Have you signed up for the Red Army?! Pathologies of the kidneys and reproductive system. The Red Army should not have existed

After the revolution of 1917, the tsarist army completely ceased to exist. In February 1918, the creation of the Red Army began. There was no shortage of volunteers. Fiery communists from the people signed up in hundreds of thousands to join the new military formation. Already on February 23, the Red Army gave its first battle near Pskov.

However, ordinary peasants and factory workers did not have proper training. Most did not know how to handle weapons, but military strategy and in general, few people were knowledgeable about tactics. The Red Army needed well-trained officers with combat experience.

Lack of professional commanders

Before the events described, Russia had already taken part in the war for about 4 years. There was no shortage of highly qualified military personnel in the tsarist army. IN post-revolutionary years The Red Army was replenished with 56 thousand White Guard officers.

8 thousand of them, imbued with the ideas of communism, joined the armed workers’ and peasants’ formations voluntarily. At the end of 1920, there were 5 million people in the ranks of the Red Army. However, 56 thousand officers for 5 million was not enough.

The command of the Red Army came to the conclusion that it was necessary to attract White Guards who had so far fought on the side of the enemy to serve. In the spring of 1920, there were 20,000 white officers from the armies of Denikin and Kolchak in captivity of the Red Army, whose main forces had already been defeated by that time. This whole mass of well-trained military personnel could be useful to the young Red Army.

Attracting White Guards to serve

A request for permission to recruit captured Kolchak soldiers to serve in the Red Army was sent to the Vseroglavshtab and granted back in June 1919. On April 8 of the following year, a new resolution of the Revolutionary Military Council was issued. It spoke of recruiting White Guards to serve in Red Army units in the Caucasus.

Despite the critical situation of the new army, leadership personnel were selected carefully. The Revolutionary Military Council rejected as ideologically alien elements officers who had previously served in the General Staff of the Russian Army, people who came from the clergy, as well as military personnel of Polish origin.

The last category of persons was included in the prohibited list not by chance. The Poles were categorically against Soviet Russia. However realities of life All precautions prevailed. During Soviet-Polish war White Guards with Polish roots began to enroll in the Red Army. At that time, 100 thousand former tsarist generals, majors and other ranks already served in it.

After the war

The end of the Civil War led to the need to reduce the army, which had been bloated to incredible sizes. If initially its strength was about 5 million, then in peacetime only half a million fighters were required. The 130,000-strong command staff had to be cut to 50,000.

Naturally, first of all, they began to lay off “politically unreliable” personnel - former White Guards. By the beginning of 1925, only 397 people remained in the ranks of the Red Army. These people, after numerous checks, were trusted military education Red Army soldiers. During the period of Stalin's purges, they were all destroyed.

On January 15, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, headed by Lenin, issued a decree on the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army "from the most conscious and organized elements of the working classes", but at the same time it was invited to join all citizens of the country who wanted to "give their strength , your life to protect the conquered October Revolution and the power of the Soviets and socialism."

Decree on the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. January 1918

Its core was formed during February Revolution detachments of the Red Guard, 95% staffed by workers, almost half of whom were members of the Bolshevik Party. But the Red Guard was not suitable for a war with a large, technically equipped army.

The Red Army was created as an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as an army of workers and peasants, the foundation for replacing the standing army with national weapons, which in the near future was supposed to serve as support for the coming socialist revolution in Europe.

Therefore, each volunteer had to submit recommendations from military committees, party and other organizations supporting Soviet power. And if they joined in whole groups, collective guarantee was required. The soldiers of the Red Army were promised full state support and, in addition, were paid 50 rubles a month, and from mid-1918, 150 rubles for single people and 250 rubles for families. Help was also promised to disabled dependent family members.

At the same time, the imperial Russian army was officially disbanded on January 29, 1918 by order of the revolutionary commander-in-chief former warrant officer Nikolai Krylenko. "World. The war is over. Russia is no longer at war. The end of the damned war. The army, which had endured three and a half years of suffering with honor, received a well-deserved rest,” said the radiogram sent out.

However, by this time only separate parts of the old army actually remained: the soldiers, who were extremely tired of sitting in the trenches, in the fall of 1917, having heard about the adoption of the decree on peace, decided that the war was over and began to go home,

At the same time, generals Mikhail Alekseev and Lavr Kornilov in the south of Russia created officer army, and called - Volunteer.

Opponents of the Soviet regime also thought that the armed confrontation would be short-lived. In Samara, the Socialist Revolutionary People's Army Committee of Members of the All-Russian constituent assembly At the beginning, she was recruited for only three months of service.

The order in this army was reminiscent of the times of Kerensky: the commanders had power only during the campaign and in battle, the rest of the time the “Comradely Disciplinary Court” operated.

