Introduction 7specifically devoted to the men who were expected to do the fighting. This is
surprising: after all, countless monographs have appeared on the intelligentsia
(numerically a smaller group), and a respectable literature exists on peasants,
nobies, anu t:vt:11 townsmen; ln recent years, offid~!~ ::incl clergymen have
begun to attract the attention that is their due. The neglect of the soldiers may
in part be attributed to a feeling among historians that the subject ought prop-
erly to be left to their military confrcres. This sentiment is no doubt justified
with regard to the more technical aspect of the topic, such as weaponry or tac-
tics, but surely not with regard to matters that are of wider interest. Unless
adequate attention is paid to the armed forces' prominent place in Russian
public life, historians will labour under serious misconceptions and draw one-
sided conclusions. Indeed, much of the existing literature suffers from this
distortion of vision. Writers on the so-called 'Decembrist movement' have
almost without exception viewed it as a civilian phenomenon-a chapter in the
history of the intelligentsia or of Russian political thought-although most of
those involved were army officers, and it needs to be seen as an instance of
'Praetorianism' (see below, ch. 12). Similarly, the military settlements (chs.
13-14) are often regarded as an epiphenomenon of serfdom, or as an aberra-
tion on the part of Alexander I and his minister A. A. Arakcheyev, instead of
as an early attempt at social engineering designed to produce a military caste
that would be under firm control and particularly reliable. By placing military
service in the centre of attention, where it belongs, we can gain a truer under-
standing of the way Russian society operated and of its leaders' code of values.
Another reason for neglect of this subject is more political in nature. In
tsarist Russia matters affecting state security or the good reputation of the
armed services were considered very sensitive. The same attitude, mutatis
mutandis, has been perpetuated in the USSR, at least since the 1930s. Before
the revolution professional military historians concentrated on 'safe' subjects
such as administration or strategy; they regarded what was then called voyen-
nyy byt, or 'the military way of life', as of trivial importance. In so far as they
dealt with it at all, they concerned themselves with the officers, whose experi-
ences were thought to possess entertainment value. This attitude carried
over to the many Russian serving or veteran officers who wrote their memoirs.
The practice was encouraged rather than frowned on, as in Prussia, and in the
last decades of the nineteenth century produced a great crop of autobiographi-
cal and similar material.^9 Writers had to take care not to give offence to the
Crimean War. Ye. V. Tarle has given classic accounts of three of these connicts: Sevemaya voy11a
i sllvedskoye 11aslles1viye 110 Rossiy11, Moscow, 1958, Nasllestviye Napoleona no Rossiyu, Moscow.
t938, reproduced in id. 1812 g., Mosww, 1959, and Krymskaya voyna, 2nd rev. edn., Moscow
and Leningrad, 1950.9 An invaluable bibliographical guide to memoir literature has recently been provided by
Zayonchkovsky, lstoriyu dorevol. Rossii. For an evaluation of military memoirs on the pre-
rcform era, see our 'From the Pistol to the Pen'.