The Mind in the Machine 209tale: he came across a soldier who had lost both arms and was being nursed by
a comrade. The crippled man said: 'I regret only that I can't smoke m~
pipe-but what can one say, Your Excellency, it's all God's will.' Engel' adds
that he did not know whether to laugh or to cry.^40 It would be misleading to
read too much into these writers' choice of inspiring episodes: they will have
remembered those that fitted their own preconceptions of how Russian
soldiers ought to behave.
More to the point is the fact that these memorialists have very little to say
about the men who served under them. This neglect testifies to the depth of the
social gulf between officers and soldiers (including NCOs). If individuals are
mentioned, they are seldom identified by name. Officers were supposed to
know their men individually, but this was difficult, as guards ensign
Venediktov complained, because when they were lined up on parade 'they
looked as if poured into the same mould'.^41 The man in the ranks seemed a
faceless being, even to officers who fancied themselves as liberals.^42
A soldier could not afford to be so indifferent towards his officers, whose
title, name, and rank he was likewise required to memorize. Privately he might
refer to them by nicknames which reflected the place they held on his own scale
of values. The official code bristled with references to the paternalistic code of
behaviour: for example, the Instructions to Colonels of 1764-6 required them
'to look after their subordinates as fathers look after their children',^43 a
principle that was not defined further since to have done so would have
demonstrated its limited feasibility. The soldiers interpreted these precepts in
their own manner. If an officer showed a spark of human decency, he would
be typed as a genuine 'father' (batyushka) and his merits praised in an exag-
gerated fashion, perhaps to point up the contrast between 'good' and 'bad'
superiors.
Unfortunately the evidence for the men's attitudes toward their substitute
fathers is somewhat suspect. Some so-called 'soldiers' songs' were not spon-
taneous creations but were written on the men's behalf by their officers. Thus
Ya. A. Potemkin (1778-1831), a popular commander of the Semenovsky regi-
ment (1813-19), was the subject of a lament (p/ach) which ended thus:
I saw him in the heat of battle
Astride his horse, flying like an eagle.
In time of peace he was gentle
40 Shchukin, Sbornik, iv. 90.
41 Venediktov, 'Za 60 let'. p. 587.
42 Captain I. I. Gladilov, speculating idly on what soldiers dreamed about, decided that it must
be of parades and marches, and so 'unimaginably sweet'. Apparently oblivious of the contradic·
tion, he went on to describe a conversation he had overheard between two soldiers, one of whom
said he had dreamed that his father had died. His comrade thought this a bad omen, but the
soldier replied: 'if one's killed, then one's killed, it would be as joyful to me now as if all my sins
had been forgiven' (chtozh ub yut, tak ub yut, leper' tak radostno, kak budto grekhi vse otdal).
This suggests not contentment, as Gladilov fondly supposed, but nostalgia, filial affection, and
fatalism. Shchukin, Sbornik, vii. 179.
43 Bogdanovich, Russkaya armiya, p. 5; PSZ xvii. 12543 (14 Jan. 1766).