Russian Guards

Russian Guards

Guards (Russian: гвардия) or Guards units (Russian: гвардейские части, gvardeyskiye chasti) were and still are elite military units of Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The tradition goes back to the a chieftain's druzhina of medieval Kievan Rus' and the Marksman Troops (Стрелецкое Войско), the Muscovite harquebusiers formed by Ivan the Terrible by 1550. The exact meaning of the term "Guards" varied over time.

Read more about Russian Guards:  Imperial Russian Guard, Russian Revolution, Soviet Guards, Russian Federation Guards

Famous quotes containing the words russian and/or guards:

    That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    The book borrower of real stature whom we envisage here proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures and by the deaf ear which he turns to all reminders from the everyday world of legality as by his failure to read these books.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)