Red Guards (Russia)
Red Guards (Russian: Красная гвардия) were paramilitary volunteer formations consisting mainly of factory workers 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. 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 in 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.
See also: Red Guards (Finland)Read more about Red Guards (Russia): General Outlook, Creation, Organization
Famous quotes containing the words red and/or guards:
“The dancers crowded about him
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)