358 Towards a Modern Army, 1825-1874He was probably attracted as much by Chernyshevsky's professional experi-
ence as by his political views. He may also have thought that any undue
radicalism on his part would be checked by the two assistant editors,
Lieutenant-Colonel V. M. Anichkov and Captain N. N. Obruchev, both of
whom were general staff officers as well as professors at the Military
Academy. In fact all these men already knew each other well from the St.
Petersburg military colleges, at one of which Chernyshevsky had been briefly
employed as an instructor.
Voyennyy sbornik made a great impact and its circulation soon leaped to
6,000, three times that expected by the authorities. Officers were invited to
submit contributions which, as selected and edited, took a tone critical of the
military establishment. In one of the first articles Obruchev questioned the
privileges enjoyed by guardsmen, advocated a militia system, and suggested
that in civilized European states the armed forces' role ms declining. Other
writers dealt with such sensitive issues as corruption, corporal punishment,
and the need 'to raise the soldier's image in his own eyes so that he may
appreciate his own worth' .37 All this was strong meat for the traditionalists.
Russkiy invalid complained that the editors of the new journal were guided by
'speculative concepts'. The authorities clearly could not permit two organs of
military opinion to contradict one another, and the military censor, Colonel
L. L. Shturmer (Sti.irmer), had his own axe to grind. He submitted an adverse
report to the tsar. Kartsev asked Chernyshevsky to refute his allegations, but
the journalist did not help his case by intemperate language and pedantic ex-
planations which, like Shturmer's charges, avoided the real issue at stake: were
the malpractices referred to typical, and if so what legal and administrative
steps should be taken to overcome them? The upshot was that, after seven
issues had appeared, Chernyshevsky had to resign; the journal was allowed to
continue under a new editor who had a military background, and was made
subject to dual censorship. It still was able to publish much interesting
material, and from 1862 became a mouthpiece of Milyutin's administration.
The War Minister made a point of dissociating himself from alleged 'subver-
sives' such as Chernyshevsky; Obruchev, who in 1861-2 helped to found
a revolutionary organization called Land and Liberty, made his peace with the
authorities and, as an official of the Military Education Committee, became
one of Milyutin's closest collaborators. His change of heart was apparently in
part a response to the 1863 Polish insurrection, which produced a rightward
shift in Russian public opinion.
In the late 1850s the Polish cause had won considerable support among
'advanced' Russian youths, including those who wore military uniform.^38 It
Brooks in MERSH xvi (1980), 44-7. Many writers (for example, Makeyev, 'Chernyshevsky-
redaktor', p. 65) attribute the decision to Milyutin, but he was no longer in the capital.
37 N. Obruchev, 'O vooruzh. sile i yeyo ustroystvo'; D. S., 'Zametki komandira strelkovoy
roty', in VS 1 (1858), pp. 16-56, 113-19.
38 This subject has been closely investigated in recent years by Soviet scholars, notably V .A.