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Though brave, Red Army soldiers were tactically inept, often absurdly so. Officers were trained to undertake only frontal assaults, even across open terrain. A German account of Soviet counter-attacks on a German strong point on the approach to Kiev exemplifies both Soviet persistence and Soviet ineptitude. The attack began with an artillery barrage that fell […]

The Bolsheviks’ new army, which they called the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (Raboche Krest’ianskaia Krasnaia Armiia, RKKA) did, surprisingly enough, start out nearly as Lenin had envisioned. Based on Red Guard detachments the Bolsheviks’ first military force was completely voluntary, drawn from the working class, and determined to defend the revolution. It soon became […]