As an ethnic minority in Russia, the Germans experienced firsthand the repressive policies of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Their legacy is largely forgotten and suppressed in today’s Russia.
October 18, 2022 – Joshua Crocker –
Articles and commentary
Engels, Saratov province, formerly known as Pokrovsk and Kosakenstad. Volga German historical center.
Today, it is hard to imagine that German minority culture flourished in much of the Tsarist Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union. From St. Petersburg and Moscow to the Black Sea in Ukraine, along the Volga River in Russia and in the mountains of Georgia, Germans have lived contentedly among locals for centuries. Until the turbulent times of World War I and the subsequent Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Germans were considered a respected minority within the borders of the Empire.
The 20th century witnessed countless human tragedies. His one of them, the end of the German community in Russia, is hardly remembered today. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Germans killed by the Soviet deportation policy, the German experience—“being German”—is largely lost in the vast territories of the steppes of Siberia and Central Asia. I was. History, especially wartime policies, has brought this turning point in the now-forgotten trajectory of millions of lives.
In the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of World War I and the ensuing conflict between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia, many actions were taken to suppress the ethnic Germans living on the western borders of Russia. These were just the first in a series of ethnic cleansing directed against Germans in the Russian Empire. In the war’s first year, hundreds of thousands of Germans were deported to the eastern part of the Reich, where they were forced to wait for the war to end. Naturally, many could not survive the trip and the harsh conditions of Siberia. It is no longer welcome.
Similar actions were taken after Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. This time, the stakes were much higher. Ethnic Germans were deported from the western and central parts of the Soviet Union, as well as from border areas. In total, more than 1.2 million Germans of German descent were forcibly relocated to Siberia and Central Asia. Hundreds of thousands died on the way there or because of poor living conditions. This was justified by national security needs. Stalin thought that the Germans in the Soviet Union could be spies and was secretly planning to help Hitler and Nazi Germany destroy the Soviet Union.
In most cases, these people were not allowed to return to their homeland after the war. Many of them were forced to work for the Soviet regime and live the rest of their lives in alien lands, far from what they knew and loved.
Soviet policy towards the German people was one of oppression and cultural denial. The Khan of the Nazi invaders, the Soviet he Germans, needed to be re-educated and reformed as Soviet people, not as Germans.
Over the next three decades, the history and culture of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were actively cleansed. German children were no longer allowed to learn German at school, so they lost their language and were forced to use Russian on a daily basis. The practice of religion, which had previously been an integral part of German culture, was prohibited. German-language publications, radio and literature have almost disappeared. Today, many Germans who grew up in the Soviet Union remember that they can only recite one or two childhood fairy tales and no more. Soviet policy effectively nullified German culture.
The anti-German policy was systemic. In the field of education, quotas prevented Germans from attending most courses such as law, medicine and journalism. Of the few Germans allowed to study, they were sent to engineering or agricultural schools. Of the millions of Germans who lived in Siberia and Kazakhstan throughout the Soviet era, less than 5% of her completed tertiary education, about half the population average for the region as a whole. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Germans of German descent transformed themselves into united Soviet citizens—homo-his Sovietics.
The era of perestroika under Gorbachev and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union saw a slight revival of German culture. Legally, Germans were free to revert to Germans. However, this remained almost impossible. Little of their culture remains, and in the late 1980s and his 1990s, many of those who felt connected to Germany emigrated. Between 1980 and 2000, over 2 million Germans emigrated from the post-Soviet space to the Federal Republic of Germany. Only a few hundred thousand remained.
Few of the remaining ethnic Germans living in Russia and Kazakhstan today have retained traditional German customs, language or identity. Those who do continue to face decades-old stereotypes and anti-German sentiment. The names of cities that once represented an integral part of the glorious national tapestry of the Tsar’s Empire were changed to Russian or Kazakh names, churches were torn down and the memory of Germany faded. Today, when traveling through the vast post-Soviet territories, one rarely encounters any reminder of German culture.
Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was undoubtedly a disaster for the Soviet Union and its people. The ethnic Germans who prospered peacefully in the Tsarist Empire and later in the Soviet Union, people who had nothing to do with aggression and who almost always supported their Soviet brethren, became three casualties. was a victim of war, Soviet anti-German policy, and history.
In today’s post-Soviet space, the memory of the ethnic Germans of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union is almost non-existent. Wartime policies are rarely culturally positive. Minorities often bore the brunt of war, as the example of ethnic German communities in the Soviet Union shows.
Joshua Crocker He is a historian and political scientist with degrees from the University of British Columbia, Canada, Heidelberg University, Germany, and St. Petersburg State University, Russia. He is currently completing his PhD at the University of Heidelberg. He specializes in modern history and politics of Russia and Ukraine.
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Minority Rights, Post-Soviet Memory, Volga Germans
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