Racial III.

This is coolbert:

The U.S. military has NOT BEEN ALONE in suffering from "racial" problems.

The army and military of the Soviet Union DID ALSO suffer from similar problems. Perhaps in a much more intense, violent, and pervasive manner.

I use the term racial here in a very broad sense. NOT totally racial, as the word racial is commonly and generally understood.

Think of this term as being in this case ethnic background. Christian and Muslim. Even though the Soviet Union rabidly promoted atheism, persons were still readily identifiable as "Christian" or "Muslim" in the cultural sense. NOT necessarily practicing the religion, but still nominally identified as such. And recognized as such by everyone too.

Problems of a "racial" sense in the old Soviet Army did not manifest themselves until the 1950's.

Prior to that time, "national" units existed. You had Latvian units [Lettish], Armenian, Georgian, Mongolian troops forming distinctive units of their own. Mixing was not the norm during World War Two [WW2], for instance.

Mixing troops from Slavic areas [Russia and the Ukraine], with troops from the Central Asian Soviet Republics became the norm in the years AFTER WW2.

Keep in the mind that the Soviets used to boast of a state consisting of one hundred fifty [150] nationalities. All living in harmony, of course, and without the slightest problem existing between the groups. So the world was told by the "party".

Tensions among the "mixed" troops were very high. So say a number of emigres' and defectors from the old Soviet Union. The desire to create harmony among the nationalities of the Soviet Union by mixing the groups in the army just seemed to exacerbate an already existing tense situation.

[did not solve the problem, just made it worse within the Red Army. Where a problem did not exist prior, or was miniscule, it became acute!!]

"Christians" and "Muslims" had a lot of animosity for one another, according to what has been documented. Animosity that often resulted in pitched battles of thousands of troops going at one another all at the same time. NOT using firearms, but fighting with fists, chains, clubs, chairs, etc. Sort of like what went on aboard the Kitty Hawk.

According to General Odom, in his book, "The Collapse of the Soviet Military":

"The ethnic composition of the officer corps was predominantly Slavic. Central Asian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, and Moldavian officers were rare . . . in 1990, 97 % of the officer corps was Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Tatar."

"The abuse of a minority soldier [Muslim] often inspired the wrath and revenge of his fellow nationals. National groups banded together in fights, thievery, and other kinds of disorderly behavior . . . deaths frequently resulted both from fights among ethnic gangs and from . . . hazing"

"Hazing of Central Asians was particularly brutal, and many groups from the Caucasus were treated little better. Slavic soldiers were highly creative in devising obscene ethnic slurs for Central Asians, Armenians, Georgians, Moldavians. And troops from the Baltic Republics"

"Frequently the soldier of minority ethnic groups in a regiment would band together informally in what was known as a zemlyachestvo - - a group of soldiers from the same homeland. A soldier might be the only Uzbek in his platoon, for example, but a zemlyachestvo tied him closely to all other Uzbeks in the regiment. If he felt that a Slavic starik [old time soldier] had hazed him excessively, he might call on his zemlyachestvo to retaliate against the starik, These brawls often produced serious physical injuries, sometimes riots, and occasionally deaths. Clashes sometimes broke out along religious lines, Muslims battling against Christians"

"The army is a copy of society and suffers from all its diseases, usually at a higher temperature." - - Leon Trotsky.

Leon seems to have hit the nail right on the head. Right??!!

coolbert.