ABSTRACT
The Red Army had by this time come into nominal existence, while the bulk of what military effort there was followed the strictly decentralised course which Krylenko's directives both suggested and approved. Local soviets conceived grandiose plans for organising their own armed units, formidable paper armies, or else they relapsed into muddle or dilatoriness. 2 Such Red units as did exist, composed usually of enlarged Red Guard detachments ometimes stiffened with sailors, showed alarming weaknesses. In the Ukraine, Petrov's Bolshevik force numbered little more than 1,000 men. In Petrograd, nine battalions of the 1st Army Corps, with a strength of 12,000 men, made up the city garrison. No Red Army units had been organised in Siberia or deep in rural Russia. Where detachments of newly enlisted men were formed, they frequently inflicted substantial damage on the discipline of the few regular units in being, since all the lawlessness of elective command failed to settle.
