How Accurate this 1982 RAND study on Ethnic Factor within Soviet Military?

comrade cat

So I stumbled upon this this interesting piece from RAND corporation about ethnic relations within the Soviet military.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R2787.1.pdf

As this was made back in 1982, they obviously cannot rely on hard data, and thus relied on tons of interviews with former Soviet military servicemen that has moved/fled to the west at that time, instead. They admit it could contain exaggeration although they're quite confident that they've taken enough measures to mitigate it.

Some findings (amongst others) are:
  • With the exception of the non-combat construction troops, most conscript will be stationed far from their place of origins, except if they can bribe the conscription officers enough.
  • "Reliable Slavs" (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorusians) dominated the structure of the armed forces, and overwhelming Russian dominance could be found inside the officer corps. Minorities who climbed in the officer rank were usually quite russified, although even then, minorities rarely reach the rank above Major.
  • Russification of the officer corps picked up steam especially after world war II and after Khruschev's military downsizing in the 1950s (alledgely non-Slavic officers got demobilized more than Slavic ones).
  • (Eastern) Ukrainians overwhelmingly dominated the NCO corps because so many of them re-enlisted after their conscription terms ended. Many deemed of them as ruthless and careerist. Western Ukrainians, however, were seen as more nationalistic and thus don't like the military service.
  • There are significant language issues within the less educated non-Slav people, especially those that came from Central Asia and the Caucasus, who often times spoke no Russian when they got conscripted.
  • Majority of non-Slavs were assigned to the non-combat construction troops, partly because of the government distrust of minorities, but also because of language issues above. Some exceptions are:
  • Many Balts found themselves to be assigned to technologically intensive services because the government found them to be highly disciplined and have excellent academical aptitude. While the Balts and Russians enlisted hate each other (because of the Balt's very strong national sentiment), Russians bedgrugingly respected the Balts for this, and...
  • MVD troops (internal security) were mainly manned by Central Asians (in one claim, as much as 50-60% of the total internal security troops were from Central Asian ethnicities). There were stereotipically deemed to be ruthless and cruel in this service.
  • Racism were widespread inside the armed forces. Racism were especially severe towards Central Asians who were deemed to be backwards. Fightings and violence because of racism were also frequently happened inside the armed forces, sometimes involving dozens of people.
  • It was said that these kind of racially motivated fightings happened all the time and in many places, even said one interviewee, "in top secret nuclear facilities near Tomsk". Officers don't like to involved themselves in this issues because it could blemish their career records, thus, many issues remains unadressed.
  • However, technologically intensive services were said to be affected by this racial strive much less because 1. there were not many Non-Slavs in the first place, and 2. these services generally does not tolerate racism as much as regular services.
  • The compulsory military service, instead of alleviating national identity by making the service a melting pot, exarbated it instead because of the racial issues enlisted conscripts encountered during their service.

How accurate do y'all think it is? Love to hear you opinion.
 

Monk78

If central Asian were recruited more for internal security, will they also be stationed in non Slavic areas ?
Eg kazakh troops in tadjik ssr or Georgia ssr ?
 

comrade cat

Monk78 said:
If central Asian were recruited more for internal security, will they also be stationed in non Slavic areas ?
Eg kazakh troops in tadjik ssr or Georgia ssr ?
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Unsure, as it is also stated that although overall this seems to be the rule, ethnic mix could vary greatly depending on place.

So (I think) it it possible that they might use other non central-Asian minorities and Slavs in central Asian SSRs, while the central-Asians were used elsewhere.
 

Monk78

comrade cat said:
Unsure, as it is also stated that although overall this seems to be the rule, ethnic mix could vary greatly depending on place.

So (I think) it it possible that they might use other non central-Asian minorities and Slavs in central Asian SSRs, while the central-Asians were used elsewhere.
Click to expand...
How much hostility was there between the tadjiks Uzbeks Kazakhs and other central Asian groups in the population of that time ? Do we have any information on that ?
 

comrade cat

Monk78 said:
How much hostility was there between the tadjiks Uzbeks Kazakhs and other central Asian groups in the population of that time ? Do we have any information on that ?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately there's not much information on this, as the Central Asians were mostly clumped up together by respondent, and I got the sense that most assumed relations between the central Asian Turkic Muslims to be good. I think one of the only clearer example on intra Central Asian's relation was this respondent (who I assumed to be Kazakh or Tatar because he used the pronoun "we" when discussing about it) who said that Kazakh and Tatar's relationship were very good.

There were, however, respondent who noticed that Chechens and Central Asian's relation were not that good (despite both being Muslims), ostensibly because the former looked down upon the later for being more willing to accept Russian domination, and thus one rarely sided with each other during racially motivated fights.
 

Monk78

comrade cat said:
Unfortunately there's not much information on this, as the Central Asians were mostly clumped up together by respondent, and I got the sense that most assumed relations between the central Asian Turkic Muslims to be good. I think one of the only clearer example on intra Central Asian's relation was this respondent (who I assumed to be Kazakh or Tatar because he used the pronoun "we" when discussing about it) who said that Kazakh and Tatar's relationship were very good.

There were, however, respondent who noticed that Chechens and Central Asian's relation were not that good (despite both being Muslims), ostensibly because the former looked down upon the later for being more willing to accept Russian domination, and thus one rarely sided with each other during racially motivated fights.
Click to expand...
One would think that the Soviets would exploit the differences in ethnicities of Central Asia just to maintain order and tighten their control.
 

EWHM

I had a friend who was a foreign area officer in the USSR back in the mid to late 80s and in Russia during the 90s. That report seems pretty congruent with what he told me about Russia and the way they rolled in general. The bit about using distant minorities for MVD sorts of things is pretty textbook though, pretty much every empire winds up doing that. That's as far as I can speak without involving current politics.
 

comrade cat

Monk78 said:
One would think that the Soviets would exploit the differences in ethnicities of Central Asia just to maintain order and tighten their control.
Click to expand...

Perhaps they deemed the Central Asians as non-threatening enough so it won't be necessary. Respondents often compared contempt openly shown by some minorities like the Balts or Chechens with the Central Asians who, although also resenting Russians bossing them around, were generally less assertive as those.

After all, historically the Central Asian SSRs were deemed as some of the more loyal in the Soviet Union.

EWHM said:
I had a friend who was a foreign area officer in the USSR back in the mid to late 80s and in Russia during the 90s. That report seems pretty congruent with what he told me about Russia and the way they rolled in general. The bit about using distant minorities for MVD sorts of things is pretty textbook though, pretty much every empire winds up doing that. That's as far as I can speak without involving current politics.
Click to expand...

mike of mass said:
Totalitarians always station ethnic troops in places where they don’t understand the locals begging for mercy
Click to expand...

Pretty much. The respondents also seemed to agree on this. One mentioned that historically, Lenin used Latvian riflemen as loyal guards and also mentioned the adage "if you're afraid of the Russians, use minorities, if you're afraid of the minorities, use the Russians."
 
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Ajobek

My father served in Soviet Army in 86-88, according to his experince national identity played role amoung regular solider, he was sole Kyrgyz in his unit, and older Kazakh soliders helped him to adopt in army. He did not had any problem with any Slavic soliders, according to him Slavic soliders in most case did not try to create their "Zemliachestvo- division based on national or regional identity". They had problem with solider from Georgia. However the most important division was based on year of conscripition, their was whole hierarchy based on your years and months of servise. Experince of my uncle who served in Afganistan is totaly diffirent, all of national divison did not exist in his unit.
 
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