These pages are aimed to provide information in an accessible form for people wishing to game the Red Army.

If material is heavily covered in easy to find form elsewhere (e.g. armoured trains) or is irrelevant to wargamers (e.g. the uniforms of armoured car crews) it will be largely ignored.

I also aim to dispel some of the myths about the Red Army of the Civil War which have grown up, many actively encouraged by the later Soviets – who regarded history as something that often needed correcting, to tell the right story.

The Red Army

The Workers and Peasants Red Army (RKKA) was officially formed on 28 January 1918. I shall discuss all the forces that fought for Soviet power, regardless of whether they were part of the RKKA or not.

Infantry

Cavalry

Artillery

Aviation

Commanders

Commissars

Kursanty

Other troops

Security Troops (CheKa, VOKhR, VnuS, "Blocking" Detachments)

Worker units (Red Guards, ChON, Vsevobuch)

Internationalists

Latvian Rifles

Estonian Rifles

Red Sailors

Partisans

Other

Before the Red Army

Numbers of men

Fortified Areas

Flags

Orders of Battle

Articles

Articles of a general nature that don't fit anywhere else.

O. G. Durov Analysis of the Tactics of the Red Army in the Kurgan-Petropavlovsk Offensive on 1919

A quick look at some tactics used by the Red Army in one of the later Siberian operations. There's a tendency to talk up things that are nothing particularly special to the Red Army, but some interesting technical details.

The original can be found here.