Red Army was formed in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its first civilian leader was Leon Trotsky, who proved a brilliant strategist and administrator. The Red Army began life as a small volunteer force of proletarians from the major urban citadels of Bolshevik power in northern and central Russia.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russia entered a period of civil war that lasted until the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922. The main forces involved in this unrest were the Red Army, who were pitted against the counter –revolutionaries or “white Russian” ranging from moderate socialists to conservatives advocating the restorations of the tsarist regime.
By the end of the civil war against the Whites and the various armies of foreign intervention, in the autumn of 1920, Red Army had grown into a mass conscript army of five million soldiers, 75 per cent of them peasants1 by birth - a figure roughly proportionate to the size of the peasant population in Russia..
Red Army of Russia
