Red Guards (Russian: Красная гвардия) were paramilitary volunteer formations for the "protection of the soviet power", as part of the Bolshevik Military Organizations.

The Red Guards consisted primarily of urban workers, peasants,[dubious – discuss] cossacks and partially of soldiers and sailors.

Composing the majority of the urban population, they were the main strike force of several radically oriented socialist political factions.

Red Guard units were created in March 1917 at manufacturing companies by Factory and Plant Committees and by some communist-inclined party cells (Bolsheviks, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, others).

Taken all together, this is a revolutionary army.A number of other militarized formations created during the February Revolution, such as "people's militia" (народная милиция), created by the Russian Provisional Government, "squads of self-defence" (отряды самообороны), "committees of public security" (комитеты общественной безопасности), "workers' squads" (рабочие дружины) were gradually unified into the Red Guards.

On March 26, 1917, the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDRP(b) published a resolution "About the Provisional Government" since then the term, Red Guards, received the widest usage.

On April 14, 1917, the Moscow Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) (RSDLP(b)) adopted a resolution for the creation of its Red Guard.