The Germans of the Soviet Union (Basees Routledge Series on Russian and East European StudiesA?)

The Germans of the Soviet Union

This book provides an account of the experiences of the Germans living in the Soviet Union from the early post-revolution period to the post-Soviet era following the collapse of communism. Making full use of previously unavailable archival information, it sets out the history of this minority group and explains how they were affected by the Soviet regime’s nationality policies. It describes the character of the ethnic Germanic groups, demonstrating their diversity before the execution of the policy of systematic deportations by the Stalinist authorities from 1937 to 1947. It is argued that there was not one but several episodes of deportation within this period. The different dimensions of this policy are considered, including the legal and economic structures of, and everyday life in, the Soviet special settlements – often characterized as the “invisible Gulag” – and the “labor armies” into which deported Germans were forced during 1942–45. The “women’s dimension” of deportation is also investigated, especially the role of women in the preservation of ethnic identity among the afflicted groups. Finally, it explores the long term consequences of Soviet deportations and exile on the identity of the Soviet Germans. Overall, this book is a detailed study of the history of ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union, and the evolving nature of their ethnic identity. Irina Mukhina is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Boston College, USA. She conducts research on nationalism, ethnicity, and national policies in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia.

BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European studies Series editor Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent Editorial Committee Julian Cooper, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath David Moon, Department of History, University of Durham Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow Founding Editorial Committee Member George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, highquality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. 1 Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000 Roman Wolczuk 2 Political Parties in the Russian Regions Derek S. Hutcheson 3 Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation Edited by Simon Smith 4 Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe J.C. Sharman 5 Political Elites and the New Russia Anton Steen 6 Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness Sarah Hudspith 7 Performing Russia – Folk Revival and Russian Identity Laura J. Olson

8 Russian Transformations Edited by Leo McCann 9 Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin The baton and sickle Edited by Neil Edmunds 10 State Building in Ukraine The Ukrainian parliament, 1990–2003 Sarah Whitmore 11 Defending Human Rights in Russia Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969–2003 Emma Gilligan 12 Small-Town Russia Postcommunist livelihoods and identities a portrait of the intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999–2000 Anne White 13 Russian Society and the Orthodox Church Religion in Russia after communism Zoe Knox 14 Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age The word as image Stephen Hutchings 15 Between Stalin and Hitler Class war and race war on the Dvina, 1940–46 Geoffrey Swain 16 Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe The Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction of the Changes 1988–98 Rajendra A. Chitnis 17 Soviet Dissent and Russia’s Transition to Democracy Dissident legacies Robert Horvath 18 Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001 Screening the word Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski 19 Russia as a Great Power Dimensions of security under Putin Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen

20 Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 Truth, justice and memory George Sanford 21 Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia Philip Boobbyer 22 The Limits of Russian Democratisation Emergency powers and states of emergency Alexander N. Domrin 23 The Dilemmas of Destalinisation A social and cultural history of reform in the Khrushchev era Edited by Polly Jones 24 News Media and Power in Russia Olessia Koltsova 25 Post-Soviet Civil Society Democratization in Russia and the Baltic States Anders Uhlin 26 The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland Jacqueline Hayden 27 Television, Democracy and Elections in Russia Sarah Oates 28 Russian Constitutionalism Historical and contemporary development Andrey N. Medushevsky 29 Late Stalinist Russia Society between reconstruction and reinvention Edited by Juliane Fürst 30 The Transformation of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Russia Konstantin Axenov, Isolde Brade and Evgenij Bondarchuk 31 Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40 From Red Square to the Left Bank Ludmila Stern 32 The Germans of the Soviet Union Irina Mukhina

The Germans of the Soviet Union

Irina Mukhina

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Irina Mukhina This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0–203–96314–8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-40731-1 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-96314-8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-40731-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-96314-2 (ebk)

To my husband Denis and my son Andrey

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgments

1

x xii

Introduction

1

“Many Germans” – Germanic communities in the Russian Empire

7

2

Many deportations and their legal basis

29

3

Intentions and realities of early years, 1941–45

57

4

Life in special settlements

81

5

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile and the end to hardships

109

Long-term consequences of deportation and exile: the formation of ethnic identity among Germans in the Soviet Union

131

At the end of the road . . .

153

Epilogue Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

169 170 183 216 236

6

7

Illustrations

Figures 6.1 A.1

A.2 A.3 A.4–A.5 A.6 A.7

Identity model for ethnic Germans of the former Soviet Union Native language proficiency among various nationalities of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states, based on the Soviet and post-Soviet censuses Literacy rates among the overall Soviet population and ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union, 1926–79 Proportion of educated population by religious confession, 1939 People with university education per thousand of population, by nationality Urban/rural ratio (absolute values) among overall Soviet population and ethnic Germans, 1939–79 Urban ratio (relative values) among overall Soviet population and ethnic Germans, 1939–79

147

175 178 179 180 181 182

Maps 1.1 1.2 1.3

Country of origin and areas of settlements of German settlers in Russia, 1763–1864 Density of Germanic settlements in southern Russia Origins of residents in the Germanic settlements in southern Russia

27 28 28

Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3

Ethnic German immigration in the Russian Empire, 1763–1862 Religious followers of ethnic German origin in pre-revolutionary Russia Differences of dialects among ethnic Germans in the Russian territory

9 19 21

List of illustrations xi 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1

5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 A.1 A.2 A.3 A.4

A sample of Soviet deportations (forced migrations) 37 Victims of the “German Operation,” 1937–38 40 National composition of the Baltic States 53 Distribution of livestock to settlers in Kyrgyzstan, 1944 61 Patterns of labor mobilization among ethnic Germans on the example of ethnic Germans in the Altai region 71 Gender distribution among German deportees mobilized to work in various factories: the example of the Molotov region, 1943 72 Average wages received by Germans mobilized to work in labor armies 74 Average wages of workers, by industry, during war years 75 Food rations distributed to German deportees in labor armies, in grams per day according to three categories (C1, C2, C3) 76 Numbers of Agentura recruits working for Komendatury of special settlements, as of January 1948 86 Plan of employment in Narym fishing industry, by Raions of the Novosibirsk region 97 Number of German special settlers in various sectors of employment, by industry 101 Children of German special settlers in Kazakhstan, 1945 104 Statistics of answers to the question of who set an example and/or enforced religious training and/or other religious practices and traditions 121 Religious practices among ethnic Germans in the 1940s and early 1950s 121 Education of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union in 1967 133 Knowledge of German language among ethnic German youth in the Soviet Union, based on their self-identification in the 1990s 136 Intermarriages among ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union, 1957–91 140 A demographic sample of a religious meeting in the Krasnoyarsk region 145 Ancestral origins of Siberian Germans, as identified by Germans themselves 150 Legal regulations 170–173 Ethnic Germans in special settlements as of January 1, 1953 174 Distribution of German population by region of the Soviet Union, 1926–70 176 Native language proficiency among various nationalities in the Soviet Union and beyond based on Soviet and post-Soviet censuses 177

Acknowledgments

For the inspiration, encouragement, and assistance, my debts run deep to various institutions and individuals. In Russia and Central Asia, various archives kindly opened their doors to me. The Academy of Sciences in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the Director of its Department of History and Anthropology, Kaidar Aldazhumanov, expressed sincere interest in my work and greatly facilitated my access to the pertinent archival information. I have also been honored to work with several distinguished researchers in Central Asia, especially Anvar Galiev and Ablet Kamalov. Their criticism and advice helped me shape my argument, and their knowledge of local infrastructure and bureaucracy allowed me to complete my research much sooner than would have been the case without them. The “German House” in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and especially its Director, Aleksander Dederer, introduced me to many ethnic Germans in this region and greatly facilitated the oral history part of this project. At the beginning of my research, I asked the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) to help me find people who would be able and willing to tell the stories of their lives in the Soviet Union. The AHSGR eagerly distributed my “call of arms,” and dozens of people responded with their life stories and valuable advice. The network of people established through the AHSGR now spreads over several continents to include Canada, USA, Germany, Russia, and Central Asia. Two of its most enthusiastic members, Donna Baxmeyer and Beate Barleben, became a continuous source of inspiration and welcoming support for me. The AHSGR has also kindly allowed me to reproduce some invaluable materials from Karl Stumpp, Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862, published by the AHSGR, and I am grateful to the Society for this permission. Similarly, Europe-Asia Studies (former Soviet Studies), published by the Taylor & Francis Group, allowed me to use excerpts from my article previously published by the journal. For more information on Europe-Asia Studies, all interested parties may refer to www.tandf.co.uk. Several institutions helped me become more confident with my research findings. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the International Institute of Social History (IIGH) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, offered me travel grants to sharpen my understanding of the relevant research during

Acknowledgments xiii numerous conversations with my colleagues from all over the world at various international conferences, and I am most grateful for their support. I am also thankful to the Coordinating Council for Women in History for acknowledging my research endeavors by awarding me the Ida B. Wells Award. I am also forever intellectually in debt to Katherine Jolluck of Stanford University for her inspiring and innovative research that prompted me to undertake this study. The support I received from the Department of History at Boston College has been indispensable to the completion of this manuscript. I can only hope that I fully justified the risks and investments made into my work. Special thanks go to the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Candace Hetzner, Assistant Chairperson of the History Department Kevin Kenny, and Crystal Feimster, Lawrence Wolff, and Lawrence Clifford for their continuous support. Roberta Manning read countless versions of this manuscript and offered invaluable advice. She has been a guiding hand behind many of my intellectual endeavors. I take this occasion to thank her for everything she has done for me, for her students, many of whom are now prominent and well-recognized historians, and for the study of history of the Soviet Union. I would like to thank Laura and Albert W. Delpine Jr. for their encouragement and support. My family has always been very important to my success. Both my mother and my mother-in-law have been of tremendous help. The greatest thanks go to my husband Denis and son Andrey. When I started this project, my husband was probably the only one who believed that this book would actually be written one day. I still do not know how he managed to survive through my constant fretting about endless conference papers, journal articles, and manuscripts revisions. My son is my source of joy and inspiration. I received the news that this book would come into existence the very same day that I gave birth to my son, and I treat this not as a coincidence but as a sign of greater promise. Nevertheless, I hope that having children and publishing books on the same day will not become a pattern of my life, as I aspire to have far more books than children. As always, all errors, omissions, and misunderstandings are solely mine.

