the name of interests alien to the working class, we can and must – and this is already taking effect – establish a discipline ten times harder and firmer than theirs, for this is discipline in the name of the interests of the working class.

In military literature – in particular, I read something about this only today in our rather poor and weak journal Voyennoye Dyelo (Military Affairs), which is published by specialists who have evidently not quite understood the spirit and sense of this epoch of war – in military literature the question: ‘drill or education?’ has often been raised. By ‘drill’ was meant the physical education of the soldier, and by ‘education’ the exercising of spiritual influence upon him. Have we rejected drill? Never. We have merely brought more purposefulness into it, driving out, through living necessity, the survivals of barrack tyranny, square-bashing and so on. Drill, as we understand it, means inculcating in the soldier the capacity for operating in a purposeful way his arms, his legs, his sabre and his rifle, and doing all that automatically. A musician cannot become a good musician if he cannot rove his fingers automatically over the keyboard, if he has to seek with his eyes for every separate note. Just as the musician must lay his finger automatically on each key as he needs it, so must the soldier automatically operate his body and his weapon with the maximum productivity, in the interests of the military task assigned to him, just as this is achieved in industrial production, through the mechanisation of movements. The greater the automatism of his technique, the more freely will his mind work, the easier will it be for him to find his bearings, the better will he be able to estimate danger and find cover – the greater will be his freedom for military creativity. Drill, that is, the inculcation of automatism in the soldier, does not stand in contradiction to education.

But education is a different sphere, and here the military specialists do not understand – I am not talking, of course, about all the specialists: there are some among them whose eyes the revolution has opened – that the education we have in mind is profoundly different from, and diametrically opposite to, the education of the past epoch. What was meant by the education of the soldier in the epoch of Tsardom, and what is meant by this in Germany and France today? Educating the soldier on behalf of the propertied class: inculcating in him spiritual slavery and subordination, causing him not to under stand his own interests, the interests of his class and of humanity in general. Achieving this under the conditions of capitalist society is a little difficult, and that is why, in all those countries, the education of the soldiers is such a complicated, serious, delicate task. Where religion lends its aid the task is easier, but in proportion as criticism takes hold of the soldier’s consciousness, and he no longer submits blindly to whatever his priest tells him, it becomes ever harder for the propertied class to instil in the soldier masses the idea of the necessity of submission, that is, to educate them to serve purposes that are against their own interests. Only our army, the one in which you, comrades, are serving, is, for the first time in the history of the world, nothing but the armed hand of the working class and the poor peasants. Consequently, for us, educating the soldier means showing him that he is serving himself, in the shape of his class and his posterity. Our education is therefore incomparably easier, more honest, simpler, and, in that sense, Comrade Red officers, your task includes, besides a military mission, a great moral and cultural mission as well. You will be able to fulfil your task provided that every soldier feels, recognises, sees and senses that you are flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. The fact that you belong to the working classes, your spiritual bond with the worker and peasant masses, does not, of course, solve everything, and much room is left free for individual evaluations. Ivanov may be brave, whereas Petrov is not brave enough. Woe to that officer regarding whose courage a spark of doubt is struck in the soldier’s mind: woe to him, he is ruined in the consciousness of the masses, ruined for military work. Your first military quality is the same as your first revolutionary quality – selfless courage in face of any and every danger. Hold your head proudly high: that is the behest for every warrior. Nor is that all, comrades. You must be, and you will be – for this is your calling which you have entered freely – not courageous only: you must struggle steadily to enlarge your knowledge, experience and skill as leaders of the Red Army. I have seen in battle, in action, excellent units which did not feel that they were being directed by a steady, technically competent hand. When, at a critical moment, they notice that their leader hesitates, woe to that officer, and woe to that unit! A unit must know at every moment, and especially at the moment of battle, that it is being guided by steadfast thought, a clear eye and a firm hand, and if that hand is sometimes severe, the conscious mass of the soldiers will not complain. They will understand the need for this, in the common interest: they will know that they are fighting for the cause of their class and that for this the fighting capacity of a military unit is an essential condition.

The second behest for every Red Officer is to ensure the unity and growth of the army. You are called proletarian officers. In bourgeois society the word ‘proletarian’ had a certain nuance which cannot and will not apply to you. You know that when people say: ‘he lives like a proletarian’, it means: ‘he lives badly’; that when they say: ‘he lives in a proletarian flat’, it means, ‘in a poor sort of flat’; that when they say: ‘he eats a proletarian meal’, it means a scanty meal. But the words ‘proletarian officer’ must not be translated as signifying ‘bad officer’. A ‘proletarian officer’ must signify a first-class Officer, who is a model of courage, firmness, knowledge, and selfless devotion to the cause of the Soviet land. That is what being a proletarian officer means. Thanks to Tsardom and the old army, the word ‘officer’ became discredited with us and was relegated to the archives, but I think that you will renew and revive it, fining it with a new content. I do not doubt that the soldier masses themselves will renew and revive this word, and when you come among them – you, new men filled with a new spirit – they will hail you as ‘our Red worker-and-peasant officers’.

