The Red Army on a Peace Footing

Orders, Circulars, Telegrams, etc.

Order No.2656

By the Revolutionary War Council of the USSR December 8, 1923, No.2656


Transcribed and HTML markup for the Trotsky Internet Archive by David Walters

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Today, December 8, the Military Academy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army celebrates its fifth anniversary.

This is a day that deserves to be marked not only in the Army’s calendar, but also in that of the Republic.

Five years ago, an order by the Revolutionary War Council called the Red Academy into existence. It was built in exceptionally difficult conditions, inheriting from the past neither an apparatus of administration nor a cadre of professors, nor even the necessary property. Everything had to be created afresh, amid a situation of acute civil war and severe material shortages.

The years that have passed since then were for the Academy a period of maximum tension. These years in the Academy’s life were closely involved with the life of the Red Army, with its combats, its adversities, its successes, its temporary defeats and its ultimate victory.

In the epoch of the great civil war the students of the Academy, and also a section of the present professorate, combined their scientific and teaching work with active combat, and fought bravely for the Soviet Republics, and this was in due course recognised by the award of the Order of the Red Banner both to the Academy itself, as a whole, and to a considerable number of its members.

The period of calm which followed was filled with persistent work, intense quests and achievements. Striving to blaze new trails in scientific and teaching work, the Military Academy steadily advanced along the road of living creativity, in unison with the aims and the tasks of the Red Army.

Three waves of highly-qualified Red military workers have already passed from the Academy into the ranks of the Army and three more waves are now acquiring strength, knowledge and skill in the Academy.

Much work lies ahead. We must improve ourselves, go forward, and draw others in our wake.

The shared battlefield behind us and the community of aims and interests link the Military Academy with the working people of all the nations of the Union and with the Red Army.

The nations of the Soviet Union have always shown special attention, care and love for their Red Academy, the laboratory of organised military thought and practical achievement.

Warmly greeting the Red Banner Military Academy on its fifth anniversary the Revolutionary War Council of the USSR thanks the Academy for its hard and useful service and is confident that all its members will continue in the future to carry on their harmonious and fruitful work to strengthen the might of our Union and of its Red Army.


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Last updated on: 28.12.2006