Introduction

This book traces the history of ethnic Germans in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day, concentrating on their World War II deportation, their life in exile in special settlements in the 1940s and 1950s, and the longterm consequences of deportation for Germans in the Soviet Union. Though historians often talk about deportation in the singular, Germans’ is the story of not just one but many deportations conducted among numerous, diverse Germanic communities that then existed in the USSR. The ancestors of these Germanic settlers came to Russia at different times from many places in Central and Western Europe for a variety of reasons – to escape religious persecution, to seek better economic opportunities, or a combination of the two. Other German communities, such as the Baltic Germans, did not emigrate to Russia but found themselves absorbed into the expanding Russian Empire. Russia’s Germans lived in different areas of the country in particular communities, and they played decidedly dissimilar roles in Russian society, politics, and culture, ranging from high positions in the tsarist regime occupied by the Baltic German nobility to the German farmers in the southern parts of the Russian Empire. I began my research by studying the “other Gulag,” the understudied special settlements where deportees of various ethnic origins were placed in exile after the deportations of the early 1940s. However, I soon became interested in ethnically German deportees due to the diversity of their origins and the range of their deportation experiences. To better understand their history, I turned to studies of Soviet ethnic groups. As I read the large and ever-growing body of scholarly literature on Soviet nationalities, I noticed that many recent scholarly works maintain that the multinational Soviet regime paradoxically fostered, or at times created outright, ethnic identities among many groups that had previously lacked such identities. The ethnic designations of the peoples of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, for example, were formally worked out only in the 1920s.1 Hitherto there had been little in the way of ethnic identity among these Central Asian peoples, not to mention ethnic cohesiveness; clan and religion (mainly Islam) had formed the basis of collective identity.2 It was only in the 1920s that the Soviet government designated consolidated territories and granted a degree of political autonomy to these peoples in order to foster among them a national consciousness. According to Soviet ideology, such

2

Introduction

national consciousness was essential to the development of societies labeled “feudal” into nations. As a result, in the course of the next few decades, Central Asians began to perceive themselves in terms of these Soviet designations, and many accepted and adapted to their own worldviews the new versions of their national histories and identities.3 Of course, many historians now assert that the Soviets’ artificial creation of nations defined by discrete territories, codified “national” languages, and administrative hierarchies only served to create ethnic divisions and ultimately ethnic tensions where previously there had been none.4 Yet most historians of Soviet nationalities do not doubt the reality of identity reconfiguration among various ethnic minority groups under Soviet rule. What surprised me about existing studies of Soviet nationalities is that the overwhelming majority of such works concentrate on the titular populations of the fifteen Soviet Republics or the early years of the Soviet regime, largely overlooking the other ethnic groups. Thus, these works paid little – if any – attention to ethnic Germans.5 Yet my study of ethnic Germans in pre-revolutionary Russia and the USSR shows that the long-term consequences of their experience under the Soviet regime were not dissimilar to the experiences of much better studied titular ethnic groups. Hence as I proceeded with my investigation of the history of Germans and their experiences, it dawned on me that it should be the primary goal of my work to analyze the consequences of the Soviet regime’s policies for ethnic identity of Germans in the USSR. I realized that the deportations and life in special settlements gave the numerous Germanic groups that existed before deportation something which they lacked earlier: a sense of “lived commonality,” or common experiences, and a sense of having one single ethnic identity instead of a variety of identities. Earlier Germans in pre-revolutionary Russia and the early Soviet Union thought of themselves, for example, as Moscow Germans, Leningrad Germans, or Baltic barons, not to mention Volga Germans who, despite their prolonged stay in Russia, tended to identify themselves with their ancestors like Swabians or Bavarians. But after war-time deportations and while residing in exile in special settlements until 1956, these diverse Germanic groups began to regard themselves as having one ethnic identity, that of “Soviet Germans,” and later, following the dissolution of the USSR, “Russian Germans.”6 In other words, ethnic Germans developed a common ethnic identity in the Soviet period in a similar way as did many other peoples in the Soviet Union. This realization convinced me that the study of Soviet policies in regard to Soviet nationalities needs to be expanded to include later periods as well as other ethnic minorities besides those living continuously in the union republics. Ethnic war-time deportations were not just horror stories with short-term implications and sky-high death rates. They were also policies that had many long-term consequences, especially for ethnic identity alteration among the deported peoples. Hence, these deportations should be studied not only in and by themselves but also as a part of the larger processes of ethnic identity formation under Soviet rule. Moreover, the changes that I study in this work were not the result of policies implemented in the first two decades of Soviet rule. A common

Introduction 3 German national identity among ethnic Germans did not exist in the first two decades of Soviet rule but was rather a product of later, mature regime policies of the 1940s and 1950s. This is why I believe that the studies of Soviet nationalities and Soviet policies need to be expanded through to the 1940s and 1950s, and to some extent even to the 1960s and the 1970s. The changes of ethnic identity that I noticed among Germans in the Soviet Union in the post-deportation years were often not as pronounced as the changes among Central Asians in the earlier decades of the Soviet regime. Yet this fact does not render these changes any less important or significant for the lives of ethnic Germans themselves or for the study of other non-Russian groups in the USSR. Various archival collections, both published and unpublished, provided the basic sources on which this study rests. The main importance and significance of these archival collections is that all of the fonds I use were classified before the early 1990s, and the majority of them are yet to be scrutinized by historians. Especially noteworthy among these fonds are located in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF; partly available at the Harvard University library thanks to their large Chadwyck-Healy Collection7); the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI); the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (TsGARK); and the Central State Archive of Kyrgyzstan (TsGAKyrSSR). Written and unpublished personal testimonies of survivors were crucial to the completion of this work. A significant body of published memoirs have appeared in recent years in the former Soviet Union, and I used them extensively.8 I also collected many testimonies personally.9 I believe that my reliance on personal accounts and interviews has allowed me to add “a human face” to the deportations, something that is often hidden behind statistical data on mass displacement of peoples. When I read these testimonies, I sought to keep in mind the social (and historical) logic of these works. As a matter of fact, I found no intolerable contradictions or discrepancies in the various individual accounts, and those that existed, it seemed to me, could be easily explained by memory lapses, normal reversal of the exact chronology of the events expected in any recollection, and, above all, the confusion and repression inherent in such cataclysmic experiences as deportation. Of course, the choice of details to share and choice of words utilized tell us more about the present-day state of mind of ethnic Germans than about their past experiences. But I believe that this fact, as well as numerous limitations of oral history in general, does not render these accounts any less valuable. I also relied on ethnographical and sociological studies for the analysis of contemporary ethnic identity among Germans. While the goals of such studies and means of conducting them often differ from the work of historians, the findings of social scientists and ethnographers are crucial for researching long-term effects of deportation. Before I could even undertake this study, I had to address some complex theoretical questions, the most important of which was the definition of ethnicity

4

Introduction

and identity, the central parameters examined in this work. Though I could talk at length about various interpretations of what ethnic identity is and how to “measure” it, I find it more appropriate to discuss the definitions I adopted in this study rather than embark on a detailed theoretical reiteration of various arguments advanced by scholars of ethnicity. In my work, I follow the lead of Beatrice Manz in her study of multi-ethnic empires and identities. Manz, after analyzing various studies of identity adopted by Western, Islamic, and other scholars, concluded that in the Russian Empire, as in the Mongol Empire and the Islamic caliphate, the key markers of identity for any ethnic group were “language, origin, and territory.”10 While other definitions might be more perfect or precise, Manz’s definition appears to be complete and satisfactory for a study of dispersed groups of Germanic people in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union prior to the deportations, with only slight modification. In the context of the earlier German settlements in the Russian Empire, the territory of residence often determined the origins of various Germanic people, meaning both the social strata they belonged to and the place of their residence prior to resettlement in the Russian Empire such as Württemberg or Bavaria. Hence this territory of residence in Russia often came to dominate the self-identity of various Germanic groups. Religion also played a major role in German identity before deportation. In brief, the markers I use to analyze the earlier, pre-deportation identities of the Germanic settlers in Russia are language (dialect), origin (both the social strata they belonged to and the territory from which they came), and religion. Manz further argues that by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, it was possible to talk about the formation and achievement of modern identity with an “emphasis on religion, common historical experience, culture and language.”11 I therefore study these factors as they influenced the post-World War II German identity in the Soviet Union, paying attention to Germans’ common experiences of deportation and life in exile, as well as religious, cultural, and linguistic changes among ethnic Germans. I also realized that it is possible to show that various groups came to share a sense of lived commonality only if it is possible to prove that there had existed various ethnic groups to begin with. Hence, in this work I attempt to acknowledge and demonstrate the diversity of Germanic groups that existed in the Soviet Union prior to their deportation and their segregated identities. The problem with addressing such diversity is to find a term for these groups that would allow us to identify all Germanic communities in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union by using a single word or phrase without implying a single community and a single identity. Since the term “Soviet Germans” implies a degree of political and ideological connection between the Soviet state and the people that in reality was often missing, and the term “Russian Germans” implies some cultural assimilation, in this book I use the term “ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union.” For simplicity, I occasionally omit the word “ethnic” in this term and speak of Germans in the Soviet Union, or talk about ethnic Germans without a direct reference to their presence in the Soviet Union. Similarly, I was presented with a challenge of simply putting a name to the

Introduction 5 experiences of the removal of Germans from their communities to Siberia and Central Asia. The most commonly used term “deportation” means “the removal from a country of an alien whose presence is unlawful or prejudicial.”12 But ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were not aliens and were not expelled beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. The term “exile,” a derivative of Russian ssylka,13 implies in the context of Russian history banishment from an individual’s home province as a means to punish a person for a crime already committed.14 But in the case of ethnic Germans, as we will later see in detail, even the Soviet government acknowledged that their resettlement was a preventive, not a punitive measure, and therefore no crime was committed. Some historians argue that it might be more appropriate to talk about “internees” than about “deportees” in the Soviet Union; to intern means, after all, “to confine or impound especially during a war.”15 But for these deportees, “internment” did not end at the war’s end in 1945 and lasted until 1955–56. Several historians have also proposed and used the terms “forced migration”16 and “compulsory evacuation,”17 both of which have their share of limitations. As a result of the lack of a fully satisfactory definition, I use the terms “deportation,” “exile,” and “forced migration,” all three of which appear consistently in scholarly works. Once I had completed the task of explaining the process of numerous deportations, I attempted to analyze the legal, economic, and social structure of the socalled special settlements where German (and other) deportees were confined to from the time of their deportation until 1956. There, they came to be called spetsposeleny, or “special settlers.” In official documents, the deportees themselves were not identified by a single term for the first several years of the deportations. Early NKVD documents referred to pereselentsy (re-settlers), evakuirovannie (the evacuated), spetspereselentsy (special re-settlers), trudposelentsy (labor settlers), and other terms. In 1942, however, the NKVD decided on the term spetspereselentsy (special re-settlers) which it used consistently until 1945. That year, the term changed to spetsposelentsy (special settlers), and then to vyselentsy (the exiled) in 1949. For the sake of ease and consistency, I use the term spetsposelentsy or its English equivalent, special settlers, throughout this book. Noteworthy, “special” was a term often used to describe the operations of the Soviet political police, or NKVD, aimed at controlling (or repressing) a particular segment of the population. But what exactly was a special settlement? One of the first historians to study special settlements, Nikolai Bougai, defined special settlements as a system of “limitation on the rights of citizens in their places of residence (including, for deportees, their new place of residence), above all restrictions on the right of freedom of movement.”18 While a detailed discussion of the special settlements will follow, this definition captures well the essence of deportees’ experiences in exile. As I made my way to studying the post-deportation and post-exile changes of identity among ethnic Germans, I noted a great discrepancy in roles played by women and men, but a special role of women in this story is often not acknowledged and at times not even understood. I never meant to write a comprehensive study of ethnic German women in exile, and I believe I made my work as

6

Introduction

much “male” as I made it “female.” But it happened inevitably and almost beyond my control that women oftentimes assumed center stage in my work. As such, this work will hopefully shed some light on the peculiar “woman’s dimension” of Soviet deportations and the special role that these German women in exile played in the preservation of ethnicity. The structure of this book follows roughly the pattern of my investigation into the history of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Chapter 1 analyzes the diversity of Germanic communities that existed prior to their deportations and the roles Germans played in the Russian Empire. Chapter 2 illuminates many deportations these Germans underwent. Chapter 3 studies the uncertainties of the war years for Germans, and their hardships in exile and in labor armies in 1941–45. Chapter 4 scrutinizes the legal, social, and economic structure of the regime of special settlements, while Chapter 5 analyzes the role women played in exile. The last two chapters (6 and 7) analyze the long-term consequences of deportation for Germans’ ethnic identity and their struggles to survive as a single but not assimilated ethnic group after they were freed from the control of the special settlement regime.

