Text by (. c) Grigory Tsidenkov. Commentary by Russian military journalist is in italics.
Please note in searching for at least a Russian source for some of this, I found a US Department of defense explication of the Tsarist and Soviet military thought and doctrine, in English (PDF)
Additionally, a college thesis from the University of Edenborough (PDF) deals with the specific period of time with relation to the then nascent Red Army.
[ColonelCassad] Real combat strength of the Red Army, Red Guards and Red partisans by May 28, 1918.
This is about the question of the balance of forces at the time of the speech of the Czechoslovak corps.
It is often forgotten that the Red Army was originally formed on a voluntary basis. At the same time, the process of demobilization of the old army was going on. Many red detachments were created spontaneously. Sometimes this is deliberately forgotten and they operate with cosmic numbers.
By the time the Czechoslovaks spoke out, the situation was as follows:
- the payroll strength of the Red Army on May 20, 1918 (with sick, wounded, non-combatants, etc.) - 263,000 people;
- in the semi-spontaneous Red Guard detachments, scattered throughout the country and often without communication with each other - 37,950 people (this includes the first internationalists);
- in the red partisan detachments there are approximately (well, very approximately) 54,000 people. The figure is given for July 1918 and in May it was, for obvious reasons, much different and downward;
- 25,000 people in food detachments and in prototypes of CHON.
Total: 380,730 people. The figure is given without taking into account the veil detachments on the demarcation line with the Germans.
A lot of? Even if we imagine them all as combat androids (forgetting about non-combatants, reserves, sick, wounded, in training, etc., etc.), then having spread all this number across the map, we get not very large groups on all fronts (in Full growth is taking place near Orenburg, in the South, in the North, Ukraine, and the Far East).
What did this figure represent in real life:
- we are taking away the food detachments and CHON - their business is in the rear;
- out of 355,000 fighters, 185,386 people are armed;
- out of 185,386 people are trained or have combat experience - 49,068 people;
- out of the same 185,386 people ready to go to the front (organized, reliable, not decayed, not sick or wounded, armed, trained, staffed with command staff, supplied with food and fodder, dressed and wearing shoes) - 17,039 fighters.
N.I. Shatagin. Organization and construction of the Soviet army in 1918-1920. Ed. Ministry of Defense of the USSR, M., 1954, p. 63. Provides a link to TsGAKA (RGVA), f.3, op.6, d.15, l.137-139, f.4, op.2, d.34, l.141,143.
(c) Grigory Tsidenkov
The mobilization measures that followed during the civil war surpassed the parallel efforts of the White Guards and made it possible to gain a decisive advantage in numbers by the middle and end of the war, although this was not the only factor that determined the victory of the Red Army.