Ranks and insignia of the Red Army and Navy 1918–1935  In the period from 1918 to 1935 of the young Soviet Union any bourgeois military thoughts were put under general suspicion by the communists, the new political establishment. Among others, the Old Russian tradition to wear epaulets and shoulder straps as rank insignia was rigorously abolished and was replaced with a new tradition of rank designations and insignia for the new Red Army and the nascent Soviet Navy. In the early period of the October revolution new uniforms were used and new units structured on the basis of the former Imperial Russian Army and Navy. The levelling of military grades and neglecting of rank designation were symptomatic of the new order. The first common rank designation throughout the Red Army was "Red Army man" () or, in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Navy, "Red Fleet man" (). Personnel designated to command a military unit were unofficially named "red commander" (Russian: красный командир; "krasnyi komandir", abbreviated краском; "kraskom"). Commanders of major units (army or corps sized) were designated "army commander" (Russian: командующий армией; "komanduyushchy armyye"; abbreviated командарм; "komandarm"). For more detailed graduation "komandarm I" and "komandarm II" were adopted. Commanding officers of major units below army and corps level were known as:  In the navy from December 1917 until 1918, naval officers of the Imperial Russian Navy who joined its ranks were addressed by their tsarist rank with the addition of front abbreviation "b.", which meant "former", while new officers had to wait till 1924 for their rank designations to be issued. With no formal Red Army insignia designated, red bows, cap peaks, sleeve patches and the red soviet star were worn, first by the so-called Red Guard units, later by all other Red Army units. In 1920 all the ranks and rank insignia of the Red Army and Navy were regulated by the orders of the Defence Commissar, Leon Trotsky. The first official emblem of the Red Army was a chest badge (red textile bend and oak leaves twig, in the middle a star with sickle and hammer), introduced in April 1918.