1

“Many Germans” Germanic communities in the Russian Empire

Would it be possible to explain many deportations that occurred among ethnic Germans in the USSR without acknowledging the dispersed nature of Germanic population in Russia and the Soviet Union and the fact that prior to the deportations, ethnic Germans never comprised a coherent group with a common national consciousness? I believe the answer is no. Hence it is my purpose here to demonstrate this diversity and lack of unity among German people in the Russian Empire. Nowadays, we often hear about “Soviet Germans” or “Russian Germans.” But the term “Russian Germans,” a term that unified various Germanic groups in Russia, did not exist and was not used in pre-revolutionary historiography on German settlers and colonists in Russia and its immediate environs.1 For example, the greatest historians of Russia, namely Kliuchevskii and Soloviev, note that Nemetskaia sloboda (German settlement in Moscow during the reign of Peter the Great) included Prussians, Swiss, and other foreigners from a variety of nations. These historians did not perceive that other German settlements elsewhere in Russia (for example, in the southern parts of the Russian Empire) were a part of the common history of German settlements or German presence in Russian territory.2 Similarly, a well-known Russian historian A. Velitsyn did not perceive the Germans of St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Pskov and Livland regions, and various Germanic colonists residing along the Black Sea coast and the Volga River banks as members of the same ethnic group.3 He referred to the colonists by two general terms of “nashi inostrannye kolonisty” (our foreign colonists) and people of “nerusskie vladeniia” (nonRussian property holders).4 Velitsyn divides them into various ethnic and confessional groups, using terms that included Hamburg, Danzig, Swiss,5 Bavarian,6 and Prussian colonists;7 Crimean Germans,8 Khortitsa colonists,9 settlements of Scottish missionaries and Lutheran pastors;10 Evangelical, Catholic,11 Stundist, Anabaptist, Separatist, Presbyterian colonists and colonies of Dancing Brotherhood,12 Baptists, Mennonites, and Molokans.13 Not once does Velitsyn say that any of these various groups comprised a coherent ethnic entity, let alone could be commonly referred to as “Russian Germans.” Prior to deportations, there was a significant number of variables separating the Germanic people in the Russian Empire and later the USSR. Three of these variables appear to be the most significant – their confessional affiliation, social

8

“Many Germans”

position, and geographic location of their settlement in Russia – which also often indicated the place of their residence prior to emigration to Russia. Often Germans living in the same location in Russia displayed similar confessional and social identities, although this was not always the case. Moreover, various aspects of Germanic identities were not mutually excusive and often went hand in hand, especially in terms of social and confessional interrelations. Yet, as we will see, various Germanic groups often avoided contact with each other precisely because of their different religious affiliations and social class. They also often lived hundreds of miles apart from each other. Hence there is a need to identify these categories and analyze their diversity in order to appreciate various waves of deportation.

Location Volga Germans The best-known and the most numerous group of Germanic people in Russia settled along the Volga River. The first German settlements in the Volga region were established in the second half of the eighteenth century after Catherine II issued a Manifesto on July 22, 1763 that allowed foreign migrants to settle in Russian lands.14 This Manifesto offered full religious freedom to settlers and the right to self-government, exclusion from all taxes and the military draft, and unrestricted permission to purchase existing or to establish new businesses. The Russian government often paid settlers’ relocation expenses as well as offering them substantial travel money, free food and transportation within the Russian Empire, relocation loans, the duty-free import and subsequent export (in case the settler changed his mind) of all personal possessions and accumulated capital, and even business or construction loans with no interest for a term of ten years.15 Residents of various regions in Europe found many of these proposals attractive, and the emigration of German-speaking people to Russia began. The flow of immigration was maintained throughout the following century as subsequent government decrees after Catherine’s Manifesto further reassured settlers of their special position in the Russian Empire. Paul I apportioned an additional 123,000 dessiatines of land for free distribution to settlers (about 332,100 acres) and confirmed all privileges bestowed on settlers by Catherine II in a decree signed on September 6, 1800. Although a later decree signed by Alexander I required that all would-be immigrants possessed enough liquid assets to survive the first years of immigration (usually the equivalent of 300 gulden in cash or property), Alexander I nevertheless reconfirmed in an Edict of February 20, 1804 all other privileges enjoyed by settlers since Catherine II’s Manifesto. Though the first settlers of 1763–65 came to Russia to settle in the Volga region, the history of the Volga Germans is inseparable from the Black Sea Germans, Crimean Germans, and Volhynia Germans. All of them were motivated to come to the Russian Empire for similar reasons and they arrived in Russia with similar expectations as did Volga Germans, even if the exact dates

“Many Germans” 9 of their coming and details of their lifestyle were different. Table 1.1 and Maps 1.1–1.3 demonstrate the pattern of immigration by people who were known in Russia as “German colonists.” There were numerous political, economic, religious, and personal reasons why so many German-speaking immigrants decided to relocate to Russia, and very often a combination of various factors prompted relocation. For instance, wars waged in Europe often stimulated the influx of newcomers. The first wave of German immigration was directly linked to the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). Immigrants came from all regions affected by the war but especially from warafflicted Hesse. Similarly, the Napoleonic invasion of the Upper Rhine in 1796 stimulated the outflow of people from the entire Rhine valley. Immigrants were trying to escape forceful military conscription and various economic hardships commonly associated with warfare, including plunder and high taxes. Table 1.1 Ethnic German immigration in the Russian Empire, 1763–1862 Date

Countries of origin

Areas of settlement

1763–68

Hesse, Rhineland, the Palatinate, Saxony Württemberg, Switzerland, etc. Sulzfeld, Württemberg Hesse, Branderburg, Württemberg Hesse Sweden Prussia Bavaria, Prussia, Württemberg Danzig, West Prussia (a) Alsace, the Palatinate, Baden

Volga area

1765 1766 1766 1782 1786 1780 1789–90 1804–06

1808–10

1817–18 1812–27 1814–16, 1821–34 1822–31 1823–42

(b) Württemberg, Alsace, the Palatinate, Baden, Hungary (c) Danzig, West Prussia (d) Baden, Hesse, Württemberg (e) Switzerland (a) Hungary, Alsace, the Palatinate, Baden, Württemberg (b) Alsace, Baden, Poland Württemberg Baden, Hesse, Württemberg Prussia, Poland, Bavaria Württemberg Rhine-Hesse, Baden, Danzig, West Prussia

1853, 1859–1862 Danzig, West Prussia

Riebensdorf near Peterburg Belowesh Alt Schwedendorf Alt Danzig Josefstal, Jamburg near the Dnieper Chortitza Franzfeld, Mariental, Josefstal by Odessa Grossliebental, Alexanderhilf, Neuburg, Peterstal Halbstadt, Molotschna Prischib, Molotschna Crimea Beresan, Bergdorf, Gluckstal, Kassel, Neudorf, area of Odessa Baden, Elsss, Kandel, Selz, Mannheim, Strassburg South Caucasus Prischib, Molotschna Bessarabia, colonies near Odessa Swabian colonies near Berdiansk Grunau area (Planer colonies) Samara

Source: Adopted from Karl Stumpp, The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the years 1763 to 1862, Lincoln, NE: AHSGR, 1978, p. 22.

10

“Many Germans”

Political and religious reasons often intertwined to promote emigration. When the Edict of 1789 in West Prussia restricted the land acquisition by all non-serving groups of people, Mennonites, who rejected military service on religious grounds, were denied a right to acquire additional lands. Mennonites were not willing to abandon their religion due to the changing political climate and chose to emigrate instead. In Württemberg, the reasons were more explicitly and directly religious. The rise of the prominent Pietist movement in the second half of the seventeenth century and thereafter prompted the rise of a religious separatist movement in the eighteenth century which denied any presence and need for the State and the Church. The movement split into “revolutionary” and “peaceful” coalitions of separatists. Whereas the government was willing to tolerate Pietists and “peaceful” separatists, it placed severe restrictions on revolutionary Separatists and waged a war of religious persecution. The complete freedom of religious self-expression promised by Catherine II and later Alexander I attracted many Separatists to Russia as a new place of residence. Several other religious denominations such as Chiliasts and Stundists joined Separatists in this semi-voluntary exile.16 Although some personal reasons for emigration also existed (for example, a desire to reunite a family), many historians believe that promises of economic well-being and overall improvement of quality of life were the primary driving force behind German emigration to Russia. Lucrative promises of land in the rich soils of southern Russia and of the relative autonomy granted settlers by Catherine II seemed especially attractive to farmers who faced problems with low and still diminishing productivity of the soil at home, in addition to various economic hardships produced by wars. In Europe, the three-field rotation system was rapidly depleting soil of important nutrients, and no new virgin lands were available to farmers. In Prussia and elsewhere, many farmers were on the verge of starvation and impoverishment, and even those farmers who learned crafts and trades to survive hard times still fostered dreams of having their own farmsteads. Hence the combination of various factors prompted an influx of Germanspeaking settlers to Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of these emigrants ended up settling along the Volga River, where in the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet regime created an Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans (ASSR of Nemtsy Povolzhia).17 Although there existed no confessional unity among settlers and as many as twenty-five regional dialects were spoken among Germanic settlers along the Volga River up until the early 1920s,18 the Volga Germans possessed a common livelihood (e.g., agriculture) and a common history of migration to Russia. Although assimilation to a limited degree occurred over the decades and centuries that German settlements existed on Volga, their settlements were still characterized by the unique preservation of various dialects and traditions of their Schwaben, Thueringer, Hessen, and other ancestors. 19 The ability of German settlers to remain an enclosed community is not surprising considering the multicultural atmosphere of many regions of the Russian Empire. The example of Volga German settlements is revealing in this respect. From the very beginning, the Volga region was a multi-ethnic and

