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- Some wild speculations, and a few hard facts…

I have been working on a number of TOAW-scenarios, depicting battles from The Russian Civil War. This is not easy. OOB:s are sketchy at best, and and know of no TOE:s for the Red Army of the Civil War Period – or the White Armies, for that matter. TOE:s are always in some way theoretical creations, but never more so than in a situation like the one in the Soviet Union 1918-21, when an army was created all anew amidst the turmoil of a revolution. Still I have tried to go on, using different calculations from historical material to put together the units, the calculations are abstract and probably way off, that I readily admit, but any way it’s better than just winging it. I Present some of these calculations here, firstly in order to show how the forces for my RCW-scenarios where reconstructed, secondly in the hope that it will provoke someone who really knows, slapping my hand and sorting it out for me ;-).

Ratio of Cavalry units against Infantry Units. In cases that only the total number of men is known, but not even the ratio of infantry units to cavalry units, some guide can again be found in historical precedents. At the end of 1918, the Red Army attacked the Don Area and Ataman Krasovs army of Cossacks; the Red Army then fielded 100.000 infantry and 17.000 cavalry. Another example. The force that was used north of Orel in October 1919 to turn back Denikins last offensive consisted of 10.000 Infantry and 1.500 Horse. In both these cases there was, roughly:

1 Cavalryman per 6 Infantrymen

Infantry Division Strength. The strength of the various Divisions in the Red Army differed enormously. One example. In May 1920, when the Russo-Polish War just had erupted, the Infantry Divisions of the XVth Army varied in strength from 2.500 (the 56^th Infantry Division) to 9.863 (the 29^th Infantry Division); in the XVIth Army the weakest Divisions counted 1.580 men (the 57^th Infantry Division) while the strongest had 6.841 men (17^th Infantry Division). One can still try to extract some sort of "Standard"-divison, using the figures we have for the Red Army units in the West in May 1920, and calculate an average, which in this case will be:

46.888 Men in 12 Infantry Divisons =

3.907 Average Red Army Infantry Division strength =

Make it 4.000, just for simplicitys sake

HMG:s and Artillery. When trying to establish the more exact composition of the units, one can revert to calculations of ratios of men to guns and HMG:s, sort of counting backward. It will give us a rough estimate. So, in the Spring of 1920, the Red Army had committed some 65.000 men, 3.208 HMG:s and 665 artillery pieces to the Western Front. This means that there was:

1 HMG per 20 men

1 Artillery piece per 98 men (make it 100, just for simplicity’s sake)

This can then be used to give rough, probable numbers for all the Divisions whose manpower strength we know but nothing else.

Artillery. The above calculations combined, gives, in the case of Divisional Artillery, a total of 40 guns per Division, which sounds plausible. The Red Army kept the 6-gun-batteries of the Tsarist Army, and the average Artillery Regiment most probably had 36 guns (6 batteries). (The surplus number – the difference between 36 and the calculated number of 40 - can most likely be explained as being Army Artillery.)

Organic Cavalry. Then there is the additional complication of cavalry organically attached to the individual Red Army Divisions. (Rememeber, the earlier calculation is concerning the ratio of Infantry UNITS to Cavalry UNITS.) Not all Red Army Infantry Divisons had organic cavalry, but judging from the above mentioned example, roughly half the Divisons had. The number of attached cavalrymen varied enormously, from 991 (8^th Infantry Divison) to only 56 (57^th Infantry Division). The Average number is: 400 Cavalry Men per Divison. (Which, by the way, is the exact number of cavalry – 2 squadrons, 400 men – that that was employed in the Infantry Divisons of the Polish Army during the War of 1920.) This is probably too high, especially if you consider that half of the infantry divisions on the Western Front 1920 had no organic cavalry at all, and so, if you divide the total (2034) with the total number of divisions (12), you instead get

170 Cavalrymen organically attached to each Infantry Divison.

Make it 150, just for simplicity’s sake.

Using the above calculations – and still, some guesses – we come up with the following units:

1 x Red Army Division HQ, 1919-20

2 x Red Army Infantry Brigade, 1919-21

1 x Red Army Field Artillery Regiment, 1919-21

And now for some good news. Not everything is darkness. The following units are based on historicals facts, not just calculations.

1 x Red Army Division HQ, 1919-20

2 x Red Army Cavalry Brigade, 1919-21

1 x Red Army Division HQ, 1919-20

3 x Red Army Cavalry Brigade, 1919-21