 Trotsky founded the Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and Chekist secret police.Conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed.To control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated special punitive brigades which suppressed anti-communists, deserters, and "enemies of the state".