The Strn~gle for Survi1·£J/ 177
produced carriages, sledges. and similar items of excellent quality which were
sold in the neighbourhood. the colonel pocketing all the profits.^9
What these critics overlooked-as have the military historians who have
referred to the subject^111 -was that private employment could be of advantage
to the soldier as well as to the officer: of the thrf'f' r~rtil..'~ !!'!valved iD ~:.:ch dcul:;
it was the state that stood to lose most, and its defenders were not above shed-
ding crocodile tears on the men's behalf. Of course, officers might abuse the
men whom they took, treating them much as if they were their serfs, but exces-
sive maltreatment was likely to come to official notice. It appears that normally
soldiers in private employment had some chance of increasing their incomes
and that in most cases these mutual arrangements were more than just swindles
for the officers' sole enrichment. The practice may also have been beneficial in
a more general sense. Soldiers helped farmers bring in the harvest during the
short season before the first frost (as their Soviet successors still do today); and
officers and men, whose relationship was normally antagonistic or at least
coldly distant, will have been brought together in an illicit or semi-licit associa-
tion against authority, so undermining the legitimacy of the power structure.
The emperor Paul and his German associates like von Reimers instinctively
recognized this. Devoted as this ruler was to the principles of absolutism and
bureaucratic centralization, he had to tolerate the practice on a limited
scale-in garrison regiments, and only for personal services within the unit.^11
Alexander l's policy, on this matter as on so many others, was ambivalent. He
first issued a general ban, but when a soldier was accidentally killed while
engaged on private work the tsar prohibited employment on 'dangerous'
tasks,^12 implying that if there was no danger the practice might continue-
which of course it did. Action was taken only when a case came to the
emperor's personal notice.^13 During his reign, however, the more enlightened
officers began to express open disapproval of the abuses associated with the
private employment of soldiers; they did so not only on moral or humanitarian
grounds but also because they believed in legality and wanted reforms to make
the army more efficient. Major I. S. Zhirkevich^14 notes a case where men at
Orel had to go 200 versts to work on land in the Ukraine owned by their com-
mander. Unfortunately he does not tell us whether they were paid, or whether
they appreciated the opportunity to return, if only brieny, to a more familiar
rural environment where they were at least spared the rigours of the parade-
ground. Another memoirist reveals that a company of artillerymen who were
9 Ibid., p. 446.
10 Petrov (Russkaya voyennaya si/a, ii. 244) 'tates 1hat 50,000 'oltliers were so employed, that
in, about one-eighth of total nominal effectives-but does not give his ~ource; nor does Kersnovsky
(lstoriya, i. 63), who adds that the practice wa~ particularly widc,pread in the south of Russia.
(^11) PSZ xxiv. 17856 (28 Feb. 1797); but cf. 17715 (7 Jan. 1797). The Prussian envoy noted that
the men suffered a drop in income as a result of Paul's efforts to restrict it. Schiemann,
Geschichte, i. 23.
12 PSZ x,;vii. 20581, 20865 (7 Jan., 25 July 1803).
1.^1 PSZ xxx. 23864 (29 Sept. 1809), xxxiv. 26732 (I~ Mar. 1817).
14 'Zapiski', RS 13 (1875), p. 573; for other .:ase~ d. F-e<lorov. Su/da1skoyedvizheniye, p. 16.