Sadly, his experience was far from unique. Ethnic Russians dominated the ranks of the Red Army (See this table which I'm too lazy to bother typing out), and racism - both casual and institutional - was rather endemic in the Red Army, especially towards those who hailed from the Central Asian region, but also the western lands such as Ukraine and Poland, although those who were at least Slavs, even if not Russians, were a step above the "Asiatics". Blame for losses was often foisted on the minorities failure to maintain their discipline under fire, and likewise, many Russian soldiers denigrated their general bravery, characterizing them as shirkers who avoided combat anyway possible.

The roots are manifold, much of it stemming back to the Imperial era, with the general assumption of 'Russian supremacy' over the various national minorities who made up first the Empire, and then the USSR. Vast differences in cultural mores only served to strengthen ideas of 'otherness', and this was further compounded by language barriers, as many minority soldiers arrived with little to no understanding of Russian. For a nominally classless society, ethnicity, in the army, became an unofficial class system, with non-Slavs on the bottom. Even in units raised in the far east, being an ethnic Russian was one of the best ways to gain high rank, and distrust of certain minority groups would see them often relegated to labor roles in the ranks, or even excluded from military service in the pre-war years. This latter restriction was mostly lifted due to the exigencies of war, which required the recruitment of just about every minority to fill the ranks, but the Russian-chauvinism remained part of the rationale for it, as seen from one Soviet description of the multi-ethnic Red Army:

Often one encounters the opinion that the Soviet people defended their own Fatherland, Russia, against foreign invasion - which is correct, but not completely so. This desire belongs to all peoples. However, historically in the USSR, it turns out that the patriotism of separate peoples became inseparable from the recognition of the Russian ''elder brother" and "a feeling of family unity." By saving themselves from enslavement, every people together with other peoples defended a single Homeland-the Soviet Union, in which Uzbeks and Kazakhs, Tartars and Chuvash, and many other peoples found their govemment, created their industry, and received the opportunity to develop their language and national culture, to train national cadres, and so on.

So even at best, as you can see, there was a paternalistic racism present, and in practice, it often denigrated into much more. This was most true in the early days when failure after failure required a scapegoat. There is a reason that Soviet soldiers of Central Asian origin defected to the Germans at often alarming rates. Later, some of the discriminatory practices returned. With more Russians and Belorussians returning to the ranks as territory was liberated, Stalins paranoia no longer had to give way to practical concerns, and when the minority groups such as the Crimean Tartars and Chechens were deported east in 1943 and '44, the soldiers from those community who had been fighting for "their" motherland were often unceremoniously detached from the ranks and sent to join their families. Other minority units were either demobilized or sidelined from the main thrust to ensure it was Slavs, and especially Russians, who brought war to the heart of Germany. Minority units that remained found themselves often employed for labor or other support roles rather than combat arms.

It should, of course, be said that much of the reluctance to employ minorities in the Red Army was not really borne out by results. Minority units acquitted themselves quite well in many battles, and their failures are often explainable not by some innate defect in their abilities, but lack of support from the establishment who doubted them, or their own failures of morale stemming from the same source - see defections issue earlier. Mistrust, in the end, breeds mistrust.

The uneasy relationship with minority soldiers would remain a part of the Red Army culture right up until the collapse, exacerbated in later years by a growing sense of identity in the national minority communities causing more and more resentment.

"Ivan's War: Life and death in the Red Army" by Catherine Merridale

"Soviet Military Experience" by Roger R. Reese

"Colossus Reborn" by David M. Glantz

Leo J. Daugherty III (1993) The reluctant warriors: The Non‐Russian nationalities in service of the red army during the great patriotic war 1941–1945, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 6:3, 426-445

Leo J. Daugherty III (1994) Ethnic minorities in the soviet armed forces: The plight of central Asians in a Russian‐dominated military, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 7:2, 155-197

'Chorny' (black) was a common insult in the USSR (and also in today's Russia) that Slavs would use against any non-Slav darker than Scarlett Johannson. The USSR's propaganda depicted a pan-racial future workers' paradise, condemned American racism against blacks and promoted African-American figures like Angela Davis and Paul Robeson. In fact, there was a very clear de facto racial hierarchy in the USSR, which was as follows:

1. Russians (not including Jews, obviously)

2. Just below Russians came the other Slavs like Ukrainians and Belorussians and the Balts

3. The Christians of the Caucasus (Georgians and Armenians)

4. Jews

5. Azerbaijanis (the least despised type of Muslim)

6. Other Muslims (Uzbeks, Kazakhs, et al.)

7. And at the absolute bottom came the Chechens, who were loathed with great intensity

https://books.google.com/books?id=VoMsBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA13

Obviously there were complications to this - Stalin was Georgian, after all, and some individuals from the more looked down on groups like the became powerful in the USSR - e.g. the Uzbek Sharof Rashidov became a member of the Politburo (after proving reliability by firmly repressing any hint of dissent in his own SSR, of course).

Interesting, was this a carryover from Tsarist times? Or a relatively new hierarchy invented by the Bolsheviks?

Do you have a link to this AMA? I'm interested in reading it.