Curiosities arose - among the officers there were no people willing to command the Samara volunteers. It was proposed to cast lots. Then a modest-looking lieutenant colonel, who had recently arrived in Samara, stood up and said: “Since there are no volunteers, then temporarily, until a senior is found, allow me to lead units against the Bolsheviks.”

This was Vladimir Kappel, later one of the best White Guard generals in Siberia.

After this, the core of the emerging army was no longer the Social Revolutionaries, but career officers who had not made it to the south of Russia and settled on the Volga. And a few weeks later, mobilization was carried out among the civilian population, and a month later - among the local officers.

The military registration and enlistment office system will celebrate its centenary in May

The influx of volunteers into the Red Army began to dry up. Seeing this, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, by a special decree, introduced universal military training workers (all-inclusive education). Every worker between the ages of 18 and 40, without interruption from his main job, had to complete a military training course within 96 hours, register as a person liable for military service and, at the first call of the Soviet government, join the ranks of the Red Army.

But there were fewer and fewer people willing to join its ranks. Even the proclaimed shock week of the creation of the Red Army under the slogan “The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger!” failed. from February 17 to 23, 1918. And the government, having temporarily put aside the slogan of “world revolution” and raised the old regime word “fatherland” to its shield, quickly moved to the forced formation of an army.

On May 29, 1918, a “forced” (as written in the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee) recruitment into the Red Army of persons aged 18 to 40 years was announced, and a network of military commissariats was created to implement this decree. By the way, the system of military registration and enlistment offices turned out to be so perfect that it still exists to this day.

The election of commanders was abolished, an appointment system was introduced command staff of those who had military training or performed well in battles. The V All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted a resolution “On the construction of the Red Army,” which spoke of the need for centralized control and revolutionary iron discipline in the troops.

The congress demanded that the Red Army be built using the experience of the old military, although it seemed to many that there was no place for former “gold diggers” in the army of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Lenin insisted that a regular army without military science it cannot be built, and it can only be learned from military specialists.

The date February 23rd appeared by chance, but it was mythologized

The Red Army did not win any victories on this day in 1918. Therefore, there are a variety of different versions on this matter. For example, that the date was set based on a call published on that day in the Pravda newspaper for workers, soldiers and peasants to come out to defend the Soviet Republic from German shock battalions, called in the appeal “German White Guards.”

February 23, 1918. A still from a Soviet filmstrip showing a battle that never happened. “The timing of the celebration of the anniversary of the Red Army on February 23 is quite random and difficult to explain and does not coincide with historical dates"- admitted Klim Voroshilov in 1933

However, according to the ideological myth propagated in the 1930s and 40s, on February 23, 1918, the first, barely formed detachments of Red Army soldiers stopped the German offensive near Pskov and Narva. These supposedly “severe battles” became the Red Army’s baptism of fire.

In fact, after Trotsky actually thwarted the first attempt peace talks with the Germans and declared that Soviet Russia was ending the war, demobilizing the army, but not signing peace, the Germans regarded this as an automatic “termination of the truce” and launched an offensive along the entire Eastern Front.

By the evening of February 23, 1918, they were 55 km from Pskov and more than 170 km from Narva. No battles on this day were recorded in either German or Russian archives.

Pskov was occupied by the Germans on February 24. And on February 25, they stopped the offensive in this direction: on the night of February 24, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR accepted the German peace terms and immediately reported this to the German government. On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed.

Narva, the second city that had long been featured as the site of the heroic victory of the Red Army, was taken by the Germans without a fight at all. The Red Navy men of Dybenko and the Hungarian internationalists Bela Kun, who were supposed to defend it, fearing encirclement, fled to Yamburg, and then further to Gatchina. Although after the entry into force of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the Germans (who had many own problems) themselves stopped on the Narva-Pskov line and made no attempts to pursue the enemy.

For several years, no memorable date was remembered at all - until January 27, 1922, when the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR ordered to celebrate February 23 as the Day of the Red Army and Navy.

Klim Voroshilov himself in 1933, at a ceremonial meeting dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Red Army, admitted: « By the way, the timing of the celebration of the anniversary of the Red Army on February 23 is quite random and difficult to explain and does not coincide with historical dates.”

The statement about the “victory at Pskov and Narva” first appeared in a material published in Izvestia on February 16, 1938 under the heading “To the 20th anniversary of the Red Army and the Navy. Theses for propagandists." And in September of the same year it was enshrined in the chapter of “A Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” published in Pravda. At the same time " Short course edited by Stalin, does not mention Lenin’s January decree on the creation of the Red Army, issued in 1918, at all.

Later, in his order of February 23, 1942, Stalin explained what happened on that day 24 years ago: “The young units of the Red Army, who entered the war for the first time, completely(italics mine - S.V.) defeated the German invaders near Pskov and Narva on February 23, 1918. That is why February 23, 1918 was declared the birthday of the Red Army.”

