Trotsky's train

During the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), Leon Trotsky, the Soviet People's Commissar of Defense from 1918 to 1925, used an armored train to travel between Red Army fronts and as a mobile command and propaganda center. In the course of the civil war, the train made 36 such trips to the fronts and traveled at least 75,000 miles (121,000 km). The train was in action against White and other anti-Bolshevik forces on 13 occasions during the civil war and suffered 15 casualties (with an additional 15 missing), and was itself awarded the Order of the Red Banner for its part in deflecting the advance on Petrograd by White general Nikolai Yudenich in October 1919.

Leon Trotsky (left) and the train at Petrograd, 1921. The commander on the right is wearing the train's special uniform, made entirely of red leather.

Trotsky's train, which he simply referred to as "the train" and officially named the "Train of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic" (Russian: Поезд председателя Реввоенсовета Республики), was first formed in Moscow on 7 August 1918. It then consisted of 2 armored engines and 12 wagons, and was dispatched for Sviyazhsk on the Volga Front with a unit of Latvian Riflemen on board. By late 1919, the train's configuration had evolved to include two separate echelons which included several armored wagons (with turrets and embrasures for machine guns and cannons), flatbed cars for transporting armored cars and other vehicles (including Trotsky's own command car, a Rolls-Royce that was commandeered from Tsar Nicholas II's garage), a telegraph station, a radio station, an electricity-generating wagon, a printing house (with presses), a library, a secretariat wagon, a kitchen, a bathhouse wagon, and even a special wagon with a small collapsible aircraft.

On board was a special guard unit of some 100 elite troops (mostly Latvians) who dressed in special red leather uniforms and budenovka hats, cooks and other staff, mechanics, technicians, political agitators, and secretaries. By 21 January 1921, there were 407 personnel attached to the train, doing 80 jobs. An assistant to Trotsky later said that the train served as "a real school for Communism", with the "militant brotherhood" of its highly disciplined staff acting as an example to the army. Trotsky wrote in his memoir My Life: "The strongest cement in the new army was the ideas of the October Revolution, and the train supplied the front with this cement". A newspaper, En Route, was published aboard the train.

It's not known what day the train met its fate but in 1921, the train was burned and destroyed by White Army troops during the Russian Civil War.

See also

• North Korean leaders' trains

Further reading

• Heyman N. M. Leon Trotsky and the Birth of the Red Army // Army Quarterly and Defence Journal. 1975. Vol 105, No. 4. pp. 407–418.
• Heyman N. M. Leon Trotsky : propagandist to the Red Army // Studies in Comparative Communism: Trotsky and Trotskyism in perspective. Los Angeles, Cal.: Univеrsity of Southern California, 1977. Vol. 10, No. 1–2. pp. 34–43. DOI:10.1016/S0039-3592(77)80073-2.
• Leon Trotsky's Armored Train // Russia in war and revolution, 1914—1922 : a documentary history / ed. J. W. Daly, L. T. Trofimov. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2009. ISBN 978-0-87220-987-9.
• Tarkhova N. S. Trotsky's Train. Unknown Page in the History of the Civil War // The Trotsky Reappraisal / ed. by T. Brotherstone and P. Dukes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
• Winsbury R. Trotsky's War Train // History Today Magazine. 1975. August, Vol. 2, No. 8. pp. 523–531.