Get ready for war
A well-known Latin proverb says: Si vis pacem, para bellum, i.e. If you want peace, prepare for war. However, in the case of a totalitarian state such as Soviet Russia, later the Soviet Union, it might be said that the Kremlin leadership’s slogan ought to have been: You want war, get ready for war. The creation of the Red Army was the first step of the Soviets on the path of conquering Europe and the world and spreading communism to the occupied territories.
From revolution to conquest
With the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks began to take power over the territories of the former Russian empire. The Red Guard, already in place since the previous revolution – the February Revolution of a few months earlier – was erected to guard the new “order”. However, this was not an armed force in the full sense of the word, but merely a paramilitary organisation, and one with only 200,000 members. Emerging Soviet Russia had to try for more if it was going to have any chance of surviving the revolutionary turmoil. Of this fact, Lenin and his associates were well aware.
The first step towards strengthening Russia militarily was the decision of the Council of People’s Commissars on the 28th of January 1918. Under this council, the existing Red Guard troops were transformed into the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (Рабоче-крестьянская Красная армия; RKKA). It was initially a volunteer formation and, additionally, devoid of military ranks (a situation that could not last long, as it led to various difficulties and confusion). However, it is not the 28th of January but the 23rd of February that is recognised as the founding day of the Red Army. It was on the 23rd of February that the Red Army (since 1946 “Soviet”) and Navy Day was celebrated in the Soviet Union, and in modern Russia, the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland.
Why the 23rd of February?
On the 23rd of February 1918, the mass intake of volunteers into the ranks of the newly formed Red Army began. The Soviet armed forces grew in strength, above all in total numbers, reaching 2 million men by July 1921. In the history of the Russian Civil War, the Polish-Bolshevik War, the Second World War, as well as other armed conflicts in which the Soviet Union was involved, the Red Army went down in history not only as a formidable war machine capable of threatening any opponent (primarily down to the sheer force of number of soldiers), but also as part of the Soviet terror machine. Looting, murder, rape, arson…these were common daily “activities” for Red Army soldiers. Poland, through whose territory the Soviet army marched several times, also establishing its bases here, alongside other things, knew of such activities only too well. Despite the fact that the Red Army was liquidated in 1992, we see to this day Soviet flags hanging from Russian tanks, and the identifying mark of the Russian Air and Space Forces is…a red star.