Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/24

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hundred thousand officers, at a rough estimate, about one hundred thousand (I am referring to the officers on the old officers' lists) are numbered in the ranks of the Red Army; and of these an immense majority are serving in the Red Army not from fear but for conscientious motives; about two hundred thousand scattered all over Russia, both Soviet Russia and the portion seized by the White Guards, are neither one thing or the other, and try in every way to escape the civil war, or remain outside of it all. Then something like two hundred thousand are to be found in the ranks of our adversaries, „White Guards“ and landed gentry (front and rear), and are fighting against the workers, and peasants.

You can see from the approximate figures that the officer class as it is now is not a compact, homogeneous body, but falls into various strata. And when I hear military specialists, officers, remark that officer-landlords should not be confounded with plain officers, I say that they are right. Yes, we must keep in view the fact that there are „officer-landlords“ and „plain officers“. The officer-landlord defends his privileges; he wants at any cost his thousand dessiatins of land (about 3,000 acres); he wants to preserve his orchard, his noble family's home-nest; the other former officer received under the Tsar not quite 100 roubles a month salary, lived poorly, came from the sphere of Govern-