346 Towards a Modern Army, 1825-1874I. 0. Sukhozanet, was 'severe, demanding, and pernickety'; he missed no
opportunity to display his power and was both hated and feared by the
students.1^41 A great controversy raged as to whether students in the academy,
who were experienced junior officers, should be required to do drill. General
Henri Jomini, the Swiss strategist tht::11 i11 Russian employ, advi<;f'd against it,
but the decision went against him.^142 In the Guards Sub-Ensigns' school drill
periods were extended to three hours a day when Nicholas acceded to the
throne, and the tsar himself used to attend ze~lously; the first parade was held
at 6.30 a.m. and the last from 7 to 8 p.m.^143 An orderly officer supervised the
cadets' conduct closely day and night, and inspectors attended many of the lec-
tures. The scale of penalties for defaulters ranged from a reprimand (private or
public) to detention in the school jail ( kartser) ·On a diet of bread and water for
a term of up to a month.^144 But at least from this school no one who com-
mitted some minor offence was sent off to serve in the ranks, as happened in
most other elite esta!Jlishments, where there was also more corporal
punishment.^14 s
The cadets' behaviour was seldom exemplary, and the better connected
among them would sometimes deliberately flout the rules and so provoke the
authorities into taking disciplinary action against them. Yet it is also clear that
the excessively strict internal regime sparked dissent and protest. In one case a
cadet sentenced to be flogged seized a knife and cut his own throat, and in
another suicide attempt a little later a boy jumped down a stairwell.1^46 The
cadets, we are told, felt sympathy for those subjected to corporal punishment
and disgust at its use^147 -yet they were too cowed to protest collectively, as
they had done before and would shortly do again. Nicholas's administrative
methods-'a system of terror', Milyutin called it^148 -forced men to suppress
their grievances; later several of them would ventilate their frustrated anger
and guilt in memoir accounts of their experiences.^149 Nevertheless these
memoirs are more trustworthy than the bland account of a casual visitor such
as Lieutenant-General Bismarck, who was impressed by 'the great cleanliness,
ample and healthy food ... and truly fatherly care that is apparent even in the
least details'.^1 so
Paternalism also took the form of heavy emphasis on religious and patriotic
values. At the Guards Sub-Ensigns' school students learned about 'the Russian
God' created by the theorists of Official Nationalism, and worshipped before
141 Milyutin, Vosp., pp. 115-21.
142 Polievktov, Nikolay I. p. 328.
10 Pollo, /st. ocherk Niko/. kaval. uch., pp. 22. 24.
144 Ibid., pp. 14, 24.
145 Odintsov, 'Posmer1nye zapiski", p. 305; Neizvestnyy, 'Za mnogo let', pp. 180, 184-5.
'"' Neizvestnyy, 'Za mnogo let'. p. 186.
147 Ibid., p. 188; cf. Odintsov. 'Posmer1nye zapiski', p. 302.
148 Milyutin, Vosp., p. 120.
149 One exception was D. G. Kolokol'tsov, who endured injustice in 1he Guards Sub-Ensigns'
school but praised the harsh methods employed: 'Preobrazh. polk'. p. 284.
150 Von Bismarck, Russische KrieRsmacht, p. 14.