Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

TANKS (RED ARMY). The October Revolution of 1917 put an end to the plans of the Russian Army, developed from 1916, to put almost 400 tanks into the field by 1918. Nevertheless, the Red Army began producing tanks at the Sormovo Factory at Nizhnii Novgorod in August 1919, and the first model (the Freedom Fighter Comrade Lenin) was completed in August 1920 and was presented by the factory to L. D. Trotsky. Another 14 tanks were completed by August 1921. However, with the exception of their Fiat engines and the addition to seven of the tanks of a 37mm cannon and one or more Hotchkiss machine guns in the turret, these vehicles appear to have been identical copies of the French Renault FT-17 tank that had been deployed by interventionist forces at Odessa in December 1918. Red forces had captured a number of these in February–March 1919. One was sent to Moscow as a prize (and a model); the others were attached to the Armored Division of Special Purpose at Khar′kov and were deployed against the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) from June 1919. From 1919 to 1921, the Red Army also captured 59 Mark V (heavy), 17 Mark A (medium), and 1 Mark B (light) British tanks, mostly in South Russia during the collapse of the AFSR in early 1920. Extensive rebuilding and repair was necessary to most of them before they could be (for the most part) assigned to the 9th Red Army, while a training course for tank crews was established at Ekaterinodar, utilizing the expertise of officers captured from the Russian Tank Corps of the AFSR. Many of these tanks were subsequently transferred to the west (to participate in the Soviet–Polish War) and then, in September–October 1920, were again redeployed to the south, used in the battles against the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel and, in February 1921, in the conquest of the Democratic Republic of Georgia by the 11th Red Army. During these operations, a further 22 tanks that had been ineffectively sabotaged and abandoned by White forces were recovered in Crimea, and two British Mark Vs were captured in Georgia.

By this time, “Directives on the Use of Tanks in Battle” for the Red Army had been published (Moscow, September 1920), according to which the role of tanks was mainly to support infantry in breaking fixed enemy positions and to work with artillery units in coordinated firing patterns. Ten Renault tanks from the United States that had been dispatched to Vladivostok to assist anti-Bolshevik forces were captured by Red partisans near Blagoveshchensk in March 1920 and were assigned to the 1st Amur Heavy Tank Division of the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. They were deployed against White forces during the summer and autumn of 1920, but by 1922, due to a lack of munitions and spare parts, only one tank, the Vigilant, remained operational. On 10 February 1922, near Volochaevka, it was immobilized after being hit by fire from the White armored train, The Kappel′evtsy, and the crew blew it up with grenades, lest it fall into enemy hands.

TANKS (WHITE AND INTERVENTIONIST FORCES). None of the White forces had the industrial capacity to manufacture their own tanks, so all had to be imported from the Allies. The first tanks arrived with French forces at Odessa, on 18 December 1918: 20 Renault FT-17s were assigned to the 501st Special Artillery Regiment, 6 of which were captured by Red forces and 6 more abandoned during the French evacuation of Odessa in April 1919.