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comfortably sitting at a table with a hissing samovar before him, amusing himself by watching the cossacks beat the peasants; and that because the miserable peasants wanted to shake off the yoke of the landlords, and for the first time had risen against them—ah! What a pretty picture! But you must admit that that is not exactly „keeping out of politics“!
No, the army did not keep out of politics! The army carried out the politics of Stolypin and the land-owners, who, by all sorts of tricks and manipulations, schemed to remain masters of that army—who knew how to make peasants beat other peasants. A monstrous system of lies and violence was created in order to set part of the workers and peasants against the people, to make them act, lay hands on their own fathers and brothers, and beat the people of their own villages.
Lastly you re member the revolution of 1905, stifled in the blood of our workers by the efforts of Generals Dubassov, Rennenkampf, Mina and others; punitive detachments ranged Siberia and indeed all Russia, and the Semionov regiment crushed the rising in Moscow, flooding with blood the city squares and suburbs. Who did that? Our own army did it, our peasants, partly perhaps our working men. Did they at that moment stand outside of politics? Alas, they were settling the fate of the entire revolution of 1905; the army was carrying out the
