Jan Stanislaw Berson

The Face of the Red Army

Originally published in: Sowieckie zbrojenia moralne, Warszawa 1937

Until recently, the Red Army was known very little outside its borders. Perhaps the only exception in this respect was Germany, which between 1922 and 1932 established very close cooperation between the Reichswehr and the Red Army, about which, among other things, the late General von Seeckt1 could say a great deal. Around the beginning of 1932, the non-Bolshevik world took a somewhat more lively interest in this army from a strictly professional military point of view. The Soviet side reacted rather favourably to this interest, rightly seeing great advantages in it for USSR foreign policy. This was entirely understandable especially when the peacetime role of the army no longer consisted of training reserves and guard duty. In all regimes, the military has come to play a very prominent political role – despite the principle of the “apolitical” nature of the military in “bourgeois” states, a principle which, even on this side of the ideological barricades, has now been abandoned by countries organised according to a mono-party system, and is only maintained in countries that adhere to a more or less truncated democratic liberalism.

Thus, when it comes to the role of the military in domestic politics, representing the quintessential raison d’état, i.e. the historic mission of a nation in a given era, it has become (peculiarly in countries newly created or reborn after the world war) an essential school of civic education.

In the field of foreign policy, the army in peacetime constitutes “coverage” for the speeches of the foreign policy leadership of a country in exactly the same way as the stock of gold in the bank constitutes the coverage for the banknotes in circulation.

A citizen does not demand immediate exchange of every banknote for gold, but he must know that he can do so at any time and that the necessary stock of gold exists. The moment they start to doubt this, the country’s economic and psychological disorder begins.

Also, the foreign minister of a country – even the best prepared for war – always prefers to defend the interests of his country by peaceful means, especially when, after the last war, it became apparent (which is quite clearly now the case) that even the greatest and bloodiest victory lasts at most several years or so. But in order to defend one’s position peacefully, it is necessary to have “coverage” in the form of an army, and this “coverage” must be of sufficient quantity and quality not to expose oneself to disrespect in the realm of world politics, and thus to the possibility of... involuntary recourse to arms.

Thus, in the spring of 1932, as the threat from Japan began to take concrete shape, the Soviets began to advertise their military strength to foreign agents (internally, military propaganda had not ceased for a moment since the outbreak of the revolution). The 1932 May Day parade was the first large-scale organised demonstration of the Soviet army’s mechanisation progress, held simultaneously in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev, Tiflis and Khabarovsk. Since then, such revues have been held twice a year (on 1 May and 7 November - the anniversary of the Bolshevik coup) and each time both qualitative and quantitative armament progress has been demonstrated. The Red Army’s most recent “publicity” venture was the great manoeuvres held last autumn in Belarus and Soviet Ukraine with “airborne landings” by parachute, which were intended to make a very powerful impression on foreign observers.

A verbal illustration of these demonstrations can be found in almost all the public speeches of Soviet statesmen, and peculiarly in the great assemblies of party organisations (the 17th Congress of the Communist Party in 1934) or of state organisations (the 7th Congress of Soviets in 1935 and the 8th Extraordinary Congress of Soviets in December 1936).

Thus, as far as the strictly professional side is concerned, the non-Bolshevik world is quite abundantly informed about the Red Army by the Soviet side, which does not attempt to conceal many things – even from its possible adversaries in the next few years, as can be seen, for example, from the exchange of “trainees” with Japan that still existed in 1935...

On the other hand, we know little about the moral face of the Red Army, and even a long stay in the Soviets by no means facilitates observations in this field, since direct contacts with the military world are extremely rare and very casual. In recent years, as far as the Polish side was concerned, perhaps the only occasions of this kind were exchanges of visits between the air force and navy of the two countries.

However, contrary to some claims, the Red Army is by no means “detached from its society” but, quite the opposite, is very closely linked to it, much more so than in several “bourgeois” countries.

What is more, I have all the data to state categorically that the Red Army is probably the only institution in the USSR which enjoys widespread and probably unreserved popularity among the entire Soviet society, which is otherwise extremely far from being uniformly enthusiastic about other areas and phenomena in the life of its motherland, as well as about the soon-to-be official “liquidation of social classes”.

Polish readers, and particularly military readers, are not the readers of “Płomyk”, and revealing this (as opposed to “Płomyk”) completely non-one-sided truth will certainly not harm anyone. I would consider concealing it a misconduct not only from the point of view of journalistic duty, but also from the point of view of soldierly duty.