No one dared to object to this. It was this version that was included in school and university textbooks. And only on January 18, 2006, the State Duma of the Russian Federation decided to exclude from official description holiday in the law the words “Victory Day of the Red Army over the Kaiser’s troops of Germany (1918).”

The Russian Civil War was in many ways similar to the American one.

At the beginning of the American War of 1861-1865, the North and South also recruited volunteers into their armies. Both began mobilization only after a series of fierce battles, when it became clear that the war would not last a few months, but much longer. Johnny (as the opponents called the southerners) did it in April 1862, the Yankees (northerners) - in July of the same year.

Don Troiani. An Illustrated History of the American Civil War. That civil war has many parallels with ours.

Mobilization into the Red Army was announced on May 29, 1918. By this time, Denikin’s regiments had captured Yekaterinodar, the rebellion of the 40,000-strong Czechoslovak corps cut off the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia from the European part of the RSFSR, and Entente troops occupied Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The opponents of the Soviet Republic also switched to the mobilization principle when they realized that volunteers were not making up for losses.

The ideological attitudes of the opposing sides were also similar among Russians and Americans - whites, like the southerners, advocated the preservation of “traditional values,” while the reds, like the northerners, advocated for active changes and universal equality.

At the same time, one of the parties to the conflict refused shoulder straps - in Russia they were not worn by Red Army soldiers, in the USA - by soldiers and officers of the Confederacy opposing the federal government.

Tankers of a separate Tank Regiment of the Red Army against the background of their combat vehicles

Denikin’s men, like the soldiers of General Robert Edward Lee, despite the enemy’s superiority in manpower, for a long time inflicted defeat after defeat on the enemy, fighting in the Suvorov style - “not with numbers, but with skill.” One of their main trump cards at first was the advantage in cavalry.

However, the revolutionary forces learned quickly. And the superiority in weapons and ammunition was initially on their side, since (again, by analogy with the USA) they had industrial centers with the largest weapons factories and military warehouses. In Russia, Moscow, Petrograd, Tula, Bryansk, and Nizhny Novgorod were under Bolshevik control.

Like the southerners, the White Guards were supplied by Great Britain and France, but this assistance was clearly insufficient, which ultimately led to the strategic defeat of both Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Denikin’s AFSR.

There was another “argument” in favor of the Red Army: it was supported by part of the officer corps of the former tsarist army.

Tsarist officers fought for both the whites and the reds

The core of the Red Army became former officers, generals, military officials and military doctors, who, along with other categories of the population, began to be actively drafted into the Armed Forces of the RSFSR, although they belonged to the “hostile exploiting class.”

Lenin and Trotsky insisted on this. In 1919, at the VIII Congress of the RCP(b), a heated discussion took place regarding the involvement of military specialists: according to the opposition, “bourgeois” military experts could not be appointed to command posts. But Lenin urged: “You, being associated with this partisanship through your experience... do not want to understand that now the period is different. Now the regular army should be in the foreground, we must move on to regular army with military specialists." And he convinced.

However, the decision itself was made earlier. Back on March 19, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars decided to widely recruit military experts into the Red Army, and on March 26, the Supreme Military Council issued an order to abolish the elective principle in the army, which opened up access to the army former generals and officers.

By the summer of 1918, several thousand officers voluntarily joined the Red Army. Among them were the later famous Soviet military leaders Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, Boris Shaposhnikov, Alexander Egorov, Dmitry Karbyshev.

The longer the civil war went on, the more numerous the Red Army became, the greater the need for experienced military personnel. The principle of voluntariness no longer suited the Bolsheviks, and on June 29, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on mobilization former officers and officials.

Until the end of the civil war, 48.5 thousand officers and generals, as well as 10.3 thousand military officials and about 14 thousand military doctors, were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army. In addition, up to 14 thousand officers who served in the white and national armies were enrolled in the Red Army until 1921, including the future marshals of the Soviet Union Leonid Govorov and Ivan Bagramyan.

In 1918, military experts made up 75% of the command staff of the Red Army. And their total number in the Red Army ultimately exceeded 72 thousand people, amounting to approximately 43% of the total officer corps of the tsarist army.

On different positions, including key ones, 639 people served (including 252 generals) from among the officers of the General Staff, who at all times and in all armies are considered the military elite.

And the first commander-in-chief of all the Armed Forces of the RSFSR was the former General Staff, Colonel Joachim Vatsetis. And then he was replaced in this post by former General Staff Colonel Sergei Kamenev.

For comparison, during the Civil War, about 100 thousand officers, generals and military specialists fought in the ranks of the anti-Bolshevik formations, primarily in the Volunteer Army. That is, approximately 57% of the total number of tsarist military personnel. Of these, 750 are General Staff officers. More than in the Red Army, of course, but the difference is not so fundamental.

