An Age of Reform 369
and 55 privates in the crack Yamburg Ulans made a collective protest. The tsar
reversed an obviously biased verdict by a lower court and placed the blame on
the negligent commanding officcr.^91 Another case, in 1865, involved naen of
the 108th Saratov infantry regiment. When a captain started to beat a
sergeant-major on parade the men broke ranks, surrounded the officer and
were on the point of seizing his drawn sword when a civilian policeman inter-
vened. The three 'ringleaders' were sentenced to six years' forced labour-but
the captain was cashiered.^92 This verdict, though scarcely equitable, represented
an advance on earlier practice. Milyutin's reforms of military justice do not
deserve all the praise sometimes heaped on them,^93 but they pointed in the
right direction, and his successors had a hard time trying to turn the clock
back.The same could be said of the War Minister's efforts to encourage literacy and
basic education among soldiers, with the object of fitting them to become
NCOs-and officers. Not that anyone envisaged radically upsetting existing
officer selection procedures: this would have aroused stiff opposition within
the nobility, and in any case substitute cadres were not yet available. It was
rather a matter of bridging the cultural gap between officers and men in the
ranks and humanizing the general atmosphere. 'An army', Milyutin had once
written, 'is not merely a physical force, a mass that serves as an instrument in
military operations, but also an association of individuals endowed with intel-
ligence and sensitivity.' These moral qualities needed to be respected and
nurtu.red by commanders, who should learn 'how to manage their men' .iu
This meant a change in training methods, with more emphasis on marks-
manship and personal fitness, to be developed by gymnastics, along with
.instruction in the three Rs, scripture, and military subjects. This was a novelty
-at least for soldiers drawn from regions other than the Baltic. The first
such schools were set up in guards and grenadier regiments in 1857. Contribu-
tors to Voyennyy sbornik initiated a lively discussion on teaching methods and
other practical matters. The early enthusiasts had exaggerated expectations of
what could be achieved. The instructors were usually NCOs who lacked
qualifications for the job; there were no proper textbooks and the reading
material consisted either of army manuals or of cheap Western novels in
translation. Some soldiers would have preferred the New Testament, but
copies were in short supply; other critics suggested, quite sensibly, using the
works of contemporary Russian writers. The real problems, though, were time
and money. The courses were given on winter evenings, after an I I-hour
91 Ibid., pp. 82-4.
92 Ibid., p. 8S.
9J E. Lampert writes that 'by bureaucratizing the whole system [the reform] turned the Russian
army ... from a penal establishment into one of the most enlightened institutions of ninetccnth-
century European military history': Sons Against Fathers: Studies in Russian Radicalism and
Revolution, Oxford, l 96S, p. 47.
94 Zayonchkovsky, Voyennye reformy, pp. 49-SO.