270 Gentlemen to Ojjicers
opm1ons. Their attitude towards their officers' efforts on their behalf was
necessarily ambiguous (see further below, p. 300).
Moreover, the service milieu set very narrow limits to what could be achieved
in trying to bridge the gulf. The authorities treated as seditious even efforts by
honest officers, such as M. F. Orlov and V. F. Rayevsky, to take judicial
action against corrupt or cruel subordinates whose arbitrary conduct con-
travened military law-although it might have been said that by instituting
proceedings against them they were actually upholding the existing command
structure. In Alexander's army the very idea of legality was suspect to the
authorities, who hypocritically ignored the laws in force when it suited them.
We have already seen that informal horizontal contacts were difficult to sus-
tain over great distances, and that the surveillance system was as thorough as
contemporary techniques permitted.
Another obstacle was the formality that normally governed relations between
officers of staff and subaltern rank. In an effort to counter this the secret
societies developed an alternative hierarchical system, based on personal and
ideological loyalties, and to some extent managed to enforce it. Since esprit de
corps was feebly developed in the Russian army, there does not seem to have
been much rivalry between different arms of service, although officers in line
regiments harboured a certain distrust of those in the guards. The collapse of
the Northern Society's leadership at the hour of decision should be seen as 'a
failure of the colonels' as well as one of aristocrats, in the sense that junior
officers like Captain A. Bestuzhev or Lieutenant Panov found themselves in
command of larger forces than they were trained to handle. The role of
civilians in the clandestine organizations, especially in the north, is also signifi-
cant. The poet (and offi..:ial) Ryleyev was second to none in political commit-
ment and also demonstrated considerable organizational talent, but his civilian
status prevented him from taking decisive action on the Senate Square and
may explain why he left the scene prematurely. It is a curious fact that those
rebel leaders who resorted to armed violence were civilians (P. G. Kakhovsky,
W. Kilchelbecker [V. K. Kyukhelbeker]) rather than officers; this may explain
why the latter did not emulate their example.
Russia's Praetorians showed a good deal of ingenuity in camouflaging their
intentions and took readily to conspiratorial methods of struggle. But some of
them became obsessed with 'technique': secret meeting-places, false identities,
code-words, and the like. As already noted, deliberate deception made it hard
to establish relations of comradely trust, and the intrigues between members of
the two regional societies led a number of activists to abandon the cause in
disgust. The issues that divided them were as much moral as political, and
there were faults on both sides. So far as the political aspect is concerned, it is
obvious that despite much endeavour programmatic unity was not achieved,
although the parties were not really far apart. Their views of the future order
ranged from the 'authoritarian' (N. Murav'yev) to the 'autocratic' (Pestel')-to
wang
(Wang)
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