February 23, 1918: Founding of the Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.

“On the one hand, the bourgeois-landlord troops restore in practice, everywhere that they go, the injustice that prevailed under the Tsars, the oppression of the poor, especially of all those who speak a different language or belong to a different nation or religion. In Avdat village the inhabitants are Muslims, so – at them, chase them, crush them, rob them and cut them up! That is the principle of action of the dishonorable counter-revolutionary bands. 

“The conscious revolutionary Red forces are not like that. They know that the working people, whatever nation they belong to, are their brothers. They know that people must be divided not by nation but by class. All honest working people form one family, whatever language they may speak and in whatever place of worship their fathers may have prayed. All oppressors, exploiters, parasites, aggressors, regardless of nationality, are enemies of the working people. The task of the soldiers of the Red Army, their sacred task, is to defend the poor against the rich. This is what distinguishes our army from all other armies in the world.”

- Leon Trotsky, “The Sacred Task of the Red Army” (1920)

Photo: Trotsky aboard his armored train during the Civil War