Red Army is the Strongest (Красная армия всех сильней) - EPIC Soviet Instrumental Song

The Red Army is the Strongest (Russian: Красная Армия всех сильней), popularly known as "White Army, Black Baron" (Белая Армия, Чëрный Барон), is a marching song written by Pavel Grigorevich Gorinshtejn (1895–1961, a.k.a. Pavel Gorin, Pavel Grigorev) and composed by Samuil Pokrass (1897–1939). Written in 1920, during the Russian Civil War, the song was meant as a combat anthem for the Red Army.

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The immediate context of the song is the final Crimean offensive in the Russian Civil War by Pyotr Wrangel's troops in July 1920. The second verse refers to the call to a final effort in the Crimea published by the Revolutionary Military Council in Pravda on 10 July. While the song has a separate refrain, the verses repeat the claim that "The Red Army is stronger than all", which came to be the song's conventional title.


The song became popular in the early Soviet Union. It was sung in 1923 at the rally in Leningrad against the Curzon Line, the "British seas" acquiring new significance in view of Lord Curzon's ultimatum. In a letter to a school for blind students in the Vologda region, Nadezhda Krupskaya, the wife of V. I. Lenin, named it as her favourite songs alongside "The Internationale". The phrase "from the taiga to the British Seas" became something of an idiomatic expression used by other authors, e.g. by V. A. Lugovsky in his poem Песни о ветре ("Song of the Wind", 1926).


The Russian song was adopted by the Chapaev Battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and it was allegedly sung in a Nazi torture chamber by Czech communist Julius Fučík. Alternative Russian lyrics were set to the tune during World War II, e.g. Всем нам свобода и честь дорога. Even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the tune is still played as a march during the military parades on Red Square.

In Red Vienna, the tune was used for the song Die Arbeiter von Wien (The Workers of Vienna), highlighting those fighting for a bright future of the proletariat.