An Age of Reform 3-;
another, regardless of their applicability to the concrete circumstances Russ
faced.
In this contest the political establishment enjoyed superior material strengt
but the intelligentsia had the more plausible: iUca~. The armed forces wer
generally perceived, and perceived themselves, as a principal bulwark of cor
servatism. They were an obvious target for revolutionaries and anti-militarist
many of whom dreamed of abolishing the centralized state apparatu
altogether and entrusting the people's security to a democratic militia. Conser
vatives dismissed such notions as irresponsible and utopian, not entire!
without reason. But they went too far in an opposite direction, identifyin
democracy with anarchy and the destruction of 'the foundations (ustoi) o
Russian life', as the current phrase went. They cast themselves as the natura
guardians of state interest, equating this with the interest of the 'Russia1
nation' and, implicitly, all the tsar's subjects. National chauvinism went ham
in hand with the maintenance of social privilege, resistance to institutiona
change, and repressive measures against autonomous bodies such as tht
judiciary, local government organs, the universities, and the press. They sa\\
to it that defence expenditure was still allocated a large share of the stat•_
budget: 50 per cent in 1885, 56 per cent in 1913.^162 The army's needs were nc
longer determined simply by agreement between the autocrat and his War
Minister, but after debate in the State Council; but in this as in other senio1
government bodies there continued to be a high proportion of members with
service backgrounds. Yet after the 'Great Reforms' one could no longer say
that the Russian empire was a military or militaristic state, and the armed
forces had ceased to be the preferred career option for members of the social
elite.
Within the army strong emphasis continued to be placed on discipline and
respect for rank. This was accompanied by successful efforts to maintain the
officer corps as a noble preserve. Formally, non-nobles who passed through
the military schools had the same rights as others to a commission, but no
major change occurred in the social composition of the officer corps before1914.^163 The traditional arms of service were still favoured over the more
technical ones, and welfare measures frequently disparaged as likely to 'soften
the troops' moral fibre'. Among officers an ascetic Spartan spirit came into
vogue. It was linked to a cult of simple paternal relations towards the men, to a
concern with ceremonial, and above all to an unreflective glorification of the
empire's martial traditions: the 1880s and 1890s were the great age of military
historiography in Russia. Writers on supply problems characteristically in-
sisted on the army's right to requisition what it needed from the inhabitants of
occupied areas in wartime, rather than on the need to build up an effective
162 P. R. Gregory, Russian National Income, 1885-1913, Cambridge, 1982, p. 138.
163 Stein, 'Offizier', pp. 422-3; P. Kenez, 'A Profile of the Prerevolutionary Officer Corps',
Calif. Slavic Studies 7 (1973). pp. 121-33.