“Many Germans” 11 multicultural region. The first settlers of this area in recent history were oiratskie tribes, which migrated there from Mongolia in the first half of the seventeenth century, bringing with them their Buddhism-based traditions and customs. Many of these first tribe members later settled in the areas of Don Cossacks and were incorporated into the Don Cossack community. German settlers brought with them to the Volga region Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Lutheranism. In the late nineteenth century, the area contained communities of Evangelical Christians, Baptists, and Seventh Day Adventists. Moreover, many nationalities, such as Persians, Turks, Jews, and others, had lived in this region for many decades and even centuries. As a result, in the early twentieth century more than two dozen ethnic groups and religious denominations existed in the Volga region, each seeking total isolation from outsiders and the preservation of its own traditions. Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism were practiced by Tatars, Kalmyks, and Jews in the region. Among the Christian churches were found not only the Russian Orthodox Church but also Old Believers (including such Old Belief variations as beglopopovtsy, Belokrinitskaia ierarkhiia, staropomortsy, novopomortsy, spasovtsy, sredniki, chasovenniki); the Armenian Apostolical Church, Armenian Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical-Lutheran churches, as well as communities of Evangelical Christians, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and various members of old Russian sectarianism (molokane, khristovery, subbotniki, enokhovtsy).20 It was this diversity of religions and peoples in the region that allowed for the long-term preservation of enclosed German communities isolated from one another in the Volga region by their religion and dialect. Ukrainian Germans Ukrainian Germans could be roughly divided into three groups: Black Sea Germans, Crimean Germans, and Volhynia Germans.21 Black Sea Germans and Crimean Germans came to Russia at least half a century later than the Volga Germans and were affected by many changes that took place in their motherland during those years. Black Sea Germans (i.e., Ukrainian Germans other than those from Volhynia and Crimea) were mostly known for their agricultural abilities; they were considered exceptional farmers. The short-term stay of Hutterites in this area also affected these Germans, although Hutterites’ exact influence on the surrounding communities and on the image of German-speaking people as “foreigners” is yet to be fully investigated. Crimean Germans, however, established close contact with Armenian diaspora in Crimea and were characterized by a lack of contact with other settlers elsewhere in Russia. Germans were the only group in Crimea who never intermarried with Crimean Tartars and never adapted any of Tartar traditions and customs. In 1939, there were 51,300 Germans in Crimea, or 4.6 percent of the population.22 Some of them were remembered as having noble (blagorodnye) manners. In the early 1920s, among Crimean Germans, 79.4 percent were literate, while this was true for only 48.9 percent of Ukrainians and 52.4 percent of Poles in the area.23

12

“Many Germans”

Germans from Volhynia were quite different. They were the last group of Germans to come to Russia. Although their movement into Volhynia began as early as in the first half of the nineteenth century, the major wave of migration here did not take place until the 1860s through 1880s. As most of the Volhynia Germans came from Poland (or what used to be Poland), and especially from Poznan area, they were to a degree affected by their Polish neighbors in terms of culture and language. Overall, the majority of Ukrainian Germans (93.2 percent) lived in villages in the countryside.24 Germans of the North Caucasus25 Many historians mention that the Germans of the North Caucasus were no different from any other rural German community in the European parts of Russia. They argue that Germans emigrated to the Northern Caucasus from other colonies in Russia and had no time to “become different.” Yet archives, personal recollections of Germans, and other sources do not confirm this view. The communities of ethnic Germans in the North Caucasus should be considered independent from other Germanic communities in Russia for a number of reasons.26 The first settlement of ethnic Germans in the North Caucasus was established in the early nineteenth century, shortly after Russia was able to expand its border further south in 1768–74. Curiously, the first Germans came to the North Caucasus to live in an area settled by Scottish missionaries who were established in this region in 1809. In 1825–26, almost all the Scottish missionaries left the North Caucasus region because they found the population of local mountainous people hostile to them and realized that there were no prospects of converting these Islamic mountain people to any form of the Christian religion. But the early history of settlement here prompted some historians to suggest that the contacts with Scottish missionaries had influenced the very nature, the “atmosphere” of German settlements in the North Caucasus, giving it a different “flavor” from other regions of the Russian Empire.27 By the early 1920s, as many as two hundred Germanic settlements of various sizes existed in the North Caucasus, officially divided into five colonies. Regardless of their early foundation, the settlements in the North Caucasus were still welcoming new German immigrants well beyond the time when other colonies elsewhere in Russia had ceased to do so. Moreover, many German immigrants in the North Caucasus were allowed to retain citizenship of their country of origin. These factors combined allowed the North Caucasus settlements to remain the most up to date of all German colonies in Russia in terms of their contacts with the German motherland, language, traditions, and even identity. Nevertheless, the territorial dispersion of the German colonies in the North Caucasus assured a far greater degree of contact, assimilation, adaptation, and integration of these Germans into surrounding non-German communities than elsewhere. While, for example, Volga Germans lived in their neatly arranged, very close communities, the North Caucasus Germans could not do so in similar ways.

“Many Germans” 13 Furthermore, while the multi-confessional German settlements existed elsewhere, the settlements in the North Caucasus housed all German religious separatists, non-traditionalists, radicals, and extremists. Seventh Day Adventists, who were ethnically Germans, lived predominantly in this region. Similarly, after the slow-occurring schism in the Mennonite Church in the mid-nineteenth century, the so-called “new Mennonites” migrated to the North Caucasus and established their communities there. Their religious toleration allowed them later to accept into their circles the Adventists, Lutherans, and the new branch of Mennonites called “Friends of Jerusalem.” While some of the settlers of various confessions came to the Northern Caucasus voluntarily, others were deported to this region. For example, Stundists (from the German word Stunde – an hour) were deported from Ukraine in 1830s and 1840s. This group, consisting mainly of ethnic Germans, believed in independent readings from the Bible at special hours and the mandatory schooling and literacy of all believers. As a result, this community of Germans had higher literacy rates than any other community in contemporary Russia. Finally, the North Caucasus also housed a large – as a matter of fact the largest – community of German Baptists. This multi-confessional blend, because of its presumably non-conventional nature, assured a unique religious atmosphere among ethnic Germans of the North Caucasus. Furthermore, numerous documents attest that the agricultural techniques utilized by Germans of the North Caucasus differed from the other people in the area and other Germans elsewhere. While it is difficult to evaluate the exact nature of this difference, various documents refer repeatedly to it. The last factor that affected the ethnic German community in the North Caucasus was the Famine of 1933 and subsequent losses. Recent scholarly works argue that although the Famine affected many regions of Russia (as we will see in Chapter 2), including many communities of ethnic Germans elsewhere, the losses were the heaviest in the North Caucasus. As much as 50 percent of urban deaths in the Famine were residents of the North Caucasus, including local Germans.28 This abnormal loss, besides taking away many lives and weakening the people and communities there, also eroded much of the ethnic base of this community, thus altering its very nature and the chances of its subsequent survival (predominantly in cultural terms) during deportation and while in exile. Baltic State Germans This group of Germans became a part of Russia after the annexation of the Baltic States by the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century.29 However, the history of Baltic German presence in the future Baltic States spans many centuries. The first “German” traders and missionaries came to this region in the twelfth century, and, after the newly established crusading Order of the Sword Brothers became a part of the Order of the Teutonic Knights in 1236, the German presence in the Baltic region was firmly established. German-speaking descendants of the Teutonic Knights governed various parts of the Baltic region

14

“Many Germans”

(e.g., Kurland, Livland) until this area too was absorbed into the Russian Empire following the partitions of Poland in the final decades of the eighteenth century. The new government, however, recognized and respected the rights of German nobility to vast land holdings (as many Germans had accumulated considerable wealth) and also allowed them their self-government. Although new immigrants from German territories continued to enrich the German-speaking community of the Baltic States for many centuries, many local barons prided themselves on their descent from the Teutonic Knights until the twentieth century and even later. Baltic States’ Germans formed their own, unique traditions and practices over the course of many centuries. Moreover, German communities here were characterized by a high level of advanced education, a high incidence of Germans who possessed noble status (since many Baltic Germans were barons), and the ability of these Germans to function freely in their own and surrounding cultures. Because of the political history of the Baltic States, these Germans had no contact with other ethnic Germans in Russia or the later Soviet Union, with the rare exception of Germans of high social status who resided in political, cultural, and economic centers such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Yet even these contacts between Baltic and “urban” Germans remained marginal. Curiously, some prominent Baltic Germans later played significant roles in Nazi Germany, and in shaping its attitudes and policies toward the Soviet Union. Many of them (for example, Theodor Schiemann, Otto Hoetzsch, and others) were involved in studying the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union and in creating myths and stereotypes (often sub- or unconsciously) about Russian people and their state which later influenced Nazi policies toward Sovietoccupied territories, and indirectly fanned Soviet fears about its own ethnic German population.30 Most scholars who claimed descent from Baltic States’ Germans argued that Russian people were unruly, had no respect for law, abused alcohol, and were able to survive only because of a long tradition of German rule (referring to “German blood” in the Romanov dynasty) and because of a centurylong “import” of German talent. Hoetzsch wrote repeatedly in his works that even though anti-German sentiments were extremely rare in Russia, “one cannot argue sharply enough that the most dangerous and bitter enemy of the German Reich and Germandom in general, is to be found in the Russian people.”31 Although many Baltic Germans noted little cultural assimilation among ethnic Germans in the Russian territories, Hoetzsch and other Baltic Germans’ perception of the Russian Empire was tainted by the rule of Alexander III and attacks on Lutheranism. In the Baltic States, the Russian government staged two major assaults on Lutheranism in the 1840s and 1880s. In the 1840s, thousands of destitute peasants converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy, encouraged to do so by a misperceived hope of “earthly rewards.” In the 1880s, there was an abrupt Russification campaign instigated by the state (as in contrast to the Orthodox Church) that converted very few but left many irreligious (though it changed administration and established Russian instead of German as the primary language in the schools).32 These assaults were never explicitly

“Many Germans” 15 anti-German but many Baltic Germans perceived them as such, since Germans constituted the majority of the Lutheran population in the Baltic States. The later history of Baltic States’ independence in the interwar period and their subsequent annexation by the Soviet Union did not dispose Baltic Germans to Russia favorably either. These Baltic German scholars prompted the establishment of several institutions in Germany to study ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe and instigated a widespread substantial interest in the ethnic German population in the Soviet Union. But the most influential Baltic German of the twentieth century was probably Alfred Rosenberg (although some might argue in favor of the Nobel Prize winner chemist Wilhelm Ostwald or the art historian Georg Dehio). Born in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1893, Rosenberg was the main architect of some key aspects of Nazi ideology, including its racial theory, its advocacy for the persecution of Jews, Lebensraum, and annulment of the Versailles Treaty. Although Rosenberg never expressed anti-Slav feelings like Hoetzsch, he was found guilty of racial crimes (due primarily to his anti-Semitism) and sentenced to death in the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Needless to say, many Baltic Germans were neither racial instigators nor influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Yet their pronounced ethnic and national identity made them an obvious target of later Soviet policies, and their works often explicitly demonstrated their lack of assimilation into surrounding society. The majority of Baltic Germans were “repatriated” by the Soviet government at the end of World War II and deported to special settlements and the Gulag, where they became “Soviet Germans” along with the other ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union deported earlier. Germans of St. Petersburg and Moscow Although Germans came to Moscow as early as the sixteenth century, these Germans were the least numerous Germanic community in Russia. The majority of these Germans, although not all, were members of the cultural and intellectual elite who came to Russia in search of greater opportunities in the service of the tsars or to promote and expand their businesses. Some of them quickly assimilated into Russian society for the sake of career advancement, but many preserved their close ties with their motherland, and some even moved back to Germany. Having spent over three hundred years in Moscow and having lived in St. Petersburg from the time of its establishment, Germans influenced music, architecture, and even the overall atmosphere in the two capitals. With the exception of Germanophobic tsars, whose reigns were relatively short, Germans in these areas enjoyed great freedom and the protection of their rights and culture. Historian Dmitrii Spivak, after analyzing the long presence of Germans in these two cities and the peculiarities of their culture as compared to other communities of ethnic Germans, made two interesting conclusions. First, he argued that in later years of the tsarist regime, there was an influx of young

