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National military formations of the Red Army A national military formation (Russian: Национальные воинские формирования) refers to a regiment/division in the Soviet Red Army of the Soviet Union, formed before and during the Second World War on the basis of nationalities of the personnel in their ranks. In addition to national units, representatives of all nationalities served in ordinary military formations not divided according to national or other grounds. Historical summaryIn its first days of its existence, the Red Army followed the Russian tradition of forming national military units, either openly (a unit with a "national" name was created, staffed mainly by representatives of that nationality), or by the "concentration" method, in which conscripts of the same nationality were sent to one compound.[1] Many similar units in the former Imperial Russian Army had existed for years, and many national Bolshevik military units took part in the October Revolution of 1917.[1] During the Russian Civil War,[2] national units had what was considered to be an impressive battle record.[1] The policy was the brainchild of Mikhail Frunze, who made sure that national formations were of different sizes, ranging from platoons to divisions.[2] For the training of military personnel of these units, special educational institutions were created. As a rule, national formations served in the areas where they were formed. The existence of units like these were controversial in the Soviet leadership, who believed that they couldn't be able to control them.[1] The proportion of soldiers of the Red Army serving in national military units was always small. At the beginning of 1938, less than 2% of the Red Army served in national formations. In 1934, the Belarusian and Ukrainian national units were disbanded and in 1938, a special decree of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party and the Council of People's Commissars "On National Units and Formations of the Red Army", abolished all national formations and introduced a unified procedure for military service for representatives of the country's ethnic communities.[3] The outbreak of the Second World War a year later and the Great Patriotic War two years after that forced the Soviet government to reverse this decision. The reformation of national units began in August 1941 by order of the State Defense Committee, two months after the start of Operation Barbarossa. This was meant to be a counter to the collaborationist formations composed of Soviet nationals in occupied parts of the USSR (such as the Kaminski Brigade, the Armenian Legion, and the Turkestan Legion).[1] The first formation ever raised was the 201st Latvian Rifle Division, with 90% of its personnel being residents of the Latvian SSR and more than half consisting of ethnic Latvians. Many national formations lost their nationality specification after the war, continuing to exist in numbers until the 1950s.[4] List of units
Armenian SSR[8]
Bashkir ASSR
Buryat-Mongolian and Yakut ASSR
Chechen-Ingush ASSR
Estonian SSR
Georgian SSR
Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR
Kalmyk ASSRKazakh SSR
Kirghiz SSR
Latvian SSR
Lithuanian SSRMoldovan SSR
Tajik SSR
Turkmen SSR
Uzbek SSR
Formations for nationalities outside the USSR The 88th Separate Rifle Brigade was unique in that it incorporated the peoples of Korea, China and Soviet Central Asia in its ranks.[18] This unit was founded in July 1942 to accommodate the remaining forces of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, who were exiled to the Soviet Union after being driven by the Imperial Japanese Army to Manchuria during the war. Chinese Major General Zhou Baozhong was commander of the brigade.[19] Notable members have included Kim Il Sung, Lim Chum-chu and Kim Chaek. Notable commanders and membersLegacy of national formations in the twenty-first century
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