Ethnic Minorities In The Red Army

Asset Or Liability?

Alexander R. Alexiev

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367164010
• eBook ISBN: 9780429712944
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book treats the issue of national diversity of Soviet military manpower that affects the morale, effectiveness, and reliability of the Soviet armed forces. It explores the historical dimensions of military multinationalism with respect to the Russian and Soviet military establishments.

Part 1
Managing the Ethnic Factor in the Russian and Soviet Armed Forces: A Historical Overview

Susan L. Curran and Dmitry Ponomareff

Introduction

The dominant role of ethnic Russians in the political, economic, and military life of the Soviet Union has often masked important ethnic distinctions in the composition of the USSR's population. Even the division of the union into fifteen primary republics (see Fig. 1) represents only some of the major ethnic differentiations of Soviet society. That over 100 languages enjoy official status indicates more fully the diversity of the Soviet population. The expansion of the Russian Empire before 1917 and the equally determined policy of the Soviet government to retain its Imperial patrimony have resulted in Russian control over such disparate peoples as the Western-oriented Christian inhabitants of the Baltic States—Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania—and the Turkic and Iranic Muslims of Central Asia.

Russians have always been the largest single ethnic group in the multinational state, and along with the other Slavs, who include Ukrainians and Belorussians, they have constituted an absolute majority of the population. This numerical advantage is now being eroded by differences in the annual average rates of population growth in the various ethnic regions of the USSR. The birthrate of the "European" population (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Baltic peoples) shows a slowing trend, while birthrates in the "Asian" areas (Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kirghizia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan) are among the highest in the world.

The changing ethnic balance of the Soviet population is likely to pose a number of new problems for the leadership, among the most

Fig.1—USSR administrative divisions

potentially troublesome of which is the changing ethnic composition of the Soviet military manpower pool. With a declining number of "European" draft-age recruits, the government may be forced to accept an increasing percentage of "Asians" into the armed forces.

Other parts of this book address the nature and extent of the demographic shift in the conscript pool, various options that might be available to the leadership to minimize or manage the demographic change within the military, and problems the Soviets may encounter as a result of language problems, nationality-related conflicts, and decreasing efficiency, effectiveness, and reliability of forces.

This examination of the history of Russian (pre-Soviet) and Soviet policies and practices in mobilizing and using minorities in the military is designed to provide a background against which to analyze the impending leadership dilemma. The ways non-Russians have historically been recruited, assigned, and employed may suggest methods the current regime could consider for managing minorities in the military in the future. Also, the success or failure of earlier attempts to use non-Russians in the military probably shapes, or at least influences, the perceptions of Soviet leaders about the effectiveness and reliability of minority troops.

This historical review reveals that even though Russians and other Slavs have heavily dominated the population since the founding of the modern Russian state, the Kremlin has traditionally drawn on the support of minority troops to defend the country, conduct foreign campaigns, and perform internal police functions. The evidence indicates that minority troops have played important roles in a number of specific instances, and that the sheer numbers of minority soldiers were important factors in the Civil War that followed the Revolution and in World War II. At the same time, instances of questionable effectiveness and dubious reliability, if not outright disloyalty, involving non-Russian troops underscore the limitation of using minorities to augment Moscow's military manpower.

1
Ethnic Recruitment in the Russian Empire

Since the earliest days of the modern Russian state, Russian regimes have employed indigenous non-Russian nationalities in a variety of military and internal security capacities. The history of Russian policies and practices regarding minority personnel reveals a continuous struggle to balance the inherent advantages and disadvantages of a multinational military. Although a policy of mobilizing non-Russian nationalities obviously increased the available military manpower pool, it also presented command and control problems because of historical, linguistic, and cultural differences. Segregating national minorities in their own ethnically distinct units mitigated the language problem and also allowed the deployment of ethnically antagonistic units to suppress rebellions in any given area of the state. At the same time, however, the reliability of and control over separate minority units were matters of serious concern.

A few select minority groups were employed as allies or auxiliaries in Russian campaigns in the fifteenth century. Over time, the number of nationalities mobilized for the military expanded gradually but extensively, until in 1874 all nationalities were officially (although not yet operationally) subjected to conscription. By this time, the Russian military had also been transformed into a modern mass army patterned on the Prussian example. As mobilization and organizational policies evolved, the desire to maximize military manpower while ensuring the reliability of and control over troops guided decisions about which nationalities would be included in the military and about the types of units in which they would serve.

