The Red Army of the USSR began the Second World War (1939-45) with a series of shocking defeats, but from late 1942, it rallied and held on to key cities like the capital Moscow, Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), and Stalingrad (Volgograd). Then, through 1943 to the war's end, the Red Army accumulated a string of major victories such as the battles of Smolensk, Kursk, and Berlin, which saw the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945.
The Soviet Union's Red Army was formed in 1918 following the Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917, which swept away the rule of the tsars. The Red Army was officially called the RKKA or Red Army of Workers and Peasants (Raboche-Krest'yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya), red being the colour most associated with Bolshevism. It officially became the Soviet Army in 1944.
The Red Army was immediately required to fight the White Army, that is, supporters of the monarchy and anti-Bolsheviks, in a fierce civil war (1917-22). The Bolshevik victory in this war was achieved thanks to the increasing professionalism of the Red Army. The move from a revolutionary militia to a professional national army is credited to Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) and the incorporation of around 48,000 officers and over 200,000 non-commissioned officers from the old imperial army.
In its daily operations, the Red Army was heavily influenced by the ideas of Bolshevism. For example, the word 'officer' was prohibited and only reinstated in 1935. Rather, the term 'commander' was used, and each commander was obliged to report to a political commissar, who would give their approval to the commander's orders. This dual system was weakened considerably through practical realities and by the demands of WWII, when most commanders were left to make military decisions while the commissars restricted themselves to political instruction and party work. When the USSR was attacked by Nazi Germany in June 1942 (Operation Barbarossa), the dual system was revived somewhat before weakening again as the war progressed. Nevertheless, there remained, throughout the conflict, tensions between these two different groups of command personnel.
The leader of the USSR from 1924 was Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), and he harboured a serious distrust of his own army, especially when he thought it was supporting his chief political rival Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938). For this reason, Stalin purged the Red Army:
Some 35,000 officers out of an officer corps of roughly 80,000 fell victim to the purges; among them three of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union, all eleven deputies of the commissar for war, 75 of the 85 corps commanders, and 110 out of the 195 divisional commanders were killed.
In 1941, seeing the damage he had done to the Red Army's ability to actually function, Stalin brought back around 4,000 officers who had been sent to prison camps.
