February 23: Soviet Red Army Day, marking the establishment of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in 1918.
Lenin on the organizer of the Red Army, L.D. Trotsky
In his ‘Reminiscences of Lenin’, Maxim Gorky has related a conversation he had with him. When in the course of it he mentioned the hostility shown by certain Boishevists to Trotsky, Lenin banged his fist upon the table and said:
“Show me another man who could have practically created a model army in a year and won the respect of the military specialists as well. We have got such a man! We have got everything!”
