ABSTRACT
The Soviet Armed Forces are multiethnic in composition and a model "Soviet" institution. The military service in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is promoted as the "School of the Nation" where young men of diverse ethnic origins and cultures are molded into model soldiers—and prototypes of the new "Soviet man." The ethnic security map in the Soviet Armed Forces has been easy to maintain as long as an appropriate ethnic mix was available in successive call-ups. The problem, in the 1970s and even more acutely in the 1980s, has been that the ethnic mix has been changing in favor of the nationalities that are technically least developed and culturally and politically most alienated. Ethnic attitudes in the ranks are an accurate reflection of ethnic attitudes at large in the USSR, but the conditions of isolation, close proximity, and confinement that characterize the military environment, and the hothouse atmosphere, tend to sharpen perceptions and intensify antagonisms.