16 “Many Germans” Volga Germans into St. Petersburg German society. These young men came to study in the capital but quickly assimilated into the “more advanced” culture in St. Petersburg, only to never return back home. More importantly, Spivak concludes that prior to the 1917 Revolutions, Germans in St. Petersburg and Moscow had come to form a distinct sub-ethnos with traditions, dialect, and mentalities different from other groups of Germans in the Russian Empire.33 Moreover, Soviet officials, after undertaking a study of the Society for the Advancement of German Culture in Leningrad in 1929, concluded that the education received by Germans in Leningrad had allowed them to “form their own island of a German bourgeois country” within the Soviet state.34 Local Germans of Central Asia, Siberia, and other places of future deportation35 There was also a significant number of Germans living in the areas to which Germans from the European parts of the Soviet Union were subsequently deported. According to the 1939 Soviet census, 92,571 ethnic Germans lived in Kazakhstan, 33,203 lived in Altai region, 59,832 resided in Omsk oblast’, 18,594 in Chkalovsk (Orenburg) oblast’, and some in other areas.36 These communities were isolated from other Germanic communities and remained very distinctive up until the labor mobilization of the 1940s. German communities here were also segregated along confessional lines (e.g. many Mennonites by the time of the October Revolution lived in the Altai region). In Siberia, the first German settlers came as early as the time of the initial exploration of Siberia. Germans were actively present in the exploration of Siberia, and they were the first to write accounts about this region (e.g. Daniel Gotlib Messerschmidt, Gerard Miller). Mass German migration to Siberia took place in 1891–92, and by the first decade of the twentieth century there existed 323 German settlements in Siberia. As a result, in 1926 6.6 percent of the Germans of the Soviet Union resided in Siberia, 4.1 percent in Kazakhstan, and almost 1 percent in other parts of Central Asia.37 In these regions as elsewhere in European parts of Russia, various Germanic communities managed to remain independent and segregated from each other. In many different ways, the example of Kyrgyzstan Germans is very indicative of this situation. German communities on the territory of Kyrgyzstan were divided into two clear-cut groups. Prior to mass deportation of Germans during World War II, Mennonites, who came to this region in 1882 and thereafter, lived a separate life from German peasants of other denominations, who came to Kyrgyzstan in the early twentieth century from other parts of Russia in search of a better livelihood. Inevitably, following the deportations and massive shuffling of Germans from all over the Soviet Union, these distinctions among German communities became blurred.38

“Many Germans” 17

Confessional identity Lutherans Lutherans were the largest group of German settlers in the Russian Empire. Some Lutherans were colonists among Volga Germans or members of the German communities in the Caucasus and Ukraine. Other Lutherans resided in the Baltic States and belonged to the upper strata of the society and to the class of skilled town dwellers (meshchane). Lutheran noblemen (dvoriane) often regarded their noble status as more important than their religious identity in terms of communicating with other less well-born Germanic groups. In this as with many others it was often the case that confessional identity mattered more in rural areas than it did in urban localities. The system of administration in the Lutheran Church in Russia developed throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and finally crystallized in 1832. That year, the nation-wide General Evangelical-Lutheran Consistory was formed in Russia, which codified the position of Lutherans in Russia. The code adopted by the Consistory also divided Lutherans into eight consistory districts (okrugi) of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Livland, Eastland, Kurland,39 Ezel’,40 Riga and Revel’ regions. The geography of these consistories indicated that the majority of Lutherans resided in the territories of the Baltic States. In 1890, the Riga, Ezel’, and Revel regional consistories were absorbed into the Livland and Eastland consistories. The Central General Evangelical-Lutheran Consistory was located in St. Petersburg and fell under the jurisprudence of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and, in court cases, under the jurisprudence of the Senate. The position of Lutherans in Transcaucasus was perceived to be more independent than that of Baltic Lutherans, with the head of the church appointed by the representative of the Tsar in the region. In the Archangel area, Lutherans and Reformists were officially a part of the same body under the direct control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This system existed up until 1917.41 In 1909, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church had 1,094,344 adherents in Russia, and the overwhelming majority of those (estimated at 80 percent) were Germans.42 After 1917, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church experienced many hardships, both within and without. The Soviet anti-religious campaigns and prosecutions resulted in the virtual liquidation of the official Lutheran Church by the mid-1930s. As Baltic States gained independence and were recognized as independent states by the Soviet Union in 1920, the Lutheran Church in the newly formed Soviet Union lost many of its members. Many German pastors of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church who remained in the Soviet Union were either deported by the Soviet government to Germany in 1933,43 or were executed in the 1930s before the onset of World War II. Simultaneously, the church experienced a schism from within. Several congregations, including the one in the Caucasus, went independent. Many Lutherans became Baptists or Congregationalists, and many of those who remained Lutherans wanted to “renew” the

18 “Many Germans” Church and established a “free living church” (svobodnaia zhivaia tserkov’).44 At the beginning of 1920, the Lutheran-Evangelical Church in the USSR counted 1,136,000 people, at least 70 percent of them Germans.45 Yet this number dropped dramatically in the following years due to conversions, immigration of some Germans from the newly established USSR to other countries but mainly due to the Soviet loss of the Baltic region. By the time of the deportations in the early 1940s, however, Baltic States were once again a part of the Soviet territory, and some Lutheran Germans, presumably numbering 795,200 people,46 became subject to deportations in 1939–46. Catholics The majority of Catholics were peasants and former colonists who resided in various parts of rural Russia. Most Catholic Germans came originally from Poland following the Partitions, but spread out all over the Russian Empire. The limited number of studies available on “Russian German” Catholics do not provide their precise numbers throughout the course of Russian history, but historians estimate the number of Catholic Germans at roughly 450,000 or half a million followers (see Table 1.2). However, by 1914, the Catholic Church in the Southern areas of the Russian Empire with its diocese in Tiraspol, Moldova, included 350,000 faithful, of whom 90 percent were Germans.47 Nation-wide, numerous studies estimate the number of Catholics of all ethnic origins at 1,555,000 in Russia in 1918 spread out over 1,195 churches, though these numbers are still being contested.48 Many historians maintain that these Catholics were split between Germans and Poles, with a significant predominance of Poles.49 But actually, Soviet Catholics included people of more than a dozen nationalities, including French, Lithuanians, Armenians, Greeks, and others.50 Very few Germans residing in the Baltic States were Catholics; the strongholds of Catholicism among Germans were the German colonies in the Volga region, German parishes in the Kuban’ and Stavropol’ regions, and the mixed parishes of Crimea (German and Swiss) and Caucasus (German, Georgian, and Armenian).51 Curiously, there also existed a closed, aridly religious Catholic community of Germans in Siberia. Numbering 44,838 Germans in 1914, this was made up of the descendants of German Catholic Teutonic Knights, their relatives and servants who had been sent to Siberia during the Livonian Wars under Ivan the Terrible in the late 1550s.52 Mennonites When the Mennonites, a left-wing offspring of Anabaptism, felt no longer welcome in Prussia, they began to resettle in Russia upon the invitation from Catherine the Great in 1789. They originally settled in European parts of Russia, but the repression of Mennonites under Alexander II resulted in many of them moving eastward to the Southern Urals. Later, many Mennonites ended up in Siberia and Central Asia, with the largest representation of Mennonites in the

“Many Germans” 19 Altai region. Paradoxically, the Mennonites were able to completely preserve their ethnos, thanks to their particular religious beliefs and resulting lack of contact with “outsiders” and other religious denominations. Made up of pacifists, fundamentalists, and simply “lovers of the entire world,” Mennonite communities in Russia were a self-governing entity up until the twentieth century. Religion always stood at the center of their life. Although literacy was important for all German settlers in Russia, to Mennonites it assumed a special importance as it was one of the pillars of their religion.53 It has been estimated that prior to 1917, there were 110,000 Mennonites of German descent in Russia, spread over 365 villages.54 Others Some Germans were baptized into the Orthodox Church but their number remained relatively low compared to other religious affiliations. In addition, there was an insignificant number of German Baptists before the 1917 Revolution, though their number grew in the 1920s. To give a sense of the religious diversity among Germans, Table 1.2 summarizes the numbers of Germans of various religious denominations. We need to understand, however, that these numbers changed constantly. Thus, for example, among the first German colonists in the Volga region, 51.5 percent were Lutherans, 32.5 percent Catholics, and 16.25 percent Reformists. However, by the end of the eighteenth century, the proportion of confessions had changed to 54.4 percent Lutherans, 26.5 percent Catholics, and 19.1 percent Reformists. Although this latter proportion remained more or less the case for the duration of German settlements on the banks of the Volga River,55 other regions continued to witness denominational shifts throughout their existence and especially in the Table 1.2 Religious followers of ethnic German origin in pre-revolutionary Russia Denomination

Numbers

Percent

Lutheran-Evangelical Catholics Mennonites Baptists Others (Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.)

795,200 450,000 110,000 20,000 32,000

56 32 8 1.5 2.5

Sources: O.A. Litsenberger, “Raskol v Evangelichesko-Luteranskoi tserkvi SSSR v 1920-e gg.”, in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii, pp. 417–418; Revd. Christopher Lawrence Zugger, The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001, pp. 35–93; M.B. Shkarovskii, N.Iu. Cherepenina, and A.K. Shiker, RimskoKatolicheskaia tserkov’ na Severo-Zapade Rossii v 1917–1945 gg, St. Petersburg: Nestor, 1998, p. 9; W. Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union, London: Macmillan, 1961, p. 249; Ingeborg Fleischhauer and Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986, p. 50.

20 “Many Germans” early 1920s (due to a significant number of conversions to Baptism and various “non-traditional” denominations56).

Social differences among ethnic Germans in Russia Free farmers, or colonists The single largest stratum of Germans in Russia and the USSR comprised free farmers, who are called “colonists” in the historiography. Historians came to use the term “colonists” to identify ethnic Germans in order to distinguish their position from the position of Russian peasants at the time. Although most Germans were actively and predominantly involved in farming and could be called “peasants,” Germans were granted the higher status of “settlers and owners of their lands,” were not serfs, and could not be enserfed. Such colonies were originally established in the Volga region but eventually also appeared in Crimea, North Caucasus, the Black Sea region, and other areas. Regardless of their common social status, these various Germanic settlements were distinguished by great differences in their dialects, traditions, and identities. These differences were the result of factors such as the time of their migration to Russia; their place of former residence in Europe; and their confessional identity. Meshchane (lower middle class) This group was numerous and mostly comprised German-speaking people from various parts of Europe, not necessarily from the (future) state of Germany. They were skilled workers who went to Russia in search of better jobs and a better life. While some of them inevitably quickly assimilated into Russian society for the sake of their careers, many were able to preserve their cultural identity for centuries to come. Barons/dvoriane (upper classes) Most Germans in this group ended up in Russia after Russia absorbed the Baltic States. They nevertheless were also deported to special settlements and assimilated into the broader “Soviet German” category during and after World War II. The upper classes of Germans, along with Mennonites, were the most segregated group of Germanic peoples and denied any affiliation with the Germanic settlers. They would be later remembered and identified with their persistent desire to preserve their cultural and confessional identity, and with their success in this respect prior to deportation.