Detachments and penal units were introduced by Trotsky to strengthen discipline

Leon Trotsky is rightfully considered one of the founders of the Red Army, who during the Civil War was People's Commissar for Military and maritime affairs, Chairman of the Supreme Military Council and head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR.

Despite the fact that at the beginning of the bloody civil strife, Lev Davydovich had no military academies behind him, he knew firsthand what the army and war were.

L. D. Trotsky in the Red Army in 1918

During Balkan Wars in 1912-1913 (during which the Balkan Union - Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Romania - conquered Ottoman Empire almost all of its European territories) Trotsky, as a war correspondent for the liberal newspaper Kyiv Mysl, was in the combat zone and even wrote a number of articles that became serious information about what was happening for residents of many countries. And in the First world war he, as a special correspondent for the same “Kievskaya Mysl”, was on Western Front.

In addition, it was under his direct leadership as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet that the Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd in October 1917 and repelled General Krasnov’s attempts to take the city by storm. The latter circumstance was subsequently noted even by his future worst enemy Stalin.

“We can say with confidence that the party owes, first of all and mainly, to Comrade. Trotsky,” he noted.

On March 14, 1918, Trotsky received the post of People's Commissar for Military Affairs, on March 28 - Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, in April - people's commissar on maritime affairs, and on September 6 - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR.

He consistently advocates the widespread use of military experts in the Red Army, and to control them he introduces a system of political commissars and... hostages. The officers who were accepted into the service knew that their families would be shot if they went over to the enemy. Trotsky’s order declared: “let the defectors know that they are simultaneously betraying their own families: fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, wives and children.”

Convinced that the army, built on the principles of universal equality and voluntariness, turned out to be ineffective, it was Trotsky who insisted on its reorganization, restoration of mobilization, unity of command, insignia, uniform form, military salutes and parades.

And of course, the energetic and active “demon of the revolution” set about strengthening revolutionary discipline, establishing it with the most severe methods.

With his submission, on June 13, 1918, a decree on the restoration was adopted death penalty, canceled in March 1917. And already in June 1918, Rear Admiral Alexey Shchastny, who saved the Baltic Fleet from the Germans during Ice trek in 1918. He did not admit his guilt, but was sentenced to death based on the testimony of Trotsky, who stated at the trial that Shastny claimed to be a naval dictator.

Penal units (which were initially called “discredited units”) first appeared in the Red Army not under Stalin in 1942, but in 1919 - by order of Trotsky. And the units that were officially called barrier detachments were back in 1918.

On August 11, 1918, Trotsky signed the famous order No. 18, in which it was written: “If any unit retreats without permission, the unit commissar will be shot first, the commander second.” And near Sviyazhsk, when the 2nd Petrograd Regiment voluntarily retreated from the front line, after the battle all the fugitives were arrested, tried by a military tribunal, and the commander, commissar and part of the regiment’s soldiers were shot in front of the line.

As a result, in the first seven months of 1919 alone, one and a half million Red Army soldiers were detained, of whom almost 100 thousand were recognized as malicious deserters, and 55 thousand were sent to penal companies and battalions.

Despite all the draconian measures, soldiers, often forcibly mobilized, continued to desert at the first opportunity, and relatives hid the fugitives.

Therefore, in one of his next orders, Trotsky provided for severe punishments not only for deserters, but also for the persons harboring them. In particular, the order stated: “For harboring deserters, those responsible are subject to execution... Houses in which deserters are discovered will be burned.”

“You cannot build an army without repression. It is impossible to lead masses of people to death without having the death penalty in the command’s arsenal,” asserted the People’s Commissar of Military Affairs of the RSFSR.

These measures made it possible to put an end to partisanship in the army and, ultimately, achieve a turning point in the war with the whites.

The Red Army failed to become a factor in the world revolution

In the logic of the revolution, such a victory should have been a prelude to new revolutionary wars, and ultimately, global changes. And it seemed that there was a real opportunity for the development of this scenario.

On April 25, 1920, the Polish army, equipped with funds from France, invaded Soviet Ukraine and captured Kyiv on May 6.

Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity. The story of thousands and thousands of prisoners turned out to be tragic

On May 14, a successful counter-offensive began by the troops of the Western Front under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and on May 26 - by the South-Western Front, commanded by Alexander Egorov. In mid-July they approached the borders of Poland.

And then the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) set a new strategic task for the command of the Red Army: to enter the territory of Poland with fighting, take its capital and create conditions for the proclamation of Soviet power in the country. According to the statements of the party leaders themselves, this was an attempt to advance the “red bayonet” deeper into Europe and thereby “stir up the Western European proletariat”, push it to support the world revolution, one of the main hopes of the Bolsheviks in the first years of the existence of the RSFSR.

