November 1916 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2014-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

[39]

Their vodka was served in a mineral water bottle. The devil is ingenious. How was it done? Obviously Cubat’s had bribed the police to turn a blind eye.

If these uniformed guests ordered salty snacks with their mineral water it was obviously an eccentric whim of theirs.

At one table “white tea” was served in an obese teapot. Yes, they were managing all right.

All right, shall we start?

A shot at a time. They were out of practice, and the drink warmed and cheered them immediately.

In that hour with Svechin, Vorotyntsev’s complacent triumphalism had deserted him. The reverberations of the gong had died away. His body had reverted to its normal state and his dreamy mind was clearing.

The war had to be fought differently. Instead of hoping that it would be over by next summer—change its whole character.

Svechin agreed. Yes, we must change our methods of making war. Bogged down in the trenches the way we were, it wasn’t easy to break out, we could be stuck there for ten years. There was, however, one idea which nobody at GHQ would listen to: instead of trying to push forward all along each front, deploy well-trained and superbly equipped shock troops, all on horseback or on wheels. Open up a breach, however narrow, in the front, if only for a few hours, and throw in one of these groups in a raid deep behind the lines. Jerry wouldn’t stand up to this sort of warfare, it would be better than the partisan warfare in the Fatherland War. And he couldn’t use the same tactics in reply, because our raids into territory inhabited by our own people would find support, whereas he wouldn’t.

No. They had gone over the ground where there was no disagreement, but now their views diverged sharply because their experience in the past two years had been so different.

“It’s not a question of method, Andreich. Certainly not of tactical method. I’m trying to tell you that we must change the whole character of the war.”

The view from GHQ was not the same as that from a regimental dugout. Those who held staff jobs too long ceased to feel for those who died in battle. They could tally up all those zeros at the end of the number. But …

“Think back and try to realize how many of our people we have slaughtered already. Among the officers, all the best, and all the middling good ones, have been killed already, don’t forget. How many regiments are there like the 1st Siberian, with not a single officer left? Instead of regular officers you’ve got ensigns “with ideas.” We destroyed the majority of our NCOs in 1914. More Russians have been killed than at any other time in our history, in all the wars you care to mention. And it is precisely and almost exclusively Russian blood. We don’t draft the Caucasians—fair enough. The Central Asians were unwilling to serve even behind the lines, and we accepted that—fair enough.”

“You wouldn’t find the non-Russians much help in this war.

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