Dialects A few words need to be added about the diversity of dialects used by Germanic immigrants in dispersed parts of Russia. Some sources mention that the use of

“Many Germans” 21 various dialects depended primarily on religious confessions (e.g. the majority of Mennonites were fluent in the Danzig Platt, which was not in use among other settlers in Russian territory57). But the division by dialect among ethnic Germans was most often based on geographic origins, determined by either the dialect spoken in the area from which their ancestors came or where they resided in Russia. Table 1.3 demonstrates well the diversity of dialects spoken by German settlers in the Russian Empire, particularly in Ukraine and the Volga region. But this table should be perceived only as an example which illustrates the variety of dialects that existed among Germanic settlers in the Russian territory, since it does not include many regions from where the Germans were later deported. Although all these dialects were Germanic in their origins, neither High German nor Russian became a lingua franca for various Germanic settlers in the territory of the Russian Empire and during the early years of the Soviet regime. It is noteworthy that many German communities were allowed to have schools with German as the primary language of instruction following the Table 1.3 Differences of dialects among ethnic Germans in the Russian territory Region

Dialect

Dnepropetrovsk (4) Kriwoi Rog (7)

High German, German dialect, Platt Deutsch Western Prussian Platt; High Deutsch; a local dialect derivative of Danzig Platt; dialect of German mixed with Ukrainian (1) Unclear version of Platt; Swabian; Bavarian; Platt; Danzig Platt Platt; Holland Platt; East Prussian Platt; Danzig Platt; a local variation of Platt intermixed with Russian; German Sudetenland dialect of German; local unrecognized dialect of German; Bavarian; another dialect derivative of the mixture of German, Platt, and Ukrainian; unclear German intermixed with Ukrainian Rhineland dialect of German; Bavarian; Saxony dialect of German Danzig Platt; Austrian; Bavarian; unrecognized local dialect Local dialect derivative of Swabian; Platt; High Deutsch; Danzig Platt; East Prussian; another version of unrecognized local dialect High Deutsch Platt; Deutsch with occasional Ukrainian words sixteen various dialects Lower Rhine region dialect of Pfälzisch

Pjatichatki (Ukraine, 9) Zaporojie (16) Sinelnikovo (Ukraine, 5)

Werkhne-Dneprovsk (2) Khersov (10) Alexandrovka (23) Odessa (1) Pervomaisk (5) Volga region Woznesensk (1)

Sources: This table is based on the information provided in “Die Sprache in den deutschen Elternhäusern,” in Richard H. Walth, Flotsam of World History, pp. 99–103. The entry on Volga Germans is based on Nemtsy v Rossii: Liudy i sud’by, St. Petersburg: RAN, 1998, pp. 7–14. Note a Number in parenthesis indicates the number of communities studied for this table.

22

“Many Germans”

establishment of the Soviet regime. Of the eighty-two German schools that existed in 1917, three were turned into Russian-language schools in 1917 and six in 1918. Three more schools became “Russian” in 1923, 1925, and 1927. However, fifty-five German schools remained open until 1937. Fifteen of these were closed down in 1937 but forty remained open until 1938. The rest of the schools were either closed down at some time between 1917–38 or information on them is not available.58 Over the decades and even centuries that German-speaking people of various origins lived in Russia, German culture and German presence became an integral part of Russian history and even Russian culture, probably more so than any other foreign culture. From the days of “German” Romanov tsarist reign to the days of “German” Marxism in Russia, “German spirit,” as some public figures and scholars labeled it, permeated all spheres of Russian political, cultural, and social life. Inevitably, high culture and urban centers felt this spirit and presence more than rural communities and folk customs, for Russian high culture was always accepting of foreign influences, and urban centers always functioned as crucibles of peoples and ideas. But if anything else, the image of hard-working and honest Germans became deeply imbedded in popular notions of Germans in Russia, whether they were German colonists on the banks of the Volga River or German officials at the royal court. As the capital of the country, St. Petersburg was the pinnacle and the greatest example of this German presence evident in all parts of Russia. For example, the architecture of the city was influenced by German style, and the most memorable buildings were designed and constructed by German architects. Catherine the Great was a great admirer of art historian Johann Joachim Winkelmann. Inspired by his work, she invited various German architects to build the Bourse (exchange), the Admiralty, the Academy of Sciences, and other buildings. To keep up with this tradition, Nicholas I invited a famous Bavarian architect, Leo Klenze, to come and work in Russia in the 1840s. After he had worked for Jerome Bonaparte of Westphalia and Louis I of Bavaria and completed several now famous construction projects in Munich, Klenze designed and supervised the construction of the New Hermitage in St. Petersburg.59 Many seemingly nonGerman buildings were also German-influenced. The best-known example is that of Chinese influence in Russian architecture. Catherine II knew about the influence of chinoiserie (Chinese) style on architecture in Prussia and elsewhere, and wanted to recreate something similar to the Japanese Palace in Dresden and other chinoiserie buildings along the Elba River. Hence she sponsored the construction of Chinese pavilions and the Chinese Village in the Tsarkoe Selo (Royal Village), and the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum.60 Similarly, Germanconstructed and German-influenced buildings could be found in all large cities of Russia, and Lutheran and other protestant churches enriched the architectural landscape of the Russian countryside. Moreover, for decades and even centuries, prominent German thinkers influenced Russian intelligentsia. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, the

“Many Germans” 23 first Russian poet Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin created his literary image of enlightened “true” Russians based on the writings of Frederick II the Great of Prussia and Frederick’s ideas about Standhaftigkeit (staunchness, firmness of spirit). In 1775, Derzhavin read Frederick’s works during the poet’s long stay in the Volga German village of Shafgauzen to recoup his health and to find his true calling in life after some hardships in his job (sluzhba). In 1779, his “Frederickian” themes found their way into his poems “Na smert’ kniazia Meshcherskogo” (“On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii”) and later into “K pervomu sosedu” (“To the First Neighbor,” 1780) and “Bog” (God, 1784), among others.61 Although writings of Frederick II were later frowned upon by Russian intellectuals, Derzhavin nevertheless remained true to his first inspiration and later to his admiration of Goethe who also greatly admired Frederick’s work. 62 In 1844, Vladimir Odoevsky, one of the best-known intellectual figures of the nineteenth century and a close friend of Aleksandr Pushkin, wrote in his famous Russian Nights that “in the beginning of the nineteenth century Schelling was the same as Columbus was in the fifteenth; he [Friedrick Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling] discovered an unknown part of the world that previously existed only in unreal tales – soul.”63 Every educated Russian saw it as his duty to read and think about Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, System of Transcendental Idealism, On the Essence of Human Freedom, and his other works. After Schelling (and Goethe), Georg Hegel stands out as a prominent intellectual influence on Russian society in the nineteenth and indirectly twentieth centuries. Hegel’s works were introduced to Russia by Nikolai Senkevich and spread quickly within the intellectual circles of Russia. The presence of Hegel’s teaching was so significant in Russia that writing years later, Leo Tolstoy found it important to say in Anna Karenina that one of his main heroes, Levin, was a true intellectual because he read and reread Plato, Kant, Schilling, Schopenhauer but, above all, Hegel.64 Although it is beyond the purpose of this book to recount every aspect of Hegel’s work or his intellectual heritage in Russia, it is crucial to note that the so-called “Left Hegelians” (Arnold Ruge, Ludwig Ansreas Feuerback, and especially Karl Marx) influenced the creation of the revolutionarydemocratic wing in Russian society with its long-term consequences for Russian political life. Vissarion Belinskii, Mikhail Bakunin, Alexander Herzen were all ardent Left Hegelianists.65 The influence of German philosophy was not peculiar to Russia, but arguably, it had by far the greatest consequence for Russia of all other European countries in terms of long-term historical change in any given state. Although direct links are always problematical and rather over-simplistic, it is possible to say that German philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced the Herzens, Chernyshevskys, Dobroliubovs, Plekhanovs, Tkachevs, and even Lenins of Russian history. But the German presence in Russia was long-term and not limited to the influence of German philosophy. Although the fine points of the philosophical inquiry are not without their merit, oftentimes the German presence in Russia was much more “down to earth,” as were the interactions between Russians and Germans which informed and influenced the popular image of a “German” in

24 “Many Germans” Russia. As a matter of fact, the image of the “German” in Russia was being constructed from the first days of German immigration to St. Petersburg and Moscow and other regions of the Russian Empire. Although this image is untraceable among peasants and other non-elites of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many Russian writers and poets created their literary characters based on common perception and the image of Germans in Russia. A few examples from different periods will demonstrate this point well. In the early nineteenth century, the image of a German already figured prominently in the poems of Alexander Pushkin. This image appears in almost all of the poet’s writings, and surfaces repeatedly in one of Pushkin’s bestknown poems Eugene Onegin. Thus, on one occasion Pushkin writes of early morning in St. Petersburg: Prosnulsia utra shum priiatnyi Otkryty stavni; trubnyi dym Stolbom voshodit golubym, I khlebnik, nemets akkuratnyi, V bumazhnom kolpake, ne raz Uzh otvorial svoi vasisdas.

[The city’s early sounds awake her; shutters are opened and the soft blue smoke of chimneys goes aloft, and more than once the German baker, punctilious in his cotton cap, has opened up his serving-trap.] (Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, XXXV)

To Pushkin, a German baker is punctilious in his work, as every German is hardworking, honest, and prudent. This characteristic becomes especially striking in contrast with romantic, free-spirited (and not punctilious) Russian young noblemen, such as, Vladimir Lenskii.66 As further inquiry into this image demonstrates, bakers of German descent were very common to large Russian cities where their businesses thrived and were generally perceived as of exceptional quality. The baking business in German hands prospered because of the business model adopted by Germans. They believed their produce to be inedible the day after it was baked; so German bakers always sold breads and pastries baked the very same day and gave away the left-overs at the end of the day to the poor and needy.67 Hence the image (and reality) of exceptional quality, honesty, and hard work. But “the German image” in Pushkin’s works was not limited to bakers. In 1833, Pushkin writes The Queen of Spades, a book about a young German engineer in Russia, Mr. Hermann. The poet in the very first chapter assigns certain character traits to Hermann when he creates the following dialogue:

German nemets: on raschetliv, vot i vse!

“I am very much interested in cards,” Hermann said, “but I am not in a position to sacrifice the essential in the hope of acquiring the superfluous.” Hermann is a German; he is prudent—that’s all!68

“Many Germans” 25 It remained to be seen in the poem how prudent Hermann was. But to everyone around him, and even for Hermann himself, his German origins alone explain Hermann’s prudent character and ability to act decisively based on rational judgment. Only passions that Hermann learns in his Russian environment lead him to the path of self-destruction, to his ultimate madness.69 This image of the prudent German does not disappear in the mid-nineteenth century. Eduard Guber, a poet of Russian German descent and a native speaker of German, wrote extensive poems about Russian-German settlers and their image among the various strata of Russian society. He described repeatedly that Russian people admired the ability of Germans to be organized and “presentable” (presentabel’nye) in everything, including their daily routine and especially the tradition of drinking coffee in the afternoon (Kaffeetrinken), and the manicured appearance of their houses and clothing. But the most common feature attributed to German colonists was the ability to be rational: Synov Germanii razumnoi Siuda Rossiia sozvala I na dolinakh Volgi shumnoi Im les i pole otvela.70

[Russia called upon children of reasonable and rational Germany to settle along the Volga River in the fields and forests assigned to them.]