Tukhachevsky’s order to the troops of the Western Front No. 1423 dated July 2, 1920 read: “The fate of the world revolution is being decided in the West. Through the corpse of Belopa Poland lies the path to a world fire. We will bring happiness to working humanity on bayonets!”

It all ended in disaster. Already in August, the troops of the Western Front were completely defeated near Warsaw and rolled back. Of the five armies, only the third survived, which managed to retreat; the rest were destroyed. More than 120 thousand Red Army soldiers were captured, and another 40 thousand soldiers ended up in East Prussia in internment camps. Up to half of them died from hunger, disease, torture and execution.

In October, the parties concluded a truce, and in March 1921, a peace treaty. Under its terms, a significant part of the lands in western Ukraine and Belarus with a population of 10 million people went to Poland.

Internal factors also came into force. The white movement was defeated, but the peasantry entered into a desperate struggle, giving rise to its own insurgent movement. It was a protest against the policy of food requisition and the ban on free market trade. In addition, the impoverished country simply could not clothe and feed the more than five million Red Army.

From the field to Moscow (along with news about peasant uprisings) there were alarming messages: discipline was falling, the Red Army soldiers, due to the famine that had begun in the country and the deterioration of supplies, were robbing the population, and the commanders were gradually beginning to return the old order to the army, even to the point of massacre. The party and the top army authorities decided to correct the mistake and prohibited the demobilization of communists, but in response, what Trotsky called spiritual demobilization began: Red Army soldiers began to leave the RCP(b) en masse.

I had to urgently look for a solution peasant question(punitive measures in combination with NEP, new economic policy). And in parallel - the reduction in the composition of the Red Army and the preparation military reform. Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic Trotsky wrote: “In December 1920, the era of widespread demobilization and reduction in the size of the army, compression and restructuring of its entire apparatus opened. This period lasted from January 1921 to January 1923. The army and navy were reduced during this time from 5,300,000 to 610,000 souls.”

Finally, in March 1924, the decisive stage of military reform began. On April 1, 1924, Frunze was appointed chief and commissar of the Red Army Headquarters. Tukhachevsky and Shaposhnikov became his assistants. The limit on the permanent strength of the Red Army was set at 562 thousand people, not counting the variable (assigned) composition.

For all births ground forces a single two-year service life was determined, for the air fleet - 3 years and navy– 4 years. Conscription for active service took place once a year, in the fall, and the conscription age was raised to 21 years.

The next stage of the radical restructuring of the Red Army began in 1934 and continued until 1941 - taking into account the experience of military operations at Khalkhin Gol and Finnish war. The Revolutionary Military Council was disbanded, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council was renamed General Staff, and the People's Commissariat of Military and Naval Affairs turned into the People's Commissariat of Defense. The idea of ​​an imminent “world revolution” was no longer remembered.

The Red Army is not the ancestor Soviet Army, especially the RF Armed Forces. The Red Army was built on completely different principles, and the spirit of the Red Army itself is different from all known military formations. This never happened before or after her.

Red means best

Speaking modern language, The Red Army is an international transcontinental supranational combat corporation of workers and peasants, which does not recognize borders and limits. Its technical and scientific base is any country it occupies. Its spiritual support is powerful agitation on the theme of justice, freedom, equality and brotherhood.

Anyone could join the ranks of the Red Army. Only one, but serious, condition was set: each candidate must be “class-full-fledged,” that is, from workers or peasants. Officials, merchants, clergy are class alien people. Simply put, enemies. The motto of the Red Army was “The rifle is not a burden, but a privilege of the ruling class.”

The Red Army was led by "red commanders". This is the title that appeared on the diplomas of the first graduates of military schools. Generals and officers did not approach the Red Army within range of a cannon shot. As the revolutionaries aptly remarked, “the generals will ruin everything and return to the old drill.” That’s exactly what happened in the end.

Before the advent of the machine gun, walking in close formation, in “boxes,” had a practical benefit - the density of fire increased. Automatic weapons forced the rules to change. Since then, the attacks have been carried out separately, the soldiers stay away from each other so as not to be cut off by one machine-gun burst. However, the drill continues to this day - the art of walking gracefully in front of your superiors is valued almost more than combat experience.

But in the Red Army they did without superiors - old military personnel (at least they tried), relying on the voluntary principle of recruitment in full accordance with the spirit of the revolution. This is important. The most conscientious soldier is always a volunteer. Conscripts think more about home than about how to win. Service is a burden for them, especially when there is a war.

The rest of the adult population must undergo basic military training, and then go home with their weapons. In case of war, people would gather into regiments at their place of residence, these units would join the Red Army and away they go.

We must admit: this form of military organization suits the mentality and vastness of our country.

During the Civil War, the Red Army received excellent training - the war was maneuverable. Units and formations operated on vast expanses, went behind enemy lines, made surprise raids, and lured them with false retreats. There were no traces of any fronts like in the First World War.

