The Red Army at first, then the Soviet army, and the Russian army today, were built as multi-national, and it helped the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany, scientific director of the Russian Military-Historical Society, professor of MGIMO Mikhail Myagkov stated in an interview with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza.
"In Russia, in the Soviet Union, and now in Russia, there are thousands of nations, and it is impossible to imagine our army without this multinational basis," he said.
He reminded that among the heroes of the Soviet Union awarded with this title during the Great Patriotic War, there were representatives of almost all the big nations and nationalities of the Soviet Union: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Tatars, as well as many representatives of the North Caucasian nations.
"All of them fought in one large army, for one great country. Yes, of course they had their own small homeland, they had a family, their home, which they were protecting during the Great Patriotic War. But while fighting in the Brest fortress, defending Minsk and Kiev, and then defending Moscow and Leningrad, they knew that if the Germans will seize these centers of our country, their small homeland will also disappear. In other words, they did not separate a small homeland and a large country," he explained.
According to Myagkov, symbols and ideology of the Soviet state were initially understandable and close to many people. "When the Soviet state was built - and it was created on a new basis, on the basis of social equity - they perceived these symbols as native for themselves. Moreover, when they liberated Europe, they were proud of the fact that they are the representatives of the Soviet nation. A concept of the Soviet nation was not an empty phrase, there was a truly large community. People believed that they were protecting common things together, and a Russian man was a brother to Ukrainian, Jew, Tartar, all of us were brothers, and all of us were members of one big family," he stressed.
Professor pointed out that it allowed out coutry to preserve the unity in difficult conditions and win the war, in the end. "Hitler expected that when he strikes, when our army will be destroyed during the border clashes, the country will crumble. Not only the central government will collapse, but nationalities will also fight against each other. That is why the Germans tried to create legions from different nationalities, but these attempts have failed, they were minimal in the scale of our country. The Germans failed to carry out this policy, and it was actually the first step towards their defeat," he stated.
In addition, he spoke about the situation in the Caucasus. "We are closely connected with the Armenian and the Azerbaijani historians, write different projects with them. They often come to Moscow, speak at various international conferences, 'We Won Together', for example, which is held in the North Caucasus. This is a very useful thing, which gives not only scientific impulse to further study of the participation of the Armenian and the Azerbaijani nations in the Great Patriotic War, but also allows to combine their modern representatives in the framework of one common space, which was once called the Soviet Union," he informed.
