The Red Army of Workers and Peasants was the official name given to the army of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, to that of the Soviet Union .

The Red Army was created after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks recruited an armed force to fight the White Army, in the Russian civil war .

After its outstanding performance during World War II , the Red Army became the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces . As of January 1946, it took the official name of the Soviet Army , which existed until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Causes of the creation of the Red Army

When the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought the Bolsheviks to power, the new government had the Red Guard as its armed support . This was a militia made up of soldiers and armed workers , mostly led by non-commissioned officers. The soldiers who made up the Red Guard were men of communist affiliation who had rebelled against their officers, for which they had no military discipline.

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When the tsarist reaction provoked the outbreak of the Russian civil war in 1918, the Bolshevik hierarchy found it necessary to replace the Red Guard with a permanent and professionalized military force. The Council of People’s Commissars then created the Red Army, on January 28, 1918 . Its base was the Red Guard, to which it was tried to give an effective military organization, creating ranks and regulations and placing it under martial discipline.

On February 23, 1918, the Red Army had its first combat action against the German army, but 2 months later the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , which established the exit of Russia from the First World War . Thereafter the Red Army concentrated on fighting the White Army, made up of pro-Czarists and supported by Japan and 13 Western nations, including the United States, France, and Great Britain.

The Red Army was indoctrinated and ideologically oriented from its inception, as it was considered essential that the new military force be politically identified with the Bolshevik regime . This task fell to Leon Trotsky, who between 1918 and 1924 held the position of Commissar of the people for the war.

Trotsky considered it essential to have personnel knowledgeable in combat tactics and experienced in command, for this reason he allowed former officers and non-commissioned officers of the Russian Imperial Army to join the Red Army. Who led the red army

The Red Army in World War II

At the beginning of the Second World War, the Red Army was weakened by the Great Purge carried out by the Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, between 1936 and 38. During this bloody purge of partisans, whose loyalty it distrusted, they were discharged and executed 3 marshals, 213 generals, and thousands of officers and NCOs.

During 1941 and 1942 the Germans took advantage of this weakness and the inexperience of the new Soviet generals to obtain great victories and reach the gates of Moscow. But the Red Army managed to recover and ended up being one of the decisive forces in the victory of the Allies over the Axis powers .

In the war operations on the eastern front, the Red Army took part in the bloodiest battles of the war ( Stalingrad , Kursk , etc.) and caused devastating damage to the forces of Nazi Germany , which deployed 75% of its forces in that front.

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The Red Army caused the majority of the total casualties of the German forces and destroyed much of their tanks. He was also the first to enter Berlin, in May 1945, after which Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered unconditionally.

The counterpart of his enormous war victory was the large number of casualties suffered during the war. It is estimated that the Red Army lost between 8 and 9 million men between 1941 and 1945.

Dissolution

From 1985 to 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reduce the financial weight of the armed forces in the economy of the Soviet Union. For this reason it slowly reduced the size of the army and in 1989 withdrew the troops that had invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

To prevent this and other reforms, in August 1991 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) launched a coup to depose Gorbachev. In that attempt, the commanders of various army regiments sent tanks to Moscow, although the coup was ultimately unsuccessful .

On December 8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine formally dissolved the Soviet Union and later constituted the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). During the following months, the efforts made to transform the Soviet Army into the CIS Army failed, as the forces stationed in the various ex-Soviet republics became the military forces of their respective governments .

By the end of 1992, the remnants of the Soviet Army in the former republics had already been dissolved. For their part, the military forces that were stationed in Eastern Europe returned to Russia between 1992 and 1994.

In mid-March 1992, Russian President Borís Yeltsin appointed himself as defense minister of his government, a position from which he forged the new Russian Armed Forces . Who led the red army

The last vestiges of the old Soviet command structure were dissolved in June 1993 to facilitate military cooperation between the armies of the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.