What our eastern neighbour has succeeded in doing is no less important to us than its failures, because regardless of how our relations with this country will turn out in the future – we will have to draw, sooner or later, all the conclusions beneficial for us, both from the successes and the failures of this great historical experiment. The same reasoning applies to our neighbours to the west, even though the German experiment is far less radical from a social and economic point of view.

Well, Soviet society loves its army very much. For any unpleasant actions against this society the army is never used. The numerous punitive expeditions between 1932 and 1933, aimed against the countryside due to the agricultural sabotage of the time, were carried out exclusively by the armies of the GPU (now the armies of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). The population makes a fine distinction between the Red Army and the GPU troops, which of course are excluded from popularity and are treated by contemporary public opinion in the USSR in exactly the same way as the gendarmerie corps under the tsar.

But even the most underprivileged social stratum in the Soviets until recently, namely the peasants – only came into contact with the army in a friendly atmosphere; the army would either come to a given “kolkhoz” to help with the harvest, or some technical department would refurbish the collective’s agricultural machinery.

Another thing is, that the reasons for the Red Army’s popularity vary – among different factions of Soviet society.

The vast majority of this society, made up of Russian patriots who love their homeland regardless of its system and regardless of all the material shortcomings and moral tragedies experienced since 1917, sees in the Red Army – first and foremost – a new Russian army, in fact superior in every respect to the tsarist one.

A section of the population which sincerely adheres to communist principles (not excluding the “Trotskyists” and other “nodists”) – sees in its army an “army of the international revolution” – by the way, according to the wording of the Soviet “articles of war”.

Finally, the ruling regime rightly sees it as its main support. This is how to explain the constantly increasing percentage of Communist Party members in the Soviet army, recently reaching up to one hundred percent in the technical and chemical divisions, in the armoured weapons and among the higher commanders. This percentage, undoubtedly somewhat diluted after the increase in the Soviet army’s numbers from nine hundred thousand to one million five hundred thousand over the past year – testifies, of course, not so much to loyalty to communist ideals, as to total devotion of the armed forces to the regime now in power.

This is further completely understandable: the Red Army has every reason to be grateful, both to its people and to its rulers.

It should not be forgotten that it was superbly nourished, clothed and supplied with everything, peculiarly in the field of armaments, as well as with downright luxurious cultural and educational facilities during years of truly hobbled poverty and famine.

Soviet spending on the military – calculated per head of population, and not as a percentage of the overall economic budget under the conditions then prevailing – is undoubtedly the highest in the world. And a fact is that it does not meet with the slightest murmuring even from the “class enemies” (i.e., opponents of Stalin’s regime – regardless of origin and occupation). This deserves to be particularly emphasised, all the more so because the peasantry and the lower-paid categories of labourers and white-collar workers – generally make almost no secret (in private conversations, of course) of their very considerable dissatisfaction with their lot and the prevailing social conditions.

The Soviet system, from the military point of view, presents for the time being theoretically – because the test of life will be the war – very great advantages both materially and morally.

As far as the material side is concerned – we are witnessing the fact that the Soviets, apart from the break for the “NEP” (1921-1928), are carrying out a classic “war economy” (development of strictly war industry, requisitions in kind, etc.), surpassing in the results other states with “totalist” regimes – in which “totalism” does not cover the whole of economic life.

From the moral point of view, it must be realised that the economic system of the USSR excludes the possibility, extremely painful for the fighting soldier, of individual units becoming rich on military supplies, prevents the spread of war profiteering and hooliganism in the rear – although “petty speculation” is likely to undoubtedly exist and army supplies are likely to seriously fail, especially in the event of a more protracted war – and this in the absence of organisational sense, which has so far victoriously thwarted the most splendid projects of “planned economy”. However, compared to other areas – the military is a mechanism in the Soviets that functions almost without jamming.

This is how these matters look during peace. The mental side of the Soviet army during the war – despite theoretically favourable indications – can undergo great changes, depending on the mood of the mobilised masses of people, who have every reason for extreme discontent. The outward symptoms of this discontent have recently seriously weakened – but the underlying mood has certainly not changed much.

The ruling regime undoubtedly takes this into account, as can be seen, for example, from the propaganda and educational methods applied to soldiers who, as is also the case elsewhere, are supposed to propagate Soviet “state-building ideas” among their fellow citizens upon their return to civilian life. We will deal with these methods in more detail in the next chapter.