Red Guards and Delegates in the October Revolution. Red Guards were paramilitary volunteer formations consisting mainly of factory workers, peasants, cossacks and partially of soldiers and sailors for "protection of the Soviet power". Red Guards were a transitional military force of the collapsing Imperial Russian Army and the base formations of Bolsheviks during the October Revolution and the first months of the Civil War. Most of them were formed in the time frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and some of the units were reorganized into the Red Army during 1918. The October Revolution was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to October 25, 1917 (by the Julian or Old Style calendar, which corresponds to November 7, 1917 in the Gregorian or New Style calendar). Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on October 24, 1917 (O.S.). The October Revolution in Petrograd overthrew the provisional government and gave the power to the local soviets. No photographer credited, dated 1917.