Ivan Goncharov created arguably the best-known example of such an image in Oblomov, written in 1849 but published a decade later. Lazy, barely ever off the sofa, Oblomov has a half-German friend Andrei Shtolts.71 Goncharov wanted to have a character who could connect emotionally to Oblomov and understand him (hence Shtolts is half-Russian) but who was simultaneously strikingly different from a “true Russian” (i.e. lazy) pomeshchik. Shtolts is not only hardworking, honest, and ambitious but he is also a true admirer of work, one of those people who live to work rather than work to live. Oblomov asked Shtolts on one occasion about work ethics and the need to work: “Tak kogda zhe zhit’? Dlia chego zhe muchit’sia?” “Dlia samogo truda, bol’she ni dlia chego.”

When [do we have time] for real life then? Why suffer? [Shtolts replied:] For work itself, and nothing else.72

The image of the hard-working, reasonable, and prudent German survived into the early twentieth century, although it did not survive for long. A famous Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam demonstrated repeatedly that German presence was integral to the Russian cultural and political landscape, and acknowledged particular trends that were characteristic of Germans he saw. Once again, he writes about modest and prudent Germans: Kto b ni byl ty, pokoinyi luteranin,

Dead Lutheran, whoever in life you were,

26

“Many Germans” Tebia legko i prosto horonili. Byl vzor slezoi prilichnoi zatumanen, I sderzhanno kolokola zvonili.

They lightly buried you and lightly sang. Their eyes were fogged with decent tears And with reserve above you church-bells rang.73 (Osip Mandelshtam, The Lutheran)

There is no pomp, nothing indecent in the Lutheran ceremony. Overbearing display of emotions, often seen as typical of Russians, was entirely absent in the German-speaking urban Lutheran community of twentieth-century Russia. Yet Mandelshtam was probably the last Russian poet to write about Germans in Russia in this manner. The image of the “German” in the twentieth century became tainted by many political events but primarily by the two World Wars. Germans in Russia ceased to occupy the literary and popular minds of Russian people the way they had before as they were almost entirely displaced by images of Germans of the Third Reich and Nazis. The pre-World War I image of Germans as hard-working and honest (which was in many ways a correct reflection of reality) was so persistent that it found its way into contemporary historiography on the Russian Old Regime. For example, historian Richard Pipes writes that German chinovniki were the first to show Russians that the state public service was for the well-being of the state and of the public rather than a position for personal enrichment via corruption.74 Curiously, many accounts attest that Germans in the Baltic States and in the capital were welcomed in state jobs because they spoke and wrote Russian better than many Russians. Germans spoke German in childhood and learned Russian comparatively late in life from formal language training. Hence they were better acquainted with basic grammar rules of the Russian language than were many native speakers.75 Ironically, the best textbook of Russian grammar at the time, Russkaia grammatika, was also compiled and published by a native German speaker N.I. Grech. Although all of these examples universally acknowledge the presence of the “German spirit” in Russia, there is more that unites these various examples other than the obvious discourse of Germans as carriers of particular characteristics. All of these authors talk about “their” Germans or “their” German-speaking people, i.e., about Germans who reside either in the countryside as settlers, or state workers, or Baltic Germans, or Lutherans, or some other group that these authors encountered. If Leo Tolstoy talked about German philosophy in his works, he also talked in War and Peace about Livland barons and Protestant settlers as of two very different groups. 76 If the Germans in St. Petersburg spoke Russian well, historians know for a fact that Russian was not spoken by Volga Germans, many of whom could not even comprehend Russian. If Guber described the admiration Russians had for the neatness of German Brusttücher (a type of jacket), it was not even worn by Germans in places other than the Southern Russian countryside. Moreover, accounts that have survived from the

“Many Germans” 27 times of Nicolas I and thereafter attest that Baltic Germans in St. Petersburg despised other Germans residing there who held state positions. Baltic Germans believed themselves to be an ethnic group that was better suited for such positions than were other Germans of St. Petersburg.77 These literary and scholarly works and images all pointed in the same direction; yet they never recognized or explicitly mentioned unity among “Russian Germans.” The unity of the common image and identity of Russian Germans as a product of common tragedies and common experiences was yet to come.

Map 1.1 Country of origin and areas of settlements of German settlers in Russia, 1763–1864 (generic) (source: Stumpp (1978, Vol. 2, Map 2). Published with the permission of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia).

Map 1.2 Density of Germanic settlements in Southern Russia (source: Stumpp (1978, Vol. 2, Map 7). Published with the permission of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia).

Map 1.3 Origins of residents in the Germanic settlements in southern Russia (source: Stumpp (1978, Vol. 2, Map 15). Published with the permission of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia).

2

Many deportations and their legal basis

Up until this moment, many historians interested in the study of ethnic Germans have failed to incorporate the many deportations of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union – overall at least a dozen – into the discussion of deportation. Instead, they all too often present these deportations either as a coherent, unified process aimed at “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” on Stalin’s part or as individual segregated occurrences that are studied one at a time.1 Most works concentrate on the most massive deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941, while other works study individual cases and aspects of the deportations. Very few historians have attempted and succeeded in demonstrating the complexity of the deportation process2 or acknowledging the numerous waves of German deportations that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s. The fact that the complexity of many deportations of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union is not readily acknowledged may be partially explained by the failure to recognize the diversity among existing Germanic groups and communities in the territory of the Soviet Union. But it may also be partially explained by the fact that the Soviet government policies prior to the onset of World War II in regard to ethnic Germans were primarily concerned with Volga Germans and the Volga German community, and were seemingly aimed at the ethnic consolidation of Germans in the Soviet Union. Early Soviet nationalities policy was based on the complete right of selfexpression and the denial of any form of discrimination, especially on the basis of ethnic identity. The question of minorities was on the mind of future Soviet leaders very early on. Already in 1913, Stalin defined a nation “as a historically developed and stable community of people that has emerged on the basis of the commonality of their language, territory, economic life and psychological makeup as manifest in the community of culture.”3 Although this definition would later have far-reaching consequences for the Soviet nationalities policy, in the early years of the Bolsheviks’ struggle for power, it implied a position strikingly different from that of their opponents. Whereas most other political parties supported an idea of an “indivisible Russia,” Bolsheviks promised complete rights of ethnic self-assertion and self-determination when they proclaimed “free development of national minorities and ethnographical groups inhabiting the territory of Russia.”4

30

Many deportations and their legal basis

By 1923, the Soviet government had fully formulated its policy of ethnonationalism which had been under construction during previous years. Yet the Soviet policy of national self-determination based on ethnicity posed a challenge of defining the many peoples of the Soviet Union with their complex identities as various segregated and uniformly coherent ethnic groups. For the first time in Russian history, ethnic identity in its own right, not language or religion, was the defining factor of ethnicity. Hence the census of 1926 asked respondents to identify their ethnicity and recorded over 190 ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. In a few subsequent years, ethnographers, historians, and linguists clustered these ethnic groups into some ninety major ethnos which constituted nations with a right to their own version of statehood according to Soviet ideological and political concepts of nationhood. Ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were among those who presumably benefited from the policy of ethnic self-determination as Volga Germans were granted a degree of autonomy along with nineteen other autonomous republics and eleven union republics that existed in the Soviet Union in 1936. In February 1918, the Bolsheviks created the Volga Soviet Commission (Povolzhskii komissariat) to make decisions on the so-called “German question.” The heads of the committee, E. Reiter and K. Petin, were Moscow-based and Moscow-appointed officials with little connection to the Volga German region. Yet the Commission also included local Bolsheviks of German descent, though few of them cared about anything other than the advancement of Soviet ideology and propaganda among fellow ethnic Germans. Whatever the shortcomings of this Commission might have been, it made several proposals to create an autonomous republic for and consisting of Volga Germans. Lenin approved one of the proposals when he signed a decree on the establishment of the Region of the Volga Germans (oblast’ nemtsev Povolzhia) on October 19, 1918.5 Six years later, in 1924, the region received a new administrative status when it became the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Volga Germans (ASSR Nemtsev Povolzhia). The creation of these autonomous national administrative territories, including the Volga German Republic, by no means ever implied the devolution of political or economic power. The presumption behind Soviet nationalities policy was the support and promotion of ethnic lifestyles, customs, and traditions of various ethno-national groups, while every aspect of the Republic’s economic or political life was under close control and supervision of the Soviet government. From the first days of the existence of the Volga German autonomy, it was subject to all the policies of the Soviet government. War Communism brought famine to the Volga region, and local peasants, German or not, rose in opposition to the Soviet methods of grain procurement (prodrazverstka). By the spring of 1921, the Volga region became an epicenter of the slowly receding Civil War, and that added to the overall devastation of World War I and the harsh years of War Communism in the Volga region. Although the establishment of autonomy in the early 1920s implied some freedom of cultural expression, only local soviets, Soviet trade unions (profsoiuzy), and communist youth organization (komsomol) branches were allowed to exist. Their representatives had a mission

Many deportations and their legal basis 31 to combat all “anti-Soviet sentiments” (antisovetskie nastroeniia) among the populace, including religious observance and support of the Church, desire to emigrate, and contacts with foreign countries, all of which occupied a prominent place in Volga Germans’ lifestyle.6 Despite these restrictions, the instability of the early Soviet years and the inconsistency of early Soviet policies and their implementation, the overall perception of the nationalities policy promoted by the Soviet government nevertheless allowed some room for cultural self-expression. Most German-language schools were allowed to continue to exist; newspapers, journals, and various brochures were still being published in German (though this German press paid attention predominantly to ideological and political issues); and local party leaders authorized the establishment of the Museum of German Culture, German theaters, German-language press organs, and various exhibitions of German cultural achievements in the Volga German Republic.7 Moreover, in the mid-1920s the Soviet government started to enforce its policy of korenizatsiia, or “nativization.”8 This policy resulted in the promotion of ethnic minority groups to administrative positions, especially in their ethnoterritorial regions, and the switch to the dual use of Russian and local languages for all educational and administrative purposes. The development of national cultures was highly encouraged, as was a campaign aimed to reverse some of the earlier policies of forced and semi-voluntary Russification of ethnic minorities and titular groups in the Russian Empire. Whereas the campaign was more or less successful in other parts of the country, it largely failed in the Volga region. Although there was some non-German opposition to the introduction of the German language in all spheres of life, local Germans opposed this too. Very few Germanic settlers spoke the same dialect, and few if any welcomed the mandatory use of High German or wanted to see the consolidation of their varied cultures into one official “German” culture under the banner of the Soviet flag. Neither this campaign nor the creation of a single German republic resulted in the construction of a single “Soviet German” identity.9 Starting in the late 1934, at the onset of political purges, the remnants of the korenizatsiia campaign were completely abandoned. A new idea took a prominent hold in relation to the Volga German region – the idea of the fight against nationalism and fascism. Yet under the façade of Soviet cultural life, clandestine expressions of ethnic German culture, and especially German devotion to Lutheran, Catholic, and other churches, survived, even if it was partially driven underground. Although the dekulakization campaigns of the early 1930s and the Great Purges of 1937–38 had greatly undermined the Volga German community (as we will see later), the region did not face a complete change of fortune until the coming of World War II. Arguably, the formation of the Volga German Republic, in line with Soviet policies elsewhere, was intended to promote the consolidation of Germans as a single ethnic group. But this approach could not be successful, as Germans in the Soviet Union possessed different cultures and lived scattered about in different areas of a vast nation. The artificial and perverse logic of Soviet social and

