This book discusses a number of issues concerning the service of the nationalities of the Caucasus in the Red Army within the context of Soviet nationality policies and an intensification of repressive tendencies in the USSR's armed forces during World War II. It is the first study of the role and function of the Caucasian national troops in the Red Army and of related political debates between state and military leaders of the Caucasian national republics and USSR. The political aspects of the mobilization of various Caucasian nationalities in the army, and the reasons for the gradual cessation, in the course of 1941-1943, of the mobilization in the Red Army of all native nationalities of the Northern and Southern Caucasus are analyzed, in particular.The study is based on documents from the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Social and Political History and Russian State War Archive, as well as on various memoirs and secondary sources.
