ABSTRACT
The Red Army in 1920 totaled 5.3 million men, 4.7 percent of whom were non-Slavs, mostly Muslims. Devastated by the tolls of World War I and the Civil War, the Soviet state simply did not have the financial ability to support an army of several million and took measures to scale the military down to peacetime levels. The issues of ensuring central control over the military and ensuring the proper ethnic mix in the Red Army came together in the problem of what to do about Sultan Galiev's Muslim units. The manner in which the party resolved this question serves as an excellent example of how the Soviets consolidated Slavic control in the military. A directive of the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 called for closer relations between the Red Army and the various national units and placed stress on centralization of control.
