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.

In 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. 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. During the Russian Civil War, national units had what was considered to be an impressive battle record. The policy was the brainchild of Mikhail Frunze, who made sure that national formations were of different sizes, ranging from platoons to divisions. 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.

This part of Soviet nationalities policy was controversial in the Soviet leadership, who doubted that they would be able to control the units. The proportion of soldiers of the Red Army serving in national military units was always small. In 1934, the Belarusian and Ukrainian national units were disbanded and at the beginning of 1938, less than 2% of the Red Army served in national formations. 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.

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). 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.