Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia

by Paul Dukes

Every man of the Red army is supposed to have taken the following oath:

“I, a member of a labouring people and citizen of the Soviet Republic, assume the name of warrior of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Army. Before the labouring classes of Russia and of the whole world I pledge myself to bear this title with honour, conscientiously to study the science of war, and as the apple of my eye to defend civil and military property from spoliation and pillage. I pledge myself strictly and unswervingly to observe revolutionary discipline and perform unhesitatingly all orders of the commanders appointed by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. I pledge myself to refrain and to restrain my comrades from any action that may stain and lower the dignity of a citizen of the Soviet Republic, and to direct my best efforts to its sole object, the emancipation of all workers. I pledge myself at the first call of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to defend the Soviet Republic from all dangers and assault on the part of her foes, and to spare neither my energies nor life in the struggle for the Russian Soviet Republic, for the cause of Socialism and the fraternity of peoples. If with evil intent I infringe this my solemn oath may my lot be universal contempt and may I fall a victim to the ruthless arm of revolutionary law.”

Very few Red army men have any recollection of having taken this oath, which is reserved for officers or for propagandist purposes. If it is taken by the common soldiers at all it is read out to whole battalions at a time and they are told when to raise their hands.

The method of administering justice followed by the Revolutionary Tribunals is primitive. The judges are guided by no rules, instructions, or laws, but solely by what is known as “revolutionary conscience.” The fact that the judges are often illiterate does not affect the performance of their functions, for since none but ardent Communists are admitted to these posts, their revolutionary consciences must ipso facto always be clear.

The malpractices of these courts reached such a pitch that late in 1920 the Bolsheviks, after abolishing all jurisprudence at the universities, were actually combing out from the ranks of the army all who had technical knowledge of Tsarist law, offering them posts as legal “specialists,” as had already been done with military, industrial, and agricultural experts.

The Bolsheviks discriminate minutely between regiments, which are classed as reliable, semi-reliable, and doubtful. The backbone of the army is composed of regiments which consist purely of convinced Communists. These units, called by such names as the “Iron Regiment,” the “Death Regiment,” the “Trotzky Regiment,” etc., have acted up to their names and fight with desperate ferocity. Reliance is also placed in non-Russian regiments, Lettish, Bashkir, Chinese troops, etc., though their numbers are not large. The total number of Communists being exceedingly small, they are divided up and distributed amongst the remaining regiments in little groups called “cells.” The size of a “cell” averages about ten per cent. of the regimental strength. It is this political organization of the Red army for purposes of propaganda and political control which is its most interesting feature, distinguishing it from all other armies. Isolated as the soldiers are from their homes, unhabituated in many cases by nearly seven years of war from normal occupations, and visibly better provisioned than civilians, it is felt that the peasant will be most susceptible to Communist propaganda under military conditions.

The system of political control is as follows. Side by side with the hierarchy of military officers there exists a corresponding hierarchy of members of the Communist Party, small numerically, but endowed with far-reaching powers of supervision. These branches of the Communist Party extend their tentacles to the smallest unit of the army, and not a single soldier is exempt from the omnipresent Communist eye. The responsible Communist official in a regiment is called the Commissar, the others are called “political workers,” and constitute the “cell.” In my own unit, numbering nearly 200 men, there were never more than half-a-dozen Communists or “political workers,” and they were regarded with hatred and disgust by the others. Their chief duty obviously was to eavesdrop and report suspicious remarks, but their efforts were crowned with no great success because the commissar, to whom the Communists reported, was himself a sham Communist and a personal friend of my commander.

In other regiments in Petrograd with which I was in touch it was different. I particularly remember one commissar, formerly a locksmith by trade. He had had an elementary education and was distinguished by a strange combination of three marked traits: he was an ardent Communist, he was conspicuously honest, and he was an inveterate toper. I will refer to him as Comrade Morozov. Knowing that drunkenness was scheduled as a “crime unworthy of a Communist,” Morozov tried to cure himself of it, a feat which should not have been difficult considering that vodka had been almost unobtainable ever since the Tsar prohibited its production and sale at the beginning of the Great War. But Morozov nevertheless fell to vodka every time there was a chance. On the occasion of the wedding of a friend of his who was a speculator (and a genuine speculator) in foodstuffs, he invited two or three regimental companions, one of whom I knew well, to the feast. Although Petrograd was starving, there was such an abundance of good things at this repast and such a variety of wines and spirits, extracted from cellars known only to superior “speculators” who supplied important people like commissars, that it lasted not only one night, but was continued on the morrow. Morozov disappeared from his regiment for three whole days and would undoubtedly have lost his post and, in the event of the full truth leaking out, have been shot, had not his friends sworn he had had an accident.

Yet Morozov could not have been bribed by money, and would have conscientiously exposed any “speculator” he found in his regiment. He was thoroughly contrite after the episode of the marriage feast. But it was not the wanton waste of foodstuffs that stirred his conscience, nor his connivance and participation in the revels of a “speculator,” but the fact that he had failed in his duty to his regiment and had only saved his skin by dissembling. His sense of fairness was remarkable for a Communist. At the elections to the Petrograd Soviet for which he was candidate for his regiment, he not only permitted but positively insisted that the voting should be by secret ballot—the only case of secret voting that I heard of. The result was that he was genuinely elected by a large majority, for apart from this quite unusual fairness he was fond of his soldiers and consequently popular. His intelligence was rudimentary and may be described as crudely locksmithian. An eddy of fortune had swept him to his present pinnacle of power, and judging others by himself he imagined the soviet régime was doing for everyone what it had done for him. Possessing plenty of heart but a weak head, he found considerable difficulty in reconciling the ruthless attitude of the Communists toward the people with his own more warm-hearted inclinations, but the usual argument served to stifle any inner questionings—namely, that since the Communists alone were right, all dissentients must be “enemies of the State” and he was in duty bound to treat them as such.

During the six or eight weeks that I had the opportunity to study Morozov after his appointment as regimental commissar, a perceptible change came over him. He grew suspicious and less frank and outspoken. Though he would scarcely have been able to formulate his thoughts in words, it was clear that the severity with which any criticism, even by Communists, of political commands from above was suppressed, and the rigid enforcement of iron discipline, within and without the party, differed greatly from the prospect of proletarian brotherhood which he had pictured to himself. At the same time he could only escape from these shackles by becoming an “enemy of the State,” and finally he, like all Communists, attributed the non-realization of his dreams to the insidious machinations of the scapegoats designated by his superiors, the non-Bolshevist Socialists, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who must be exterminated wholesale.