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This article is part of a series aboutLeon Trotsky
Personal Childhood and family Train House Museum Russian political activities First exile Russian Revolution of 1905 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Russian Civil War Trade-union debate Kronstadt rebellion Scissors Crisis Deposition Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky Dewey Commission Assassination perpetrator Political ideology Leninism Democratic centralism Trotskyism orthodox Anti-Stalinist left Soviet democracy Worker's control Affiliations Left Opposition United Opposition Fourth International Bibliography Our Political Tasks Our Revolution 1905 The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects Terrorism and Communism Trotsky's Military Writings Literature and Revolution New Course Lessons of October Towards Socialism or Capitalism? Leon Trotsky on China My Life The Permanent Revolution History of the Russian Revolution The Revolution Betrayed The Stalin School of Falsification Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice The Transitional Program Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence Writings of Leon Trotsky The Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany In Defence of Marxism
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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.

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.

The train carried a special guard unit of some 100 elite troops (mostly Latvians) who dressed in special red leather uniforms and budenovka hats. Also on board were 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. 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.

See also

• North Korean leaders' trains

References

1. ^ Smele, Jonathan D. (2015). History Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 1181. ISBN 978-1-4422-5280-6.
2. Trotsky, Lev Davidovich (1930). "XXXIV - The Train". My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography. Pathfinder Press. ISBN 978-0-87348-144-1.
3. "Leon Trotsky: My Life (34. The Train)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 4 September 2020.

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.

• Leon Trotsky
• Russian Civil War
• Armoured trains