THE RED ARMY AND MASS MOBILIZATION DURING THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR 1918–1920

The Red Army began life in 1918 as a small volunteer force of proletarians from the major urban citadels of Bolshevik power in northern and central Russia. The experience of mass mobilization gained by the Bolsheviks through the Red Army fundamentally shaped their governmental attitudes not only during the period of War Communism, when the whole of Soviet society was militarized, but also during the Stalinist period. The disintegration of the imperial army during the autumn and winter of 1917, and the absence of an adequate administrative apparatus in the countryside to enforce the conscription of the war-weary peasants, necessitated the foundation of the Red Army on volunteer principles during the early months of 1918. Within the Red Army itself, the poor and irregular supply of foodstuffs and goods resulted in the frequent breakdown of discipline. The problems of supply and discipline were largely to blame for the astronomical rates of desertion from the Red Army during 1919-1920.