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Soviet Union [USSR] National Minorities in the Armed Forces
The military tried to give the impression that soldiers of
different nationalities served together harmoniously, but the
number of articles in the military press devoted to relations
between ethnic groups itself indicates the persistence of
nationality conflict within the armed forces. Rather than
contributing to nation building, service in the armed forces
reportedly is more likely to increase ethnic and linguistic
consciousness. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union's non-Slavic
minority groups comprised one-quarter of the conscript pool.
Western experts estimated that, as Slavic birthrates decline, by
the year 2000 one-third of draft age males will be non-Slavic.
The armed forces, however, appear to have mechanisms in place
for maintaining control over national minorities in their ranks.
The armed forces have been dominated by Slavs in general and
Russians in particular. Russian has been the only language of
command, and Slavs constituted 80 percent of all combat personnel
and 95 percent of the officer corps. Although more non-Slavs will
have to be drafted in the future, a pervasive inability, or
unwillingness, to read or speak Russian among non-Slavic, and
particularly Central Asian, recruits has impeded their training and
advancement in the military. Because the Russian language was not
taught to conscripts in the armed forces, non-Slavs have been
limited to assignments in nontechnical and noncombat positions.
Most Central Asian conscripts were assigned to Construction and
Troop Billeting and served their two years in construction
battalions. They received little combat training.
The military leadership viewed non-Slavs as potentially
unreliable frontline troops. For example, Central Asian Muslim
soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan during the early days of the
war but had to be withdrawn because they sympathized with their
coreligionists in that country. Moreover, non-Slavs were rarely
assigned to the elite armed services. They were, however, recruited
to serve with the Internal Troops in the Russian Republic because
they could be counted on to suppress any disturbance in areas
inhabited by ethnic Slavs.
Data as of May 1989
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