As a result, the Red Army veterans received excellent combat experience, perhaps the best that existed on Earth at that time. The Red Army was given the opportunity to become the force that would forever change the face of the planet.

The beginning of a long journey

As of October 25, 1917, the troops of the Kaiser's Germany were opposed by the Russian army, consisting of 6,388,126 people. In the spare parts infantry regiments there were another 1,346,260 people. In total, from September 1914 to the revolutionary year 1917, 14,083,606 people were mobilized into the Russian army. This is a colossal mass. And all of them, with the exception of the officers, were eager to go home from the trench.

With this in mind, the Bolsheviks announced a reformatting of the armed forces. The appeals of that time said: “The socialist army from top to bottom will be built on elective principles, on the principles of comradely mutual respect and discipline.”

Before being transferred to the reserve, a person could choose: to go home or join the Red Army. Some units of the tsarist army, after a meeting of the soldiers' committee, became units of the Red Army. The Volyn, Lithuanian and Kexholm Guards regiments were among the first to join the Red Army. Air Force reorganized and became Red air fleet in full force.

But at first they were reluctant to sign up for the Red Army. On Southwestern Front, for example, only 10 thousand people. In parallel, new units of the Red Army were formed in the rear units and also with relative success. 100 people signed up in the Izmailovsky Regiment, only 8 in the Petrograd Regiment, 300 in the Sixth Latvian Regiment, 500 people in the Tukumsky Regiment, but the First Reserve Battalion joined the Red Army completely.

According to the accounting department of the All-Russian Collegium, at the end of February 1918, 21,333 volunteers in Petrograd and 15,483 in Moscow joined the Red Army.

Thus, despite the political bacchanalia in Russia, units of the tsarist army in front of the German trenches were gradually replaced by units of the Red Army. No one was going to surrender the country to the Germans, and the speeches of those days were full of optimism: under the banner of October, a new army was being created at the front “from proven volunteer revolutionaries”, ready to remain in positions and defend the revolution to the end.

Thus, old army was not abolished, but supplemented by the Red Guard and became the Red Army. Even old commanders remained in place if they corresponded class principle selection.

At first, the General Staff developed a plan, according to which the 159 divisions at the front were supposed to be reduced to 100 full-blooded ones, withdrawn to the rear as far as possible larger number unnecessary military units and divisions, and then form new army of volunteer soldiers - 36 divisions of ten thousand people each. At the same time, it was planned to prepare a material and technical base with warehouses for weapons and equipment in the Moscow or Kazan military district.

But the Germans quickly calculated the situation and took countermeasures. Everyone knows about the general retreat of the Reds; this story is not worth repeating.

In response, Lenin and his comrades decided to send 300 thousand volunteers to the front and mix them with soldiers and sailors of the former tsarist army in order to use the Red Army soldiers as cement for welding together decaying parts. But they didn’t have time to do this either - the Brest Peace Treaty was signed.

Point six of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty required complete demobilization Russian army, including those units that were created by the Bolsheviks. The government began demobilization, but in parallel the party accelerated the creation of new combat units of the Red Army. General training of the population in the use of weapons began, and national units began to be created on the outskirts: Armenians, Georgians, Latvians, Azerbaijanis - all formed their own units and joined the ranks of the Red Army.

Finally, following the model of the Red Army units, the International Legion for foreigners was created. According to the documents, volunteers speaking English, French, German and other languages ​​were supposed to serve there. In many ways, he personified the key to the success of the Red Army as a whole.

From Chinese to French

As of 1917, the following were in Russian captivity: Germany - 165,000 soldiers, 22,082 officers; Austria-Hungary - 1,670,395 soldiers, 54,146 officers; Türkiye and Bulgaria - 50,200 soldiers, 950 officers. Tsarist Russia was literally dotted with prisoner of war camps. They were used as labor in industrial production and in agriculture from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Perm, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. The prisoners built the Murmansk railway. They dug canals on the Don. They worked in the mines of the Urals and Donbass and in the military factories of Izhevsk.

Inhuman living conditions, systematic malnutrition, disease, humiliation - all this turned the captured foreigners into inveterate Bolsheviks-Leninists. The communists didn’t even have to campaign for Soviet power - everyone ran to enroll in the Red Army themselves.

On the eve of the October Revolution, prisoners of war began to form Red Guard detachments and workers' squads. For example, a detachment of prisoners of war and Russian railway workers from Serpukhov stormed the Kursky railway station in Moscow and advanced on the Kremlin.

