Review essay on The National Composition of the Red Army, 1918–1945. A Historical-Statistical Study, by A. Yu Bezugol’nyi.1

Abstract

The national aspect of the development of the Red Army is a major and complex scholarly issue that goes beyond the boundaries of specialized military-historical research. This topic is also significant within the framework of the general history of the Soviet period since it allows us to better understand the features of the development of the USSR in the first decades of its existence. To its credit, in 2021 publisher Tsentropoligraf in Moscow published a monograph on this theme, written by Aleksey Yuryevich Bezugol’nyi, a senior researcher at the Scientific and Research Institute of Military History of the Military Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. He is widely known as a major, long-established specialist in this area, the author of a whole series of in-depth monographs. His works include General Bicherakhov and His Caucasus Army, 1917–1919, The People of the Caucasus and the Red Army, 1918–1945, and History of the Military District System in Russia, 1862–1918 (Moscow, 2012 [co-authored]). His new book — The National Composition of the Red Army, 1918–1945. A Historical-Statistical Study — is a summation of many years of research on the issue of the national composition of the Red Army. Bezugol’nyi wrote on the topic earlier in his books Highlanders of the North Caucasus in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945 and the “Source of the Red Army’s Additional Might . . .”: The National Question in the Military Development of the USSR, 1922–1945, as well as his doctoral dissertation, The Experience of the Development of the USSR Armed Forces: National Aspect (1922–1945), which he defended in 2020. However, his new monograph is not a publication of his dissertation. More than a year after defending his dissertation, the author continued to develop this theme, expanding, supplementing, and refining his work. As a result, the book contains sections on the national composition of the Russian Army before the Russian Revolution and on the manning of the Red Army during the Civil War. Thus, the work encompasses practically the