military obligations to the proletarian State by militia duties at a distance from the fighting front. Of course this must not be considered to imply that a sufficiently powerful proletarian authority will refrain, in its turn, from compelling the exploiters to shoot at their White friends in the opposing trenches, just as the bourgeoisie, with the aid of its standing army, forced the proletarians to shoot their class brothers.
The standing army of the bourgeoisie, although it is established upon the basis of universal military service, and although in appearance it is an army of the whole people, is in reality a class army. But the proletariat need not hide the class character of its army, any more than it hides the class character of its dictatorship. The Red Army is one of the organs of the Soviet State, and is, generally speaking, constructed upon the same type as the other State organs of the proletarian dictatorship. Just as in the Soviet elections the soviet constitution gives no vote to persons whose whole economic and political position that constitution aims at undermining, so in the Red Army there is no place for those for whose destruction in the civil war the Red Army exists.