The Arsenal

The standard infantry rifle of the Imperial Russian Army, produced by the millions and in service on both sides throughout the civil war. A bolt-action rifle chambering the 7.62×54mmR cartridge, it was accurate, robust, and relatively simple to manufacture and maintain — critical qualities for a war fought across the enormous distances of Russia with inadequate supply chains. Both the Red Army and White forces relied on captured stocks of Mosin-Nagants from Imperial Army depots, and Red factories continued to produce them throughout the war.

The Russian version of Hiram Maxim's water-cooled recoil-operated machine gun, mounted on a wheeled Sokolov carriage and firing the same 7.62×54mmR cartridge as the Mosin-Nagant. The Maxim's 600 rounds-per-minute rate of fire made it the dominant weapon on any battlefield it appeared; a single Maxim gun section could hold a position against hundreds of attacking infantry. Both sides used the PM1910 extensively, and it was the machine gun mounted on the famous tachanka carts.

The tachanka was a light horse-drawn cart — typically a standard peasant droshky or britchka — with a Maxim machine gun mounted facing rearward, manned by a crew of three or four. It could move at cavalry speeds across the open steppe, deploy rapidly, and lay down devastating machine-gun fire before retreating. Makhno's Black Army perfected the tachanka as a tactical system, using hundreds of them to give his peasant cavalry the firepower of a mechanized force. The Red Army's Budyonny cavalry also used tachankas extensively. The image of the tachanka — a cart racing across the snow with a Maxim blazing from the back — became the iconic image of the civil war's mobile steppe warfare.

The British-supplied Lewis Gun was provided to White forces as part of Allied military aid. An air-cooled, gas-operated light machine gun with a distinctive drum magazine holding 47 rounds, the Lewis Gun was far more portable than the Maxim and could be carried and operated by a single soldier. White forces, particularly the Volunteer Army and units in the north supplied by Britain, used Lewis Guns to provide squad-level automatic fire support. The gun was a significant technological advantage when White forces had adequate ammunition, but Allied supply lines were inconsistent.

Britain supplied approximately seventy-four Mark V tanks to White forces — the most advanced tanks in the world at the time, capable of crossing trenches and crushing wire that stopped infantry cold. The tanks were used by Denikin's forces in 1919 and had a terrifying psychological effect on Red Army troops who had never seen armored vehicles before. However, the Whites lacked trained tank crews, experienced mechanics, and adequate spare parts. Tanks broke down frequently, were difficult to repair in the field, and could be immobilized by concentrated artillery fire or by being driven into soft ground. Red Army commanders quickly learned to concentrate artillery on tanks and to dig ditches to trap them.

The Red Army built and operated over a hundred armored trains during the civil war — railway carriages clad in steel plate and mounting artillery pieces, machine guns, and sometimes anti-aircraft guns. On Russia's flat terrain, cut by a relatively dense railway network, armored trains were mobile fortresses that could concentrate firepower rapidly at any point along a railway line. Trotsky's personal command train was the most famous — an armored locomotive pulling carriages containing a telegraph station, printing press (for revolutionary newspapers for the troops), a library, a garage with automobiles, and Trotsky's own armored carriage. The armored train gave the Red Army a crucial strategic advantage: the ability to move heavy weapons across vast distances rapidly.

The standard Russian field artillery piece, manufactured at the Putilov Works in Petrograd. A 76.2mm quick-firing field gun that could fire up to ten rounds per minute, it was the backbone of both Red and White artillery throughout the war. The Putilov factory — one of the largest in Russia — continued producing and maintaining these guns under Bolshevik control, giving the Red Army an artillery production advantage that the Whites, who relied on captured stocks, could never match.

The early Soviet air force — the Red Air Fleet — was built from the remnants of the Imperial Russian Air Service, using WWI-era French aircraft including Nieuport fighters and SPAD VIIs. The Whites also operated aircraft supplied by Allied intervention forces. Air operations were limited in scope — both sides struggled with fuel, spare parts, and trained pilots — but reconnaissance flights provided crucial intelligence, and occasional ground-attack missions had significant psychological effects on troops who had never been bombed before. The civil war was the formative experience for early Soviet military aviation.

The standard sidearm of Imperial Russian officers, adopted in 1895 and manufactured continuously through the civil war era. A seven-shot double-action revolver, the Nagant M1895 had the unusual feature of a gas-seal mechanism that improved muzzle velocity. More importantly, it was the weapon most commonly associated with Cheka executions — the pistol shot to the back of the head, carried out in prison cellars across Russia, was performed with the Nagant M1895 more often than any other weapon. The revolver thus became a symbol not just of the civil war's military combat but of its political violence.