Revolutionary Guard

Revolutionary Guard is a military or paramilitary elite unit that plays the role of key protection force of the new regime in a country which has experienced a revolution.

See also

Russian Guards

Guards (Russian: гвардия) or Guards units (Russian: гвардейские части, gvardeyskiye chasti) were elite military units of Imperial Russia prior to 1917-18. The designation of Guards was subsequently adopted as a distinction for various units and formations of the Soviet Union and the modern Russian Federation. The tradition goes back to the a chieftain's druzhina of medieval Kievan Rus' and the Marksman Troops (Стрелецкое Войско), the Muscovite harquebusiers formed by Ivan the Terrible by 1550. The exact meaning of the term "Guards" varied over time.

Imperial Russian Guard

In the Russian Empire, Imperial Russian Guard units ("Leib-Guards", лейб-гвардия, leyb-gvardiya), derived from German 'Leibwächter' (body-guards), were intended to ensure the security of the sovereign, initially, that of Peter the Great in the 1690s. These were based on the Prussian Royal Life Guards. During the 19th century the Imperial Russian Guard regiments were not exclusively composed of Russian troops, but also included Lithuanian, Finnish and Ukrainian units.

Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution

The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (Persian: سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی ‎‎ / Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enqelāb-e Eslāmi, or Sepāh for short), often called Revolutionary Guards or Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by the English-speaking or U.S. media, is a branch of Iran's Armed Forces, founded after the Iranian revolution on 5 May 1979. Whereas the regular military (artesh) defends Iran's borders and maintains internal order, according to the Iranian constitution, the Revolutionary Guard (pasdaran) is intended to protect the country's Islamic system. The Revolutionary Guards state that their role in protecting the Islamic system is preventing foreign interference as well as coups by the military or "deviant movements".

The Revolutionary Guards have roughly 125,000 military personnel including ground, aerospace and naval forces. Its naval forces are now the primary forces tasked with operational control of the Persian Gulf. It also controls the paramilitary Basij militia which has about 90,000 active personnel. Its media arm is Sepah News.

Revolutionary Guard Corps

The Revolutionary Guard Corps (Liwa Haris al-Jamahiriya) or Jamahiriyyah Guard was a Libyan paramilitary elite unit that played the role of key protection force of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, until his death in October 2011. Composed of 3,000 men hand-picked from Gaddafi's tribal group in the Sirte region, the Guard was well armed, being provided with T-54 and T-62 tanks, APCs, MRLs, SA-8 SAMs and ZSU-23-4 Anti-aircraft guns taken from the army inventory. As of 2005, its commander was Hasan al-Kabir al-Gaddafi, a cousin of the former Libyan leader.

The Revolutionary Guard developed from the Revolutionary Committees, even if the latter had at first been introduced only into workplaces and communities, and not extended to the military. After the early 1980s, however, the Revolutionary Guard, as a paramilitary wing of the Revolutionary Committees, became entrenched within the armed forces. They served as a parallel channel of control, a means of ideological indoctrination in the barracks, and an apparatus for monitoring suspicious behavior. The Revolutionary Guards reportedly held the keys to ammunition stockpiles at the main military bases, doling it out in small quantities as needed by the regular forces. Their influence increased after a coup attempt in May 1985, that was blocked mainly thanks to the action of the Revolutionary Guard that engaged regular army units in a series of street battles.

Guards Corps (German Empire)

The Guards Corps / GK (German: Gardekorps) was a corps level command of the Prussian and then the Imperial German Armies from the 19th Century to World War I.

The Corps was headquartered in Berlin, with its units garrisoned in the city and nearby towns (Potsdam, Jüterbog, Döberitz). Unlike all other Corps of the Imperial German Army, the Guards Corps did not recruit from a specific area, but from throughout Prussia and the "Imperial Lands" of Alsace-Lorraine.

The Corps served in the Austro-Prussian War. During the Franco-Prussian War it was assigned to the 2nd Army.

In peacetime the Corps was assigned to the II Army Inspectorate but joined the 2nd Army at the start of the First World War. It was still in existence at the end of the war in the 4th Army, Heeresgruppe Kronprinz Rupprecht on the Western Front. The Corps was disbanded with the demobilisation of the German Army after World War I.

Austro-Prussian War

The Guards Corps fought in the Austro-Prussian War against Austria in 1866, including the Battle of Königgrätz.