Life itself seemed to induce the officers to utter some kind of protest against the existing order. Of all the classes that served the State, there had been for a long time no element so downtrodden and forlorn or so ill-provided for as the officers of the Regular Russian Army. They lived in abject poverty. Their rights and their self-esteem were constantly ignored by the Senior Officers. The utmost the rank and file could hope for as the crowning of their career was the rank of Colonel and an old age spent in sickness and semi-starvation. From the middle of the nineteenth century the Officers' Corps had completely lost its character as a class and a caste. Since universal compulsory service was introduced and the nobility ceased to be prosperous the gates of military schools were opened wide to people of low extraction and to young men belonging to the lower strata of the people, but with a diploma from the civil schools. They formed a majority in the Army. Mobilisations, on the other hand, reinforced the Officers' Corps by the infusion of a great many men of the liberal professions, who introduced new ideas and a new outlook. Finally, the tremendous losses suffered by the Regular Officers' Corps compelled the High Command to relax to a certain extent the regulations concerning military training and education, and to introduce on a broad scale promotions from the ranks for deeds of valour, and to give rankers a short training in elementary schools to fit them to be temporary officers.
These circumstances, characteristic of all armies formed from the masses, undoubtedly reduced the fighting capacity of the Officers' Corps, and brought about a certain change in its political outlook, bringing it nearer to that of the average Russian intellectual and to democracy. This the leaders of the Revolutionary democracy did not, or, to be more accurate, would not, understand in the first days of the Revolution. In the course of my narrative I will differentiate between the "Revolutionary Democracy"--an agglomeration of socialist parties--and the true Russian Democracy, to which the middle-class intelligencia and the Civil Service elements undoubtedly belong.
The spirit of the Regular Officers was, however, gradually changing. The Japanese War, which disclosed the grave shortcomings of the country and of the Army, the Duma and the Press, which had gained a certain liberty after 1905, played an important part in the political education of the officers. The mystic adoration of the Monarch began gradually to vanish. Among the junior generals and other officers there appeared men in increasing numbers capable of differentiating between the idea of the Monarchy and personalities, between the welfare of the country and the form of government. In officer circles opportunities occurred for criticism, analysis, and sometimes for severe condemnation.