In Moscow, at the Goujon plant (now Hammer and Sickle), Hungarian prisoners of war were engaged in revolutionary work. They also formed their own detachment and also took part in the storming of the Moscow Kremlin. In Petrograd in October 1917, the so-called internationalist warriors also fought for Soviet power. A Yugoslav detachment operated in Kyiv, remembered for the battles at Cherkassy station and for Dnepropetrovsk. In the summer of 1918, the Hungarian Janos Geiger, at the head of a battalion of internationalists, suppressed the rebellion of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Yaroslavl. An Italian company fought in the defense of Tsaritsino in the fall of 1918; another company of Italians was part of the 2nd International Regiment of the Soviet Division. The 60th Reserve Battalion of the Caucasian Front consisted of Germans.

Not exactly foreigners, but still: out of 600 thousand Poles - servicemen of the old tsarist army, almost all joined the ranks of the Red Army. The Warsaw, Mazowiecki, Lublin, Grodno, Vilna, and Suwalki regiments fought as part of the Red Army. Even a Division of the Polish Red Artillery appeared.

This is what concerns Europeans. But in Tsarist Russia, hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Korean guest workers also “lived and worked under the yoke of capitalists.” They willingly fought for the “Hundan” (red party) and for the “Chondan” (party of the poor), that is, the Bolsheviks. Chinese troops took part in suppressing the Socialist Revolutionary uprisings, took part in battles with the White Finns, and fought in Northwestern Front, fought against Kornilov and Kaledin in the south. Newspapers were published especially for them. Chinese, a lot of propaganda materials. The leaders of the Chinese volunteers were received personally by Lenin.

There were also mixed parts. For example, the 222nd Samara International Infantry Regiment of the 25th Chapaev Rifle Division fought near Ufa. Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Austrians, Poles and Chinese served in this regiment.

In total, according to the most rough estimates, about 500 thousand foreign volunteers from all over the globe fought for Soviet power in the ranks of the Red Army. Newspapers, leaflets, proclamations and other propaganda materials were produced for each nation.

At that time, no one could get ahead of the communists in their propaganda skills. So, on the Western Front, everyone knew that at six in the evening, gentlemen, German officers departed from the front to the rear - to apartments or to relax in restaurants, theaters and brothels, and soldiers and non-commissioned officers remained in the trenches. Then Volga Germans They dressed in German uniforms and went straight into the trenches - they campaigned against the war and for the power of the working people. By morning, the Kaiser’s officers risked seeing in front of them not a Wehrmacht unit, but a “German detachment of the International Red Army.”

This, along with the international volunteer staff, was one of the secrets of the victories of the Red Army. They never stormed the enemy head-on - to begin with, they sent local scouts and propagandists. They scrupulously collected information: how society lives, what problems it experiences, what it is dissatisfied with at the moment. Then propaganda materials were printed - the Bolshevik propaganda was always of a “top of the day” nature and focused on a specific average person in a specific place. When society began to lean towards the Bolsheviks, then they appeared as liberators with their squadrons, guns and tanks.

The Red Army was created not just for victory in a single country. It was intended to liberate the whole world from the oppression of the “exploiters”. And first of all, the “shackles of slavery” had to be thrown off by the proletarians of the European continent, including British Empire with its colonies.

The end of a dream

However, war and volunteerism played a cruel joke on the Red Army. From the very beginning, the most conscientious soldiers, seasoned revolutionaries, the salt of the Bolshevik party, came under bullets and died. In bloody battles, the ranks of heroes rapidly thinned.

Yes, the Soviet state not only survived - it returned almost the entire pre-revolutionary territory, for which the Red Army is greatly credited. But the Red Army itself, its spirit, courage, creativity - melted away.

Opportunists, thieves, and morally unstable citizens appeared in the army. There were almost no quality fighters left, and those who survived the battles and campaigns no longer made any difference. Trotsky had to accept into the Red Army a fair contingent of former generals and officers of the tsarist army, who not only occupied almost all command posts, but also began to introduce the usual procedures, about which ordinary Red Army soldiers continually complained.

Following this, forced conscription was introduced, and a little later it came to the acceptance of former White Guard units into the Red Army. And gradually everything returned to the old track.

Perhaps the concentrate of conscious Red Army revolutionaries should have been diluted from the very beginning with the general mass of conscripts, adding more agitation to this pot. However, they realized this too late.

Around 1925, the same Red Army disappeared. Chinese regiments and brigades left for the Middle Kingdom. Czechs, Slovaks, Finns, and Germans flocked home. Jaroslav Hasek returned to his Prague, finished writing a novel about Schweik and drank himself to death in melancholy and sadness.

Many people from the International Red Army took leading positions in the communist parties in their countries. But this was no longer an armored fist of the Red Army, but a finger. When Stalin returned shoulder straps, ranks and other “White Guard remnants,” he only recorded what had already happened a long time ago. I put an end to the obituary of the most beautiful, brilliant and invincible Red Army.

