210 The Imperial Century, 1725-1825And trained the soldiers with a kindly voice.
Let us mourn him, 0 soldiers,
For our born father is leaving us.^44Tne use of lhc: fi.1st person singular in this song marks it as contrived; en the
other hand it might have been in tune with the men's actual sentiments,
especially once Potemkin was replaced by a notoriously cruel commander,
Colonel F. E. Shvarts.
It is equally uncertain how many Izmaylovsky guardsmen would have
shared the critical views expressed by Grenadier Makarov, who in 1803 com-
plained:
The officers of our day
Have become unduly arrogant,
Setting themselves up as saints
And treating soldiers like the damned.^45 •More authentic both in style and sentiment are such works as the 'Lament to
God by Soldiers in the Crimea', dating from the 1780s, in which the religious
motif sounds clearly. God in his heaven is here contrasted with the 'petty
earthly divinities' (zemnye bozhki, that is, officers), who expect to be praised
and worshipped far beyond their merits; this forced, unlawful adulation leads
the soldiers to neglect their proper duties towards the Creator, whose protec-
tion they invoke against the wrongful authorities' tyranny. A subsidiary theme
is the contrast between holy Russia and the pagan country of the former
Crimean Tatar khans where they are obliged to serve; they hope one day to
leave this barren and dangerous territory and to return to the 'paradise'• of
their native land.^46 The unknown authors of this lament, which followed
ecclesiastical precedents, adhere to the Christian ethic: war and violence are
evil, and serve only to gratify the selfish vanity of their commanders. The im-
plications are certainly radical, but not revolutionary. The true believer has to
suffer injustice and maintain his faith intact while awaiting Judgement Day,
when the sinful will be punished, the powerful humiliated, and the righteous
granted life eternal.
Thus we may say that for the Russian soldier of the early Imperial era the
ultimate solution to the problem of oppression was a religious Utopia. But he
also invoked the protection of the highest earthly authorities against those
lower down in the hierarchy. This belief involved him in something of a con-
tradiction. He sensed instinctively that power corrupts; that the mightier a
man was, the more likely he was to commit immoral and sinful actions. Yet
44 Kartsov, 'Semenovskiy polk', p. 328.
4l Gukovsky, 'Soldatskiye stikhi', p. 146. Pushkarev ('Soldatskaya pesnya', p. 430) claims that
certain lines of Makarov's ode coincide with soldiers' aphorisms-but this unfortunately proves
nothing.
46 Gukovsky, 'Soldatskiye stikhi', p. 126.