Early Non-Russian Allies or Auxiliaries

Non-Russian soldiers first participated in Russian military campaigns as allies or auxiliaries. The two-century-long efforts of successive Grand Princes of Moscow to unite the numerous Russian city-states to break Mongol domination resulted in the establishment of the modern Russian state by the fifteenth century. Although the burden of this struggle against the Mongols fell principally on Russian soldiers raised through feudal levies, the Moscow Princes formed alliances with select non-Russian feudal tribes whose support proved important to the success of Russian military operations. Kasimov Tatars, for example, provided military leaders and advisers to the Grand Princes and troops that defended Moscow's southern and eastern borders. Kasimov Tatars also reinforced Ivan Ill's armies during the forcible subordination of the mercantile city of Novgorod in 1477. Troops of the similarly allied Siberian Tatars and Nogay Tatars participated in the defeat and sacking of the Golden Horde in 1481, a defeat from which the Mongol overlord—Moscow's prime enemy—was never able to recover.¹

Having proved effective, if not vital, in these instances, the Tatars continued to be used as allies or auxiliaries well into the establishment of the Russian Empire. For example, Kasimov Tatar troops served in the armies of Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584) during his conquest of the Volga Basin and in the Livonian War.²

Ivan also used Tatar nobility from Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea—especially those of Gengesid descent—to command his purely Russian armies.³ He appears to have begun this practice because some Russian commanders defected in the course of the Livonian War. Unlike such defectors, Tatar commanders were free from association with Russian aristocratic cliques and fully dependent on the Tsar for their careers; thus they could be expected to advance his wishes.

The policies of Ivan the Terrible set the precedent of drawing on trusted non-Russian nationalities to expand the military manpower base, to conduct operations against Russian enemies, and to perform internal police functions in Russia proper. With the exception of Tatar nobles who served as officers, non-Russians were not integrated into Russian units but served in separate units raised from among their own nationality.

The ways in which Russian leaders sought to capitalize on non-Russian military manpower remained essentially unchanged in succeeding centuries, even when major changes were instituted in the mobilization and organization of the military. With the exception of selective integration of aristocrats of the Empire as officers in the Russian Army, non-Russians participated outside the framework of the regular, standing army in units considered allied nomadic hordes of the Russian military establishment.⁴ Whereas conscription was instituted in Russian areas in 1699-1700, the policy was not applied in other parts of the Empire until considerably later, and most non-Russians who served were volunteers in auxiliary units.⁵

Conscription and the Creation of the Modern Russian Army

To create a modern Russian Army, Peter the Great replaced the raising of feudal levies with modern conscription. When first instituted in 1699-1700, the draft applied only to Russian parts of the Empire, Each landholder in these areas was directed to provide a specified number of draftees, according to the number of serfs he owned. The balance of the enlistees were drawn from the poorer urban social elements.⁶

The conscription policy remained focused primarily on the Russian population through the eighteenth century. This practice was codified in the Imperial Decree of May 17, 1798, which specified that recruits were to be "native-born Russians." Although in the parlance of that time this term encompassed Ukrainians and Belorussians, ethnic Great Russians carried the disproportionate burden of conscription. The other Slavs began to be systematically recruited only in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.⁷

Despite the focus of the draft on Russians, not all non-Slavs were exempted from conscription in this period. As early as 1722, such small ethnic minorities as the Mordvinians and Cheremisov Tatars became subject to compulsory service.⁸ The regime apparently chose to expand its military manpower by drafting those nationalities that were considered most loyal and that could be readily integrated with Russian soldiers.

As before, non-Russian nobles served as officers in the regular army of Peter the Great. The Russian Empire, like the Moskovite state that preceded it, accepted Tatar and Transcaucasian nobility into the Russian aristocracy and into the Imperial officer corps. This allowed Armenians, Georgians, and Ossetins to enjoy distinguished military careers in the Tsarist Army.⁹ Members of the Georgian aristocracy traditionally served in the Imperial Guard and enjoyed a well-earned reputation for recklessness and valor.

For the most part, however, non-Russian soldiers continued to serve in auxiliary units, which acquired the designation "troops of different nationalities" (inordnye voiska) at the time Peter the Great modernized the Russian Army. Kalmyks, Bashkirs, and Tatars are known to have served in such units. The nomadic Kalmyks served as military gendarmerie, protected the eastern approaches to the Empire against incursions by other nomadic elements, and supported Peter's ill-fated Persian campaign, Kalmyk units also participated in Peter's Great Northern War (1700-1721) against Sweden. Later Kalmyk units served along...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1 Managing the Ethnic Factor in the Russian and Soviet Armed Forces: A Historical Overview
• PART 2 Soviet Nationalities in German Wartime Strategy, 1941-1945
• PART 3 The Ethnic Factor in the Soviet Armed Forces
• PART 4 Soviet Demographic Trends and the Ethnic Composition of Draft-Age Males, 1980-1995
• PART 5 Soviet Muslim Soldiers in Afghanistan
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index