Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan

Author:Pat Sloan [Sloan, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2019-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

DEMOCRATIC DEFENCE - THE RED ARMY

In 1931, when I first went to the U.S.S.R., I had certain pacifist sympathies. It was not encouraging, therefore, to see factory workers sometimes inarching through the streets carrying rifles, and to find that military training of some kind was available in practically every Soviet institution. Since then, however, my personal experiences while living in the U.S.S.R., together with certain events that have taken place in the rest of the world, have convinced me that effective democracy is something which must be defended by arms against those who, at the present time, are doing their utmost to smash it by force.

And, once this need to defend the achievements of the Revolution by force against armed intervention is realized, then the extent to which the people of the U.S.S.R. receive military training is to be appreciated as one of the greatest proofs of real democracy. To make a comparison with Britain I would put it this way: In Britain, in the “public schools” where the sons of the well-to-do receive their expensive education, the “Officers’ Training Corps” is a voluntary organization of which practically 100 percent of the boys are members. In the universities such corps also flourish. But I have yet to find the industrial enterprises in Britain, where the breadwinners of some 75 percent of the population earn their living, where there are Officers’ Training Corps, so that the people may become skilled in the art of defense. By contrast, it just happens in the U.S.S.R. to be in the factories and in the collective farms, as well as in the universities and scientific institutions, that citizens may receive the elements of military knowledge, and are thus* trained to defend themselves against any enemy. In this way the military training which in Britain is confined to a small section of the population is at the disposal of the whole community. Every Soviet citizen has the opportunity to be trained as a military leader.

This relationship between the people of the U.S.S.R. and the army is nothing new. It has existed since the setting up of the Soviet State in 1917. In January 1918 it was declared by the Third Congress of Soviets that “in order to secure the supremacy of the laboring masses, and to guard against any possibility of the exploiters regaining power, the Congress decrees the arming of the workers, the formation of a Socialist Red Army of workers and peasants, and the complete disarmament of the propertied classes.” At the same time it was declared “the duty of all citizens to defend the Socialist fatherland” and “the honor of bearing arms in defense of the Revolution is granted only to the workers. The leisured section of the population will fulfill other military duties.” In this way the “public school class” of Russia was deprived of the right to participate in defense, because the working people distrusted this class in the defense of the Revolution; while the military training of the people,

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