Now began the tragedy of Cossack life and the Cossack family in which an insurmountable barrier had arisen between the “elders” and the “men of the front,” destroying their life and rousing the children against their fathers.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
National Units.
In the old Russian Army the national question scarcely existed. Among the soldiery the representatives of the races inhabiting Russia experienced somewhat greater hardships in the service, caused by their ignorance or imperfect knowledge of the Russian language, in which their training was carried on. It was only this ground—the technical difficulties of training—and perhaps that of general roughness and barbarism, but in no case that of racial intolerance, that often led to that friction, which made the position of the alien elements difficult, the more so that, according to the system of mixed drafting, they were generally torn from their native lands; the territorial system of filling the ranks of the Army was considered to be technically irrational and politically—not void of danger. The Little Russian question in particular did not exist at all. The Little Russian speech (outside the limits of official training), songs and music received full recognition and did not rouse in anyone any feeling of separateness, being accepted as Russian, as one’s own. In the Army, with the exception of the Jews, all the other alien elements were absorbed fairly quickly and permanently; the community of the Army was in no way a conductor either for compulsory Russification or for national Chauvinism.
Still less were national differences to be noticed in the community of officers. Qualities and virtues—corporative, military, pertaining to comradeship or simply human, overshadowed or totally obliterated racial barriers. Personally, during my twenty-five years of service before the revolution, it never came into my head to introduce this element into my relations as commander, as colleague, or as comrade. And this was done intuitively, not as the result of certain views and convictions. The national questions which were raised outside the Army, in the political life of the country, interested me, agitated me, were settled by me in one or the other direction, harshly and irreconcilably at times, but always without trespassing on the boundaries of military life.
The Jews occupied a somewhat different position. I shall return to this question later. But it may be said that, with respect to the old Army, this question was of popular rather than of political significance. It cannot be denied that in the Army there was a certain tendency to oppress the Jews, but it was not at all a part of any system, was not inspired from above, but sprang up in the lower strata and in virtue of complex causes, which spread far outside of the life, customs, and mutual relations of the military community.
In any case, the war overthrew all barriers, while the revolution brought with it the repeal, in legislative order, of all religious and national restrictions.
With the beginning of the revolution and the weakening of the Government, a violent centrifugal tendency arose in the borderlands of Russia, and along with it a tendency towards the nationalisation, i.e., the dismemberment, of the Army. Undoubtedly, the need of such dismemberment did not at that time spring from the consciousness of the masses and had no real foundation (I do not speak of the Polish formations). The sole motives for nationalisation then lay in the seeking of the political upper strata of the newly formed groups to create a real support for their demands, and in the feeling of self-preservation which urged the military element to seek in new and prolonged formations a temporary or permanent relief from military operations. Endless national military congresses began, without the permission of the Government and of the High Command. All races suddenly began to speak; the Lithuanians, the Esthonians, the Georgians, the White Russians, the Little Russians, the Mohammedans—demanding the “self-determination” proclaimed—from cultural national autonomy to full independence inclusive, and principally the immediate formation of separate bodies of troops. Finally, more serious results, undoubtedly negative as regards the integrity of the Army, were attained by the Ukrainian, Polish, and partially by the Trans-Caucasian formations. The other attempts were nipped in the bud. It was only during the last days of the existence of the Russian Army, in October, 1917, that General Shcherbatov, seeking to preserve the Roumanian front, began the classification of the Army, on a large scale, according to race—an attempt which ended in complete failure. I must add that one race only made no demand for self-determination with regard to military service—the Jewish. And whenever a proposal was made from any source—in reply to the complaints of the Jews—to organise special Jewish regiments, this proposal roused a storm of indignation among the Jews and in the circles of the Left, and was stigmatised as deliberate provocation.
The Government showed itself markedly opposed to the reorganisation of the Army according to race. In a letter to the Polish Congress (June 1st, 1917) Kerensky expressed the following view: “The great achievement of the liberation of Russia and Poland can be arrived at only under the condition that the organism of the Russian Army is not weakened, that no alterations in its organisation infringe its unity.... The extrusion from it of racial troops ... would, at this difficult moment, tear its body, break its power, and spell ruin both for the revolution and for the freedom of Russia, Poland, and of the other nationalities inhabiting Russia.”