There is a widespread belief that all the peoples of the USSR in equally forged victory over fascism, and one cannot single out or belittle any individual of them. However, without in any way questioning this principle, we note that it should not limit studies of state policy regarding the nationalities of the USSR. Exactly Soviet state divided peoples into more and less loyal to him, as well as into more and less prepared for action in a modern war due to historically established stage differences in their cultural development and level of civilization.[С-BLOCK]

For fear of disloyalty towards the USSR, during the Great Patriotic War, citizens of the USSR of nationalities that had their own states besides the USSR (primarily states that fought with the USSR or potential opponents): Germans, Japanese, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Bulgarians, Turks, as well as Greeks, Koreans, Chinese. From them, rear units were formed, involved in various, mainly military construction works.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and we couldn’t do without them here either. Representatives of these nationalities are found among those who fought and died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, among those awarded orders and medals of the USSR. As a rule, these were volunteers accepted into the active army for reasons of confidence in their political loyalty (membership in the party, Komsomol, etc.). [C-BLOCK]

It is curious that in this list there are no Slovaks, Croats and Italians, whose states also fought with the USSR, as well as Spaniards. The fact is that the first two nationalities were considered in the USSR as those whose states were occupied by the Nazis. In the USSR in 1942, a Czechoslovak military unit was formed (first a brigade, at the end of the war - a corps). The Croats did not separate from the other Yugoslavs. The Italians and Spaniards who accepted citizenship of the USSR could only be convinced anti-fascists. There were especially many Spaniards in the USSR who emigrated after the defeat of the Republic in civil war 1936-1939 They were subject to conscription general principles; in addition, there was a very strong influx of volunteers among them.

During the war, for the same reasons of political unreliability, as well as due to the insufficiently high combat effectiveness of the mass of conscripts as a whole, the conscription of representatives of a number of other nationalities was postponed. Thus, on October 13, 1943, the State Defense Committee (GKO) decided to exempt from the conscription of youth born in 1926, which began on November 15, 1943, representatives of indigenous nationalities of all the union republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Kazakhstan, as well as all autonomous republics And autonomous regions North Caucasus. The next day, the State Defense Committee decided to begin their conscription from the following November, 1944, and into the reserve, and not into the active army. [С-BLOCK]

Often these decisions are incorrectly interpreted as ending the conscription of these nationalities altogether. However, they clearly state that the deferment of conscription applies only to youth of the specified year of birth. It did not apply to all older ages.

The conscription among the indigenous peoples took place under rather ambiguous conditions. Far North, Siberia and the Far East. Before the adoption of the USSR law on universal military duty dated September 3, 1939, their representatives were not drafted into the armed forces. In the fall of 1939, their first conscription took place. In some sources you can find statements that from the first days of the Great Patriotic War, representatives of the indigenous peoples of the North began to be called up to the front. This is contradicted by the decree of the State Defense Committee, issued in the first weeks after the start of the war, on the liberation of the indigenous peoples of these regions of the RSFSR from conscription. True, there are no exact indications of the date and number of such a resolution. Searching for it by name did not produce results. However, not all the names of the State Defense Committee resolutions for 1941 have been published.[С-BLOCK]

The same authors report that in a number of cases, the conscription of the indigenous peoples of the North was approached formally, and there were numerous cases of desertion of conscripts. In addition, in Nenets national district In the Arkhangelsk region in January 1942, reindeer transport battalions were formed. There are indications of similar formations in other regions of the North. The names of many representatives of the indigenous peoples of the North who fought in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War and were awarded orders and medals of the USSR are known. Among them are infantrymen, snipers, pilots, etc.

From all this it is legitimate to conclude that the general compulsory conscription into the active army among small peoples North, Siberia and the Far East - Sami, Nenets, Khanty, Mansi, Evenks, Selkups, Dolgans, Evens, Chukchi, Koryaks, Yukaghirs, Nanais, Orochs, etc. - was not carried out (although amateur actions of this kind on the part of some local leaders cannot be ruled out). However, in a number national districts From the indigenous population, on the basis of compulsory conscription, auxiliary rear units were formed, like the already mentioned reindeer transport battalions, which were used in the specific conditions of the theater of military operations - on the Karelian and Volkhov fronts. The absence of compulsory conscription was due, in addition to the insufficient level of education for modern warfare, the nomadic way of life of these peoples, the difficulties of their military registration. [С-BLOCK]

At the same time, the volunteer movement among representatives of the indigenous nationalities of the North was encouraged in every possible way. Volunteers were selected at military registration and enlistment offices before being sent to the front. Preference was given to those who met the following criteria: knowledge of the Russian language, presence of at least primary education, good health. Priority was also given to party and Komsomol activists from among the indigenous peoples. The sniper qualities of professional taiga hunters were highly valued. All this created a fairly powerful influx of this category of Soviet citizens into the active army, and especially into various auxiliary units, despite the fact that its representatives were not subject to mandatory sending to the front.

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