the T.A.O.N. predominate 6 in guns, and finally guns of larger calibre,
all of them of obsolete types.
The characteristic features of this organisation, in a purely military
sense, are: the important numbers of the territorial troops, a compara-
tively enormous quantity of cavalry (in comparison with other armies),
the organisation of infantry adapted for field-warfare, a weak artillery
which is even now of already obsolete type, and a small air-force, and the
rudimentary state of the tank defence force, so that as a result the Red
Army is a long way behind the West-European Armies in regard to tech-
nical equipment.
Commanding Officers. The rank of generals and officers and of non-
commissioned officers no longer exists and has been replaced by certain
appellations of the class of commanders. In the denomination of “Com-
manding Staff’, all men in command are included, with: 1) the com-
manding staff strictly speaking (Generals and Officers), subdivided into
superior commanding staff (Generals), the higher staff (Staff Officers),
and middle staff (Officiers), 2) the lower commanding staff (non-com-
missioned officers), 3) the political commanding staff (military com-
missaries), 4) administrative staff (military state-officials), 5) the com-
manding staff of instructors (heads of instructors, Club secretaries, etc.),
6) the juridical-political staff (military-court department), and 7) the
medical and veterinary staff.
By means of a rigorous selection of the commanding staff during a
number of “proletarianising’’ years, an important number of former con-
lingent officers of the old Russian army, by whose efforts — out of its
dismembered remains, the present Red Army has been created, are no longer
in its ranks. The main mass (greater part) of the commanding staff
consists of men who have been trained in the Bolshevic military school,
or during the Civil war. In some of the positions some of the former
officers of the Old Army can still be seen, especially those of the General
Staff, but they are in the minority. 90 9 of the staff of commanders have
been trained in Soviet schools, and have never had anything to do with
the old Russian Army.
From the social point of view, the commanding staff differs materially
from the general army, there being only 56 oj instead of 84.7 9% of peas-
ants, 12.3 05 instead of 11 0p of workmen, and 23.7 0/o instead of 5.3 0)
of the “rest”, which is only natural since the commanding staff must
needs be oompieted by representatives of the better educated strata, i. e.,
of the “rest”. However, the higher the service-rank of a certain catagory
may be, the greater is the number of communists (“party-men’) in it,
their percentage of commanders of circuits and corps amounting to 6q
D9