Hi Futurist
Doesn't seem like western Ukrainians were strongly committed to Communism given just how ferociously they fought against the Soviet Union after the end of World War II:
An erroneous comparison. By 1944 the Ukrainians had had the chance of sampling the delights of the Soviet system for themselves and had more contact with Eastern Ukrainians, which would have put a dampener on anyone's enthusiasm for Soviet Communism except the most deluded.
Hi Sid
I think you are over-focussing on one aspect of the painfully complex process of selection of soldiers for a posting that was sensitive in the areas of politics and security and which changed with the times. For example the selection criteria for officers were significantly tightened up after a lieutenant in the KOP did a bunk to the USSR in (?) 1925. In fact the flood of desertions from the KOP to the USSR in the 20s was reduced to a trickle by the mid thirties. This was partly the result of much more rigorous security checks which examined a candidate's social class (peasants were preferred to the sons of workers, especially workers from large industrialised centres), criminal history, political affiliations and opinions, personal psychological characteristics etc.
Needless to say, national origins did play a part in this process and, given the times, played a more significant role than it would nowadays. That is not to say that ethnic background does not play an equally significant role today than it did then, with regard to loyalty. And not without cause - as no fan of Soviet Communism and a British citizen I would have had no problem fighting the Russians had the Cold War gone hot in my youth. However had it come to fighting Polish troops I had no idea what I would have done (albeit I cannot see myself 'going over'). I would certainly have been a less than enthusiastic soldier under those circumstances and I was far from unique in that respect. Not surprisingly, my access to sensitive positions in the British Army, had I chosen such a career, would have been limited (assuming I would have being accepted in the first place given the policy of not accepting people with family ties behind the Iron Curtain). However, much less attention would be, I would hope, given nowadays to the belief in national stereotypes as a guide to behaviour - something that was broadly considered a fact at the time in question. These 'national characteristics' were widely considered a good guide to what made a 'good soldier'. For example Muslims were considered better soldiers than Hindus and Muslims were, therefore, over-represented in the Indian Army.
Of course there is some truth (albeit a cultural one rather than a genetic one) in this and a self-fulfilling prophesy. Byelorussians in Polish service outperformed Polish soldiers in the Polish Army with regard to practically every metric you could choose (desertions, criminality, military performance) despite a virtually identical geo-political situation to the Ukrainians among whom the opposite seems to have been the case.
Also, I would suggest, you are grossly oversimplifying the whole issue of the extra-territorial system of recruitment to one factor - suspicion of disloyalty to the state. The reality is that there was a host of reasons why this system was adopted, predominantly the need to unify three very diverse systems inherited from three occupiers and to make some attempt to bring up standards in the very backward parts of the country - also an inherited problem.
WM
Where do these figures for KOP nationality limits come from? AFAIK they were never set officially, at least at the outset. In the 'recreated KOP' in 1939 up to 20% of the cavalry and engineering KOP unit personnel were German.