Against the background of the military tasks of the revolution, your task, comrades, like that of the Red Army, is truly immense and rewarding in the highest degree. When the Germans crushed us at Brest-Litovsk it seemed as though there was no way out. They cut us into pieces, separated our sister the Ukraine from her sister Great Russia, and trampled on Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic lands, while in Finland they drowned the proletariat in blood – and then, after that, when we, bled white, were healing our wounds, the Anglo-French and Japano-American predators struck their claws into the North and East. It seemed as though there was no way out. But there is! The Nemesis of history, that is, the goddess of justice, who in the present historical period is embodied in the revolutionary consciousness of the worker masses of the whole world, was and is with us. It seemed that we had been destroyed, crushed by the violence of Germany, but after only a few months Bulgaria broke away from Germany, now Turkey is following Bulgaria, and there is a ferment in Austria-Hungary: within a few weeks or days the Austrian monarch will be brought to his knees Germany itself is isolated, there is discontent and ferment in that country, and the German Kaiser, who always used to speak of ‘Unser alter Gott’, that is, ‘our old (German) God’, and maintained the closest friendship with him, has now begun to speak of the need to bring the German people into closer participation in affairs of government. Wilhelm talks as Nicholas talked in the first days of the February revolution, but he will have to talk a different language yet, or else will find himself being talked to differently. History is accomplishing, before our eyes, a rapid turn. Revolution is raising its flag in Bulgaria, where, we learn from the newspapers, a Soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies has been formed. The German press writes that the blame for the surrender of Bulgaria lies not with the military situation but with the idea of Bolshevism, which has taken hold not only of the masses but also of the Bulgarian army. ‘The idea of Bolshevism’ – that means that everywhere the hatred and indignation of the working people is rising against the dishonorable bourgeois slaughter into which they were dragged by their propertied classes. We foretold this and based our policy upon it, and at that time we were accused of having made a mistake, since we were obliged to sign the thrice burdensome and shameful peace of Brest. We said: ‘We shall have to suffer only for a time: give us time, and we will kindle the flame of our revolution in the hearts of the peoples of Germany and Austria-Hungary – and the Ukraine, Poland, Finland and the Baltic lands will be free.’ Naturally, the fools and flay-flints of the French and British Governments rub their hands with glee, thinking that because the masses have been weakened, it will be possible to finish Russia off. They are mistaken. To each one his turn: after Russia, Bulgaria, after Bulgaria, Turkey and then Austria-Hungary, after Austria-Hungary, Germany – and after Germany, and simultaneously with Germany, will come France, Britain and other countries. To each his turn, and from this we forecast with complete confidence that the weakening of German militarism will mean not only revolution in Germany but also revolution in France, Britain, the United States and Japan. We now have more allies than enemies in the world, and, just because of that, we need in this transitional period to prevent our enemies from dealing us a mortal blow. Here lies the fundamental task of the Soviet Republic, of the Red Army, and of you, its commanders. You know that a dying insect can sometimes sting fatally, and so, in order that dying imperialism, to East or West, shall not deal us a cruel blow, we need to be on the alert, we need to be strong and firm – and this applies especially to you, for you, comrades, form part of the skeleton of the workers and peasants’ Red Army, part of its backbone, and the whole organism is held up by the backbone. If the backbone is weak, the organism will not function: you must be that firm backbone on which the musculature of the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army depends, you must strengthen the cause of the international revolution by strengthening your spirit with military exercises, with your bond with the Red Army, with its affairs, with awareness that there is not and has never been a cause higher than the one that you serve. That is your first duty!

Today, when you look towards the Volga and the Urals, you can say with complete satisfaction: we have an army, it is taking shape and growing stronger, and before Kazan it smashed the officers’ battalions, which consisted entirely of officers of the old army. On the enemy’s side, disintegration and collapse, but on our side, in the Red Army – enhanced morale, self-knowledge and self-confidence.

But we are sometimes short of commanding personnel, and it is you who are called upon to fill that gap, to lead our Red Army units. I bring you a fraternal greeting and to each one I mentally stretch out my hand and say: ‘Welcome, Red proletarian officers, to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army! To you, Red officers, and to our Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, and to our Soviet Russia, which we love and for which we are all ready to lay down our lives and to shed our blood to the last drop, to our Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Russia – Hurrah!’