ABSTRACT
An ethnic cadre, or staffing, policy was a mainstay of Soviet nationalities policies. During the civil war, in the very midst of the “class struggle,” it was clear that soldiers of specific nationalities tended to side with one or another camp. Cossacks (of Russian or Ukrainian origin, but historically a separate group) mostly supported the Whites, while many Jews acquired fame as Red commissars. Caucasian mountaineers of the White “Savage Division” fought the Reds. Latvian sharpshooters guarded Lenin himself and staffed the first Cheka units. For some years the leading cadres of the Cheka included significant numbers of Poles (including Cheka leader Felix Dzerzhinskii), Latvians, and Jews, with Russians accounting for no more than half the leadership. This is not to deny the fact that there were Red Cossacks, stirringly portrayed in the novels of Mikhail Sholokhov; that a Socialist Revolutionary named Fanya Kaplan took a shot at Lenin; that most Latvians opted for independence; and that few Poles were proud of “their” “Iron Felix.”
