Word: dragooned
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...love a dragoon...
This week, in a scene reminiscent of the Czarist days at their most imperial, ex-Dragoon Zhukov, now a chunky, 59-year-old marshal, reviewed the crack regiments of the world's largest army. Standing in a pale blue Zis limousine, his broad chest loaded with decorations, his hand in a stiff salute, Zhukov watched the young cadets of Russia's top military academies goose-step their way through Moscow's Red Square in unwavering, platoon-wide lines. The cadets wore smart new uniforms; steel-blue with sleeves laced with gold-braided laurel leaves; their officers wore...
...assumed a new and stronger role in Soviet policy? Not knowing all the answers, the White House reacted skeptically to Zhukov's overtures, but kept open a small hedge on the future. The past, in Georgy Zhukov's case, is also instructive. His hazardous climb from Czarist dragoon to Communist marshal, his differences with the military commissars, his fallings in and out of Communist favor, are significant clues to the nature of the instrument he has wielded with such success...
...Bolshevik Army. When the Bolshevik Revolution broke in 1917, Zhukov was back home in his Kaluga village, a sick young dragoon of 21 and, like millions of other Russians, profoundly disillusioned vith the Czar's conduct of the war. To crush active opposition to their rule, the Bolsheviks formed an army out of bands of irregulars, war refugees, peasants, groups of industrial workers and trade unionists. "Even after defeats and retreats," reported Trotsky, the first Bolshevik War Commissar, "the flabby, panicky mob would be transformed in two or three weeks into an efficient fighting force. It needed good commanders...
There was something of the old dragoon about Zhukov's stiff, yet colorful, swagger. Says U.S. General James Gavin (who also rose from the ranks) : "He has a hard face, which can break into a wonderful smile. He's a man of the earth, short, pudgy fingers and a lot of brains...