РККА (Workers-and-Peasants Red Army)

**Soldat-Kamerad** · February 28, 2011, 04:02 AM

I think, if you would to imaginate Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War you should have some pics with uniforms of Red Sovien Army (or WPRA - РККА - raboche-krestyanskaya krasnaya armiya).
A little article from Wiki:
The Workers'-Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия, Raboche-Krest'yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya; RKKA) started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary militia during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.

The "Red Army" name refers to the traditional colour of the workers' movement. This represents, symbolically, the blood shed by the working class in its struggle against capitalism, and the belief that all people are equal. On 25 February 1946 (when Soviet national symbols replaced revolutionary national symbols), the Red Army was renamed the Soviet Army (Советская Армия, Sovetskaya Armiya).

In September 1917 V. I. Lenin wrote "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people). "

At this time the Imperial Russian Army was in a state of collapse. 23% of the male population of the Russian Empire had been mobilised, numbering about 19 million. However most of these were not equipped with any weapons and had support roles maintaining the lines of communication and the base areas. The Tsarist general, Nikolay Dukhonin, estimated that there were 2 million deserters, 1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners. He estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million.

The Council of People's Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918.Their conception was that it should be "formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes". All citizens of the Russian republic over the age of 18 were eligible. Its specific role was the defense "of the achievements of the October Revolution, the Soviet Power and Socialism. Enlistment was conditional upon "guarantees being given by a military or civil committee functioning within the territory of the Soviet Power" or by Party or Trade Union committees or, in extreme cases, by two persons belonging to one of the above organizations." In the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a "collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members" would be necessary.

The Council of People's Commissars appointed itself the supreme head of the Red Army, delegating immediate command and administration of the Army to the Commissariat for Military Affairs and the Special All-Russian College within this commissariat. Nikolai Krylenko was the Supreme Commander in Chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy. Pavel Dybenko and Nikolai Podvoisky were the Commissars for War and the Fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as People's Commissars with Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars.

At a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked: "We have no army. The demoralized soldiers are flying panic-stricken as soon as they see a German helmet appear on the horizon, abandoning their artillery, convoys and all war material to the triumphantly advancing enemy. The Red Guards units are brushed aside like flies. We have no power to stay the enemy; only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction."

The Russian Civil War (1917–23) occurred in two periods. The first period: October 1917–November 1918, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the First World War (1914–18) Armistice, developed from the Bolshevik government's November 1917 nationalization of traditional Cossack lands. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledin's Volunteer Army in the River Don region. Also aggravating Russian internal politics was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918). This allowed direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, in which twelve foreign countries armed anti-Bolshevik militias. Combat was a series of small-unit actions among the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen and others. The second period: January–November 1919, featured the White armies' successful advances, from the south, under Gen. Anton Denikin, from the east, under Gen. Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak, and from the northwest, under Gen. Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich, that defeated the Red Army on each front. Trotsky reformed and counterattacked; the Red Army repulsed Gen. Kolchak's army in June, and the armies of Gen. Denikin and Gen. Yudenich in October. By mid-November, the White Armies almost simultaneously became exhausted, and, in January 1920, Budenny's First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don.

At war's start, the Red Army comprised 299 infantry regiments. Civil warfare intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly (5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) removing Russia from the Great War. Free from international war, the Red Army confronted an internecine war with a loose alliance of anti-Communist forces, comprehending the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, the "Black Army" lead by Nestor Makhno, the anti-White and anti-Red Green armies, and others. The 23 February 1923 "Red Army Day" has a twofold, historical significance; the first day of drafting recruits (in Petrograd and Moscow) and the first day of combat against the occupying Imperial German Army.

On 6 September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under the supreme command of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (Revvoyensoviet, Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet), People's Commissar for War (1918–24), Leon Trotsky, Chairman, and Ioakhim Vatsetis, Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army. Soon afterward he established the GRU (military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded the Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization, and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and Chekist secret policemen; conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To politically control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated Special Punitive Brigades which suppressed anti-communism, deserters, and enemies of the state.Wartime pragmatism allowed recruiting ex-Tsarist officers and sergeants (non-commissioned officers, NCOs) to the Red Army. Lev Glezarov's special commission screened and recruited; by mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former Tsarist troops comprised 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 NCOs. At the Civil War's start, ex-Tsarists comprised 75 per cent of the Red Army officer corps, who were employed as voenspetsy (military specialists), whose loyalty was occasionally ascertained with hostage families. At war's end in 1922, ex-Tsarists constituted 83 per cent of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders.

Lenin, Trotsky and soldiers, Petrograd, 1921.

The Red Army used special regiments for ethnic minorities, like the Dungan Cavalry Regiment commanded by the Dungan Magaza Masanchi.

The slogan Exhortation, Organization, and Reprisals expressed the discipline and motivation ensuring the Red Army's tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka Special Punitive Brigades conducted summary field courts martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar Jānis K. Bērziņš, the Special Punitive Brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters, to compel their surrender; one in ten was executed. The tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in Red Army-controlled areas. The loyalty of the political, ethnic, and national varieties of men composing the Red Army was enforced by political commissars attached at the brigade and regiment levels, and to spy on subordinate commanders, for political incorrectness. Despite such power, the political commissars whose Chekist detachments retreated or broke in the face of the enemy earned the death penalty. In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General Mikhail Tukhachevsky to place blocking units behind politically-unreliable Red Army units, to shoot them if they retreated without permission

My Pics:

The Navy:

The ethnic forces:

The Warriars of WRPA in 1918-1920:

The soldiers-internationalists:

The Air-forces

The Red Army forces in 1920-1922

The Red Army in winter uniforms (coats)