Red Guards (Russia)

Red Guards Russian: Красная гвардия
Participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War
Red flags were used by guards in several modifications and variations
Active	1917–18 (became core units of the Red Army)
Ideology	Communism
Leaders	RSDLP(b) and Soviets
Headquarters	every major city
Area of operations	Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Russian Republic
Part of	Red Army (since Jan 1918)
Allies	several communist states
Opponents	Russian Provisional Government White Movement Entente Pro-independence movements in Russian Civil War
Battles and wars	October Revolution Russian Civil War

Red Guards (Russian: Красная гвардия) were paramilitary volunteer formations consisting mainly of factory workers, peasants, cossacks and partially of soldiers and sailors for "protection of the soviet power". Red Guards were a transitional military force of the collapsing Imperial Russian Army and the base formations of Bolsheviks during the October Revolution and the first months of the Russian Civil War. Most of them were formed in the time frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and some of the units were reorganized into the Red Army during 1918. The Red Guards formations were organized across most of the former Russian Empire, including territories outside of the contemporary Russian Federation such as Finland, Estonia, Ukraine, others. They were not centralized and were formed by decision of a local political party 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.

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 (Bolsheviks, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, others). The Red Guards formations were based on the workers strike forces of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Lenin gave a following evaluation of the phenomenon: