Azerbaijani Red Army (; , abbreviated as AzKA), also known as the Red Army of Azerbaijan (), was a field army of the pro-Bolshevik Red Army in the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic during the Russian Civil War.
History
Initial developments
After the Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan in April 1920 and the following Sovietisation of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Provisional Revolutionary Committee (Azrevcom) and Council of People's Commissars became the highest bodies of state power in the country. Azrevcom then proclaimed the Azerbaijani Socialist Soviet Republic, would later be known as the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic.
On 28 April 1920, the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs (Narkomvoenkomrat, NKVM) was established by the Azrevcom and Chingiz Ildyrym became the first People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. On the same day, he issued a decree to declare the insignia of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (ADR) and establish new external signs for the Soviet Azerbaijani military.
The next day, by a new order from the military department, the Azerbaijani servicemen were to remove orders and other insignia, including those from cold steel. On the same day, Azrevcom issued a decree to subordinate the Azerbaijani National Army in operational terms to the command of the 11th Red Army, reorganising it on the "basis of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army into units corresponding to the numerical strength, preserving the name Azerbaijani. On 5 May 1920, NKVM established new insignia for the Azerbaijani servicemen.
On 4 May, the first issue of the press body of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist (Bolshevik) Party (AC(b)P), the first Red Army newspaper of the Azerbaijani SSR, Gyrmyzy Asgar (Qırmızı Əsgər, The Red Soldier), with Aliheydar Garayev as its editor-in-chief. In the first issue of the newspaper, it was indicated that it sets itself the task of explaining to the servicemen of the Red Army "their responsibilities to protect the Soviet Republic," and each Red Army serviceman was required not only to read it carefully, but also to write to it about his needs. In total, three issues of this newspaper were published, the last of which came out on 7 May 1920.
In terms of personnel, the new-established Azerbaijani Red Army at first, in fact, was an army inherited from the Azerbaijani National Army of the ADR. The soldiers and officers of the old army continued to serve, but under new regime. So, on 30 May, Ildrym temporarily appointed the former minister of war of the ADR, Ali-Agha Shikhlinski, as his deputy. As the commander of the 20th Rifle Division, Mikhail Velikanov, later noted, the previous military units did not "undergo radical reorganization, but continued to exist without any changes in the leadership and command lines" as the "revolutionary capabilities of this army were overestimated."
Members of the new AC(b)P began to get sent to the units of the old army, which were tasked with concentrating the political leadership in their hands. Ahmad Rzayev was appointed commissar of the troops that were located in Ganja, on the recommendation of the Azrevcom. On 4 May, the People's Commissar of the Azerbaijani SSR issued a decree to appoint Habib Jabiyev the commissar of the 6th Goychay Infantry Regiment. On 7 May, the Azrevcom issued a decree on the organization of the Azerbaijani Red Army (AzKA) and the Azerbaijani Red Fleet. It also issued to decree to subordinate the army that had been renamed by that time and fleet to the command of the 11th Red Army and Volga-Caspian Flotilla in the terms of operational, administrative, organizational manner. The subjugation of the old ADR units to the 11th Red Army was not only a political action. Replenishment of the composition of the units in the garrisons was deemed necessary, since the size of the 11th Red Army, which had entered the South Caucasus, was small in numbers.