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- Title
Nationalities in a Class War: «Foreign» Soldiers in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.
- Authors
Whitewood, Peter
- Abstract
This article examines Bolshevik attitudes towards the «foreign» soldiers who served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. It focuses on the treatment of non-Russian soldiers from Europe and Asia, as well as the national minorities of the former Russian Empire, by the Bolshevik Party elite, the Red Army leadership and the political police. It concludes that while «foreign» soldiers were recognised for bringing professionalism to the newly formed and disorganised Red Army, these troops were never properly integrated into the ranks, even though class position assumed greater significance than nationality during the Russian Civil War. The soldiers continued to be faced with the same barriers to integration that had existed under the Russian Imperial Regime. Finally, the article argues that the Bolsheviks' early experience of using «foreign» soldiers in the Red Army influenced the evolution of Soviet national policy and played a part in the shift towards Russification under Iosef Stalin.
- Subjects
RUSSIAN Revolution, 1917-1921; MINORITIES in the military; SOVIET Union. Raboche-Krestianskaia Krasnaia Armiia; MULTINATIONAL armed forces; MILITARY sociology; MILITARY culture; ROSSIISKAIA kommunisticheskaia partiia (bolshevikov); RUSSIFICATION
- Publication
Journal of Modern European History, 2016, Vol 14, Issue 3, p342
- ISSN
1611-8944
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.17104/1611-8944-2016-3-342