What happened on February 23rd?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The official birthday of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army is February 23, 1918. According to the Bolshevik ideology, it was on this day that the first victories were won near Pskov and Narva over German troops.

However, on February 25, 1918, Pravda published an article titled "A difficult but necessary lesson," in which its author Vladimir Lenin denounced the decomposition of the army, demobilizing and leaving the front. The incoming telegrams and telephone messages, according to Lenin's testimony, were "painfully shameful": "about the refusal of the regiments to maintain their positions, about the refusal to defend even the Narva line, about the failure to comply with the order to destroy everything and everyone during the retreat." In other words, it was about "flight, chaos, handlessness, helplessness, slovenliness."

Lenin's article was confirmed by news from the front: on February 24, Pskov was taken by a small detachment of the German army; it took the Germans a day to capture Narva.

Shameful world

What happened on February 23rd? On this day in 1918, a meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks took place, at which a German ultimatum was adopted, which led to the signing of a separate peace on March 3, 1918 in Brest-Litovsk. Under the terms of the agreement, Russia gave Germany 750 thousand square meters. km (that is, it lost Courland, Livonia, Estonia, Finland and Ukraine), where 26% of the country's population lived and 28% of industrial enterprises were concentrated.

From the decree "The socialist fatherland is in danger!" Our envoys left Rezhitsa for Dvinsk on February 20 (7) in the evening, and there is still no answer.

The German government is apparently hesitant to respond. It clearly does not want peace. Fulfilling the instructions of the capitalists of all countries, German militarism wants to strangle the Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants, to return the land to the landowners, factories and plants to the bankers, the government to the monarchies. The German generals want to establish their own "order" in Petrograd and Kiev.

The socialist republic of the Soviets is in the greatest danger. Until the moment when the proletariat of Germany rises and triumphs, the sacred duty of the workers and peasants of Russia is the selfless defense of the republic of Soviets against the hordes of bourgeois-imperialist Germany."

Creation of the Red Army

The decree on the creation of the Red Army was issued by the Council of People's Commissars on January 15 (28), 1918. The document was signed by the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Lenin, the people's commissars for military and naval affairs Nikolai Podvoisky and Pavel Dybenko, the commissioners Prosh Proshyan, Vladimir Zatonsky and Isaak Steinberg, as well as the manager and secretary of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich and Nikolai Gorbunov.

From the document: “The old army served as an instrument of class oppression of the working people by the bourgeoisie. With the transfer of power to the working and exploited classes, it became necessary to create a new army, which will be the bulwark of Soviet power in the present, the foundation for replacing the standing army with nationwide weapons in the near future and will serve as support for the coming socialist revolution in Europe."

A month after the issuance of the decree on the creation of the Red Army, when the lack of sufficient revolutionary consciousness and patriotic spirit becomes apparent, the Council of People's Commissars will issue the decree "The socialist fatherland is in danger!" (dated February 21, 1918).

According to the doc:

“1) All the forces and means of the country are entirely allocated to the cause of revolutionary defense.

2) All Soviets and revolutionary organizations are charged with the obligation to defend every position to the last drop of blood.

3) The railway organizations and the Soviets associated with them are obliged to prevent the enemy from using the apparatus of the means of communication by all means; when retreating, destroy tracks, blow up and burn railway buildings; all rolling stock - wagons and steam locomotives - should be sent immediately east into the interior of the country.

4) All grain and food supplies in general, as well as any valuable property that are in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy, must be unconditionally destroyed; supervision of this rests with the local Councils under the personal responsibility of their chairmen.

5) The workers and peasants of Petrograd, Kiev and all cities, towns, villages and villages along the new front line must mobilize battalions for digging trenches under the leadership of military specialists.

6) These battalions should include all able-bodied members of the bourgeois class, men and women, under the supervision of the Red Guards; those who resist - to shoot

7) All publications that oppose the cause of revolutionary defense and take the side of the German bourgeoisie, as well as those seeking to use the invasion of the imperialist hordes in order to overthrow Soviet power, are closed; efficient editors and employees of these publications are mobilized for digging trenches and other defensive work.

8) Adversary agents, speculators, thugs, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators, German spies are shot at the crime scene

From shame to holiday

The army began to acquire the features of a regular controlled military force by mid-September 1918. So, on September 11, Leon Trotsky for the first time reported to Lenin on the success of the storming of Kazan, where the invaders settled. From Trotsky's report: “The overwhelming majority of the soldiers of the Red Army represent excellent combat material. Now that the organization has taken shape in battle, our units are fighting with incomparable courage."

The myth of the first victories of the Red Army, won shortly after the decree on its formation was issued, was created in 1938 by order of Joseph Stalin. In "Pravda" was published "A short course in the history of the CPSU (b)" authored by the leader. It was from this text that it became known that “the armed intervention of the German imperialists caused a powerful revolutionary upsurge in the country …

Near Narva and Pskov, the German invaders were resolutely rebuffed … The day of the rebuff to the troops of German imperialism - February 23 - became the birthday of the young Red Army."

Interestingly, back in 1935, Kliment Voroshilov argued that "the timing of the celebration of the anniversary of the Red Army on February 23 is quite random and difficult to explain and does not coincide with historical dates."

In modern Russia, February 23 has been celebrated as Defender of the Fatherland Day since 2002.