|
|
The Red Army ,Russian KRASNAYA ARMIYA, Soviet army created by the Communist government after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The name Red Army was abandoned in 1946.
The Russian imperial army and navy, together
with other imperial
institutions of tsarist Russia, disintegrated after the outbreak
of the revolutions of 1917. By a decree of Jan.28 (Jan. 15, Old
Style), 1918, the Council of People's Commissars created a
Workers'and Peasants' Red Army on a voluntary basis. The first
units, fighting with
a revolutionary fervour, distinguished themselves against the
Germans at Narva
and Pskov on Feb. 23, 1918, which became Soviet Army Day. On April
22, 1918, the
Soviet government decreed compulsory military training for workers
and peasants who
did not employ hired labour, and this was the beginning of the
Red Army. Its
founder was Leon Trotsky, people's commissar for war from March
1918 until he lost the
post in November 1924.
The Red Army was recruited exclusively
from among workers and peasants and
immediately faced the problem of creating a competent and reliable
officers'
corps. Trotsky met this problem by mobilizing former officers
of the imperial army.
Up to 1921 about 50,000 such officers served in the Red Army and
with but few
exceptions remained loyal to the Soviet regime. Political advisers
called commissars
were attached to all army units to watch over the reliability
of officers and to carry out
political propaganda among the troops. As the Russian Civil War
continued, the
short-term officers' training schools began to turn out young
officers who were
regarded as more reliable politically.
The number of Communist Party members
increased among the Red Army's ranks
from 19 to 49 percent during 1925-33, and among officers this
increase was much
higher. Moreover, all commanders were graduates of Soviet military
academies and
officers' training schools, admission to which was limited to
those recommended by the
Communist Party.
In May 1937 a drastic purge, affecting
all potential opponents of Joseph
Stalin's leadership, decimated the officer corps and greatly reduced
the morale and
efficiency of the Red Army. On June 12, Marshal Tukhachevsky,
first deputy people's
commissar of war, and seven other Red Army generals were found
guilty of plotting to
betray the Soviet Union to Japan and Germany, and all were shot.
Many other generals
and colonels were either cashiered or sent to forced-labour camps,
or both. The
purge's effects were apparent in the serious defeats suffered
by the Red Army during
the first months of the German invasion (1941), but a corps of
younger commanders soon
emerged to lead the Soviet Union to victory in World War II.
By war's end the Soviet armed forces
numbered 11,365,000 officers and men.
Demobilization, however, started toward the end of 1945, and in
a few years
the armed forces fell to fewer than 3,000,000 troops.
In 1946 the word Red was removed from
the name of the armed forces. Thus, a
Soviet soldier, hitherto known as a krasnoarmiich ("Red Army
man"), was
subsequently called simply a ryadovoy ("ranker"). Discipline
in the Soviet forces was always
strict and punishments severe; during World War II, penal battalions
were given
suicidal tasks. In 1960, however, new regulations were introduced
making discipline, and
certainly punishments, less severe. Officers were to use more
persuasion and were
charged with developing their troops' political consciousness,
thus ending the dual
control of military commanders and political commissars. The era
of the revolutionary
"Red Army" ended in fact as well as in name.
