A Herzen Reader

Or perhaps state wisdom and an understanding of Rus will be instilled in him by Zinoviev?⁷ Where did he become a teacher and why is he more able than fifty. or even five hundred other battalion commanders and all sorts of generals who give orders in a hoarse voice and educate soldiers with a rod? We know of one virtue of his, a tender love for his brother, whom he removed as supervisor of an asylum and set up as a trustee of the Kharkov district, defending him against the right-wing students. But these family virtues, valued in Arcadia, are matched by crimes in government circles. Fi­nally, even if Zinoviev were as educated as Zakrevsky, an orator like Panin, with a clear conscience like Rostovtsev, and chaste like Butkov,⁸ wouldn't it be possible to find instead the kind of people pushed aside by him and the intrigue of the Black Cabinet—who are Russian, educated, love their country, and do not wear epaulets?

Epaulets are a grand thing, and a military uniform, like a monk's cassock, cuts a person off from other people; neither a monk nor a soldier are our equal and that is why they are set off from us. Both are incomplete people, people in an exceptional position. One has his arms always folded like a corpse, while the other has them always raised like a fighter. Neither death nor murder constitute life's best moments.

The title of Russian tsar is not a military rank. It is time to give up the barbaric thought of conquests, bloody trophies, cities taken by storm, ru­ined villages, trampled harvests—what kind of daydreams are Nimrod and Attila? The time has passed for scourges of mankind like Charles XII and

Napoleon. All that Russia needs is based on peace and is possible in peace­time. Russia thirsts for internal changes, it needs new civil and economic development, and, even without war, the military hinders both these goals. Troops mean destruction, violence, and oppression, and they are founded on silent discipline; that is why a soldier is harmful to the civic order, be­cause he makes no judgments, and the sense of responsibility that distin­guishes a man from an animal has been taken away from him.

Teach your son to wear a suit and enroll him in the civil service and you will be doing him a great favor. Occupy his mind with something nobler than an endless game of soldiers; the classroom of the heir to the throne should not resemble a corps de garde. This is a peculiarity ofPrussian princes and other petty German princelings. The royal house of England seems to be no worse than others, so why does the Prince of Wales, instead of learn­ing about the Horse Guards or the Royal Blues or the Coldstream Guards, sit with a microscope and study zoology?

With deep distress we hear stories of how a cadet is sent to the heir for them to play war in the halls of the Winter Palace. a game of Circassians and Russians. What shallowness, what poverty of interests, what monot­ony. and along with that, what moral harm! Did you ever think what that game means, what it represents. what is the reason for the rifle, bayonet, saber, why these bivouacs, for which the servant lights a spirit lamp on the floor instead of a campfire? This entire game represents the misfortune of battle, that is, wholesale killing and the triumph of brute strength. there's just one thing missing—blood up to the knees, the groans of the wounded, piles of corpses, and the savage cries of the victors. What kind of children's game is this, what kind of dress rehearsal for inhumanity or senseless behav­ior when it degenerates to the level of a corporal? [. . .]

Do not think that—carried away by sentimentalism—we wish to say that military science and military craft are useless for the heir to the throne. No! The sad necessity that in time of peace one must be ready to repel an enemy makes military organization necessary. In preparing to be head of state, the heir must know the military part of his responsibilities, but as one part; financial and civic questions, as well as judicial and social issues, have a greater right to be understood well by him.

Is it not sad to see the grand dukes learning the details of each regi­ment's uniform, all the secrets of handling a rifle, and how to command a platoon and a battalion, but not about civilian work, or the limits of vari­ous powers, or the economic state of the various parts of Russia, and they remain alien to Russian literature and those contemporary questions that shake the world and make the entire human race tremble. Ask any one of them and you will see whether or not we are correct. But why even ask?

Look at how barren their lives are, how useless is their wandering about for Russia. one travels to a stud farm, a second to look at the walls of some citadel, and the third to see the fifth or the fifteenth division.