an icon which bore the names of their teachers. In a typical passing-out
address Grand Duke Michael declared that 'the inseparability of Tsar and
Fatherland is our strength, before which our enemies will ever crumble and
subversion fade'.^1 s^1 Up to a point this propaganda was effective. Many cadets
developed an almost embarrassingly effusive love for their sovereign, who was
liable to be mobbed if he appeared in their midst.^152 In the long run, however,
this simple bond of personal loyalty provided inadequate social support for
autocratic rule. It engendered a rigid pattern of thought and conduct among
officers that left them at a loss when circumstances changed. One modern
historian notes that the 'militarization' of life in the cadet schools involved 'an
intellectual dressage that inculcated submissiveness and made men function in
a ritualistic rather than an efficient manner'.^1 q
Perhaps its most serious consequence was to hinder the development of a
sense of legality, such as was emerging at this time among civilian members of
the elite. This explains the prevalence of corrupt practices among officers once
they reached their units and sank into the torpid routine of regimental life; it
also accounts for their passivity in the face of injustice and brutality. It is no
doubt true that 'those military leaders with opposition tendencies were at best
restricted to working within the limits of individual units ... and could not
hope to influence government policy in regard to the armed forces as a
whole';^154 and certainly many acts of passive resistance will have gone
unrecorded. Nevertheless more could have been done in an informal way to
protect the juridical status of the officers themselves and their men.
It is anachronistic to speak of a 'revolutionary movement' in the Russian army
at this time.^155 Yet the evidence which Soviet historians have painstakingly
accumulated shows that nonconformist sentiments survived and occasionally
led to acts of resistance. In the early years dissidence mainly took the form of
reading or circulating forbidden verse by Pushkin or Ryleyev-as in the cadet
school at Kaluga, for example.^156 In^1830 a staff captain, S. I. Sitnikov,
distributed political writings of his own through the mail under a pseudonym.
The technique was amateurish, as was his appeal to the addressees that they
should support a 'democratic Slavic-Polish army' which had no existence
in fact.^157 However, this was the beginning of a 'Polish phase' in military
1s1 Potto, /st. ocherk Niko/. kaval. uch., pp. 8, 37, 62, 69. lndoclrination in the army is also
treated by Cuniss, Russian Army, pp. 256-71. The chaplaincy budgel accoun1ed for a mere 23,000
roubles in 1840, or 0.03 per cenl of to1al mili1ary expendi1ure.^11 PSZ xv( ii),^14131 ( 1840), p. 1458.
For the term 'Russian God' see A. I. Gagarin, 'Zapi,ki o Kavkaze', VS^288 (1906), 3, p. 29. For an
example of contemporary propaganda: [General) I. N. Skobelev, Perepiska i rasskazy russkogo
invalida, 2 pis., St. Petersburg, 1844 (4th edn., fir! published under a different title in 1833).
(^1) s2 Von Bismarck, Russische Kriegsmachl, p. 151; Pollo, Isl. ucherk Nikol. kaval. uch., pp. 48,
78.
ISJ Bcyrau, 'Formation', p. 309.
IS4 D'yakov, Osvobod. dvizheniye, p. 208.
1ss Verzhbitsky, Revol. dvizheniye: an informa1ive work, bu1 lhe au1hor plays down the role of
Poles and other non-Russian ethnic groups.
IS6 Ibid., p. 99.
1s1 D'yakov, Osvobod. dvizheniye, p. 215.