Within this Red Army, the special units of the Cheka and the "internal defense troops of the Republic" stood out, with two hundred thousand members in 1921. In the wake of the Revolution, they were the main repressive organs of the fledgling Soviet State. Due to the small number of regular soldiers at the disposal of all sides, the armies that were in the Russian battlefields were very small - tens of thousands in the largest battles - compared to those used in the World War I. Volunteers were scarce and undisciplined, forcing Soviet commanders to recruit peasants, a social group that Soviet military leadership considered unreliable. This was coupled with increased pressure towards requisitions, which only contributed to the formation of new peasant guerrillas.
