Red Guards () were

paramilitary A paramilitary is a military that is not a part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934. Overview Though a paramilitary is, by definiti ...

volunteer formations for the "protection of the

soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

power", as part of the Bolshevik Military Organizations. The Red Guards consisted primarily of urban workers,

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...

s, cossacks and partially of

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a Conscription, conscripted or volunteer Enlisted rank, enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, a warrant officer, or an Officer (armed forces), officer. Etymology The wo ...

s and sailors. Red Guards were a transitional military force of the collapsing

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

and the base formations of

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

during the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

and the first months of the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

. Most of them were formed in the time frame of the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

of 1917, and some of the units were reorganized into the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

during 1918. The Red Guards formations were organized across most of the former

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, including territories outside the contemporary

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such as

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, and others. They were not centralized and were formed by decision of a local

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

and local soviet members. By fighting to protect and extend the power of the Soviets, they aided the creation of a new state that (according to its original conception) would give "all power to the soviets": the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Overview

Composing the majority of the urban population, they were the main strike force of several radically oriented socialist political factions. Red Guard units were created in March 1917 at manufacturing companies by Factory and Plant Committees and by some communist-inclined party cells (

, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, others). The Red Guards formations were based on the worker's strike forces of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Lenin gave a following evaluation of the phenomenon: A number of other militarized formations created during the February Revolution, such as "people's militia" (народная милиция), created by the Russian Provisional Government, "squads of self-defence" (отряды самообороны), "committees of public security" (комитеты общественной безопасности), "workers' squads" (рабочие дружины) were gradually unified into the Red Guards.

Creation

On March 26, 1917, the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDRP(b) published a resolution "About the Provisional Government" since then the term, Red Guards, received the widest usage. The biggest centralized Red Guards formations were created in Petrograd and

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. Soon thereafter a series of attempts took place to legalize those formations. On April 14, 1917, the Moscow Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (

) (RSDLP(b)) adopted a resolution for the creation of its Red Guard. On April 17 in Petrograd, the council of workers' squad's representatives created a commission for the formation of workers' guards and on April 29 in the '' Pravda'' newspaper has appeared a draft of its statute. The Vyborg raion (district) council of Petrograd on April 28 declared to transform the squads of workers' and factory militia into the Red Guard squads. On May 17 the

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council of workers' representatives (deputies) established a commission in the creation of Red Guard squads. A big role in the creation of the Red Guard squads played the Factory committees. Before April 1917, seventeen Russian cities created Red Guard squads, which by June increased in numbers to 24. Red Guards were the base for the forming of the Red Army. Therefore, the term is often used as just another English name for the Red Army in reference to the times of the Russian Revolution and

. In Petrograd, the head of the Red Guards (30,000 personnel) was Konstantin Yurenev. At the time of the

, the Russian Red Guards had 200,000 personnel. After the revolution, the Red Guards performed some of the functions of the regular army, between the time the new Soviet government began demobilizing the old Russian military and the time the Red Army was created in January 1918.

Organization

During the revolution, training of the Red Guards was arranged by the Military Organization of the RSDLP ( Bolshevik Military Organizations). Enlistment was voluntary, but required recommendations from

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

s, Bolshevik party units or other public organizations. The military training of workers was often performed without disengagement from the work at plants. There were both infantry and mounted regiments. At different places, the organization was nonuniform in terms of subordination, headcount, degree of military training. This state was often called "half- partisan". While successful at local conflicts (e.g., with

ataman Ataman (variants: ''otaman'', ''wataman'', ''vataman''; ; ) was a title of Cossack and haidamak leaders of various kinds. In the Russian Empire, the term was the official title of the supreme military commanders of the Cossack armies. The Ukra ...

Alexander Dutov in Orenburg guberniya), this loose organization was inefficient when combating larger, organized forces of the White Army. Therefore, when the creation of the Red Army was decreed, Red Guards had become the Army Reserve and the base for the formation of regular military detachments.

Overview

Creation

Organization

References

Further reading