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The reorganization of the Red Army: “…all those vagrants, unstable elements”
Trotsky decided at the beginning of 1918 it was time to reorganize the officer corps of the Red Army. For this he reached out to several NCOs who had been trained in the Tsarist army. The new army would be built up around the Red Guards, the paramilitary forces...
The Bolsheviks and Romania. The first step towards truce and betrayal
During the Great War, Romania’s main ally on the Eastern Front was naturally Russia. Things began to complicate in 1917, when the February Revolution took place in the Russian Empire, that resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. Relations between...
Romanian Refugees and the Russian army
Minister of Religious Affairs and Public Instruction in the Romanian government during the First World War, Ion Gheorghe Duca was a close associate of Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu. As a member of the Brătianu government which withdrew to Iaşi at the end of 1916,...
Ukrainian Proclamation on Independence, 20 November 1917
Ultimately the Ukrainians sought protection from the Germans with whom they negotiated a peace treaty at Best-Litovsk in 1918. Exacting a heavy economic price for their support the Germans duly took the Ukrainians’ side and obliged the Bolsheviks to accept an...
The end of the monarchy in Russia
In Russia, the February Revolution of 1917 ended a dynasty with a 300-year-old tradition. Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia since 1894, was forced to abdicate after the outbreak of popular uprisings in Petrograd. Crowned in 1894, Nicholas proved to be an inefficient and...