This so-called discipline was indeed very useful to the autocracy in peace time, because the authorities could always rely on the army. But war was another matter. Russian discipline not only did not train the soldiers for war, but actually destroyed in every soldier and in the army as a whole the instinct and the skill for war. The very obedience which was so great an asset in peace time, when the soldier had to fight against his own people during revolutionary risings—this blind obedience was a grave impediment in war. Certainly in war, too, the soldier's obedience is very necessary. But in war it must be based not on fear but on confidence in the skill and devotedness of the leaders. Blind obedience will not do in war. In war you have to rely on the soldier's ability—you must accustom him to think and to act, not only to obey.
Now fear inevitably creates hatred, and the Russian army was indeed permeated with active hatred. It is really difficult to say whether the officers and non-commissioned officers in the Russian army were more feared or more hated. In peace time fear was all-powerful, but in war hatred was likely to come to the top. In fact, this hatred, so effectively cultivated in the soldiers by the old régime, was only waiting for its opportunity.
That the soldiers would one day take their revenge was a fixed idea in Russia, not only among the general public, but among the officers and even among the soldiers themselves. The officers, as a matter of fact, were in perpetual fear lest at any time the soldiers should rise in revolt. Probably the method of frightfulness was to a large extent determined by this fear of the soldier's revenge. And this revenge was feared most especially in war time. It was believed that the soldiers could easily revenge themselves when on active service. The soldiers often intimated that during war the first shot would do justice to the most hated officer.
It was for this reason that a rapid and panic-stricken exchange of officers between the several regiments
