English Translation

- 15 - and to be able to conclude similar fantastic events. One will probably not fail in the assumption, . that the Finns would have presented those prisoners who had made such statements voluntarily to the whole world press in the triumph. I have now spoken pretty much all journalists who have otherwise come into contact with Russian prisoners. I have never heard of any case where a Russian prisoner would have uttered statements that could only be concluded by the desire for a overthrow. It is not said that the utterances of the ordinary soldiers or the letters found do not occasionally express the misery in which these people live. But there is no revolutionary will to be found anywhere. One will be able to distinguish, roughly seen, in the Russian army three types. Once the large mass of the commons, perhaps even a part of the non-commissioned officers with reckoned, the type of "Muschik", poor, miserable, limited but patient and obedient, simply gray mass without political will and without political consciousness. His adherence to the regime is perhaps best characterized by the saying of a prisoner when asked by a silent journalist whether he has not heard of God: "Whoever is greater, God or Stalin, how can I know?" Of these people there is no danger to the Russian regime. The second type would then be the one to which the above-mentioned captured officers belong: The politically little interested, primitively government-scattered soldier. As far as one can see in Finland, this type is firmly in the hands of the Soviet government. Finally, the third type is that of the fanatical communist, the actual bearer of the Soviet idea of the state, which, with a cold and somewhat limited but nevertheless strong fanaticism, combines a hatred against everything foreign and other, which should make him immune, at least for a long time, against foreign influences. This type is occasionally encountered among officers - 16 -