32

Many deportations and their legal basis

ethnic engineering “forgot” to take into account the fact that there was not just one but many Germanic communities throughout Russia when it attempted to mold Volga Germans into a coherent group of Soviet Germans, as it failed to eliminate the diversity of ethnic self-expression among Volga Germans prior to 1941. Yet such a policy of ethnic self-assertiveness centering around a single group of Germans was undoubtedly misleading, as it prompted scholars to concentrate on only one community of ethnic Germans rather than acknowledge the diversity of Germanic communities in Russia and the early Soviet Union. Although it is not the goal of this work to reveal the reasons behind the deportations, several words need to be said about various interpretations offered by historians in this regard. Scholars have yet to come to a consensus on why the various ethnic deportations took place. There are as many theories of the reasons behind the deportations as there are theories trying to explain Stalinist terror in general. Thus, some historians take an “emotional” approach to this subject. They argue that Stalin deported ethnic Germans in a mere act of revenge for the initial Soviet losses in the war.10 Stalin could not forgive Germans in the USSR that their fellow nationals, German Nazis, were taking over large amounts of Soviet territory. “Blind anger and revenge for the shameful losses on the front” are cited by historians such as A. German as the cause of the deportations.11 However, this interpretation does not answer the question of why so many other nationalities were also deported during the war years. Were they too blamed for the Nazi aggression? Other historians believe that the reasons for the deportation were primarily economic. Stalin had always wanted to populate the desolated territories of Siberia, and used various ethnic deportees as cheap forced labor there and in the Central Asian republics. The partisans of this view believe that the politics of deportation were just a logical continuation of the Terror of the 1930s, when masses of people, as they maintain, were sent to Gulag for the same reason, namely economic exploitation. “Soviet German” labor was particularly attractive to Stalin because of the Germans’ known love for hard work, honesty, modesty, and economic success (let us not forget that German farmer communities were the wealthiest in the Russian Empire). This explains Stalin’s desire to deport primarily ethnic Germans at the onset of war and thereafter.12 Historians who examine internal vs. external factors that brought about the deportation of many ethnic minorities argue that the war, which the Soviet Union was fighting at the time of ethnic deportations, was just an excuse to implement a far more important, from the Soviet point of view, policy toward ethnic minorities. Whereas previously, the Soviet government attempted to promote ethnic self-assertiveness among minority groups and allowed for a great degree of cultural autonomy and ethnic self-expression, Stalin no longer viewed such an approach to the “nationalities question” as reasonable and justified. Hence, he used the war as an excuse and deported assertive ethnic groups in order to “assimilate stigmatized ethnic minorities through their removal from their habitual environments and dispersal across the country. Only this grand

Many deportations and their legal basis 33 goal, rather than the state’s official justifications, can explain the diversion of significant resources from the war effort” to implement the policy of mass human relocation across the country.13 On the other hand, some historians choose to concentrate on external, rather than internal, factors that could potentially explain the deportations. Foreign relations with Germany were among the first explanations adopted by scholars. Since 1933, the argument goes, Germany along with Japan had come to the forefront of Soviet foreign relations. It was only reasonable and expected that the Soviet government, affected by various rumors spread by ordinary (if rather paranoid) Soviet citizens, began to see enemies in their own citizens of ethnic German origins.14 Along these lines, Nikolai Bougai argues that although there were numerous reasons for the deportation, the officially listed desire to prevent potential collaboration was not fake but rather a real concern on the mind of the Soviet government.15 After all, the decree that explained the reasons for deportation wanted to prevent the conflict between ethnic Germans and the Soviet government. For the decree ordering the massive German deportation of 1941 noted: If any subversive activities . . . were to take place in the Republic of Volga Germans or nearby areas and the blood were shed, the Soviet government in accordance with the wartime laws would be obliged to take punitive actions against the whole German population of the Volga region. In order to avoid such undesirable punitive actions and prevent bloodshed, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet has found it necessary to relocate the entire German population living in the Volga region to other regions [raiony], with the provision that the relocated [Germans] have land allotted to them and state assistance to help them establish themselves in the new regions.16 To the fear of collaboration were added stories of real collaboration and espionage that were already taking place among Germans in the occupied territories. Needless to say, the fact that it was Germany, the historic motherland of Soviet Germans, that had invaded the Soviet Union was also significant. In this respect, the Soviet Union was not the only Allied country to restrict the movement of “enemy” nationals and relocate them so they could not be used by the aggressors. The case of Japanese internment in the USA is only one example of such practices. Various scholars, however, have attacked the official view that deportation was a pre-emptive measure, which was required due to the high concentration of spies among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. These scholars have argued convincingly that Soviet Germans did not collaborate in massive numbers with Reichdeutsche, even if some spies did really operate in the Soviet Union. NKVD documents demonstrate that regardless of its “special attempts” (osobye usiliia, a term that usually implied a search for collaboration even if there was a complete lack of evidence of such), the NKVD had arrested only 145 Volga

34

Many deportations and their legal basis

Germans between June 22 and August 10, 1941, and only two of these were directly accused of espionage while the others were accused of organizing antiSoviet groups and spreading counter-revolutionary ideas.17 But without any doubt, fears of espionage were fueled by the recent experience of the Great Terror of 1937–38. During these two years, numerous reports reached Stalin about espionage and saboteur activities that German citizens and ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union carried out in various parts of the country, not necessarily in the Volga region. For example, Professor Frits Neter,18 who was a German citizen employed by one of the universities in Tomsk, was arrested in November 1937 and allegedly admitted his espionage activities and revealed the existence of a wide network of spies and saboteurs.19 Some of these documents were no doubt fabricated by the NKVD and confessions exerted by its harsh interrogation methods aimed to fulfill its quotas for arrest. But the Kremlin’s suspicion of ethnic Germans’ potential collaborationism during the war was only a logical and to some extent inevitable complication of the Soviets’ recent past. Furthermore, the contemporary history of Nazi aggression toward Czechoslovakia with its Sudeten German population and Poland with Upper and Lower Silesia German minority communities were of key importance for understanding the external (i.e. foreign policy) driving force for deportation. If Nazi Germany justified the war by reclaiming the territory with German minorities in other parts of Europe, it most likely would want to do the same with the ethnic German territories in the Soviet Union (e.g. the Volga region) unless Germans are relocated deep into the interior of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the New Order theory promoted by Nazi Germans in the early war years did not offer an enviable future to Russian people. Nazis envisioned a future in which the majority of the Soviet population would be relocated eastward, exterminated, or Germanized. Russians would be allowed to live in Siberia, guarded from entering European Russia by German garrisons, while Jews and other “undesirables” were to be exterminated. But ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union had a brighter prospect in these Nazi plans than did their fellow Soviet citizens of Slavic origins. Ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union were to be fully Germanized and allowed to live in model settlements as free farmers. Inevitably, such widely publicized policy did not prompt the Soviet government to regard ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union favorably.20 The arguments in favor of external pressures and state security concerns as the prime causes of German deportation gain greater credibility if we consider the movement of the war front during the first eighteen months of the war. As the front line moved east, so did the areas from which Germans were relocated. In retrospect, the hastily adopted and executed “Crimean evacuation” of Germans in 1941 was a timely measure from the Soviet point of view in light of the approaching German siege and assault of Sevastopol in November 1941 to July 1942. Equally timely were relocations from the Volga River region in light of the rapid advancement of German forces eastward and the approaching Battle of Stalingrad on the Volga River banks in 1942. In other words, the geographi-

Many deportations and their legal basis 35 cal progression of the front lines often resembled the geographical pattern of resettlement of ethnic Germans from various parts of the Soviet Union.21 But regardless of hidden or pronounced aims of the deportation of ethnic Germans, the deportation process was complex and involved several waves of deportation ranging in their time frame from the 1930s to the late 1940s and shifting from social class-based to ethnic deportations. But the complexity of the deportation of ethnic Germans can only be understood by placing it within a framework of previous tsarist practices toward ethnic Germans and within a greater framework of the Soviet displacement of the peoples. Thus, during World War I the Russian tsarist government “evacuated” ethnic Germans from the western European parts of Russia to farther eastward European (on the border with Asia) and Asian parts of the Russian Empire. Already in October 1914, some 50,000 German men were forcefully relocated away from the Russian border, and they were followed in 1915 by Germans from Vohlynia. The evacuation of ethnic Germans from areas near the front continued throughout 1915–17. Evacuated Germans were expected to pay for their transportation expenses and survive on their own in their new temporary places of residence.22 Although the exact number of ethnically German evacuees is unknown, historians estimate that as many as 235,000 Russian citizens of German origins were evacuated eastward during World War I.23 Only in February 1918 were these Germans allowed to return to their homes.24 Hence deportation of ethnic Germans undertaken by the Soviet government during World War II was not totally unprecedented but rather followed in the footsteps of similar (although not identical) policies of the Russian government during World War I. Moreover, the displacement of ethnic Germans in the Soviet period was neither a single, nor unique, nor an isolated process. The deportations of people in the Soviet Union took many forms and lasted for years; several million people were relocated in the first three decades of the Soviet regime. Thus, for example, the first Soviet effort at mass relocation included deportation of 70,000 rebellious Cossacks from the North Caucasus and 100,000 rebellious peasants from the Tambov Province in 1918.25 In 1929–33, the Soviet government attempted to turn agricultural production into a collective and state-controlled enterprise in a campaign labeled “collectivization” by “collectivizing” peasants’ farms, tools, and livestock, and consolidating land holdings into gigantic farms. To promote this campaign, the government confiscated property and agricultural tools and livestock from wealthy peasants (“kulaks”) and deported 1.5 million of these peasants (regardless of ethnic origins) to Siberia and northern Russia in 1930–33. Approximately 850,000–900,000 more were arrested and sent to prisons or labor camps in remote parts of the Soviet Union. Later on, in the mid-1930s, the Soviet government decided to cleanse its borders of various ethnic groups that might prove disloyal in the event of a war as a pre-emptive measure to strengthen the Soviet frontiers. As a result, in 1935–38, 70,000 Germans and Poles and 30,000 Finns residing in the regions of Soviet western borderlands were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan, along with some Estonians, Latvians, Kurds, and Iranians. In 1937, all Koreans in the Far

36

Many deportations and their legal basis

East, numbering 170,000, were resettled in Central Asia. Germans, along with many other ethnic groups, were also victims of the purges and terror of 1937–38. Moreover, in 1939–40, 400,000 Poles were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan as a direct result of the Soviet Union’s incorporation of its neighboring states and various treaties signed between Germany and the USSR. After the Nazi-German invasion of the Soviet territories on 22 June 1941 and until 1945, twelve nationalities in the Soviet Union (Germans, Karachai, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Crimean Tartars, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, Finns, and Bulgarians) were subjected to wholesale or partial deportation, amounting to roughly two million people. In 1943–44 alone, the Soviet government deported 70,000 Karachai, 93,000 Kalmyks, 520,000 Chechens and Ingush, 45,000 Balkars, 185,000 Crimean Tartars, 12,500 Crimean Bulgarians, 10,000 Crimean Armenians, 15,000 Greeks, and finally 92,000 Meshketin Turks, Kurds, and Khemshins from Georgia. Throughout this period ethnic Germans were among deported peoples, who often suffered because of their nationality but sometimes simply because they lived in the wrong place at the wrong time. Historian Pavel Polian has identified at least eight different categories of relocation of peoples in the Soviet Union, each based on the reasoning behind the relocation. They include deportations based on social status, nationality and ethnicity, confessional affiliation, and political factors. Some categories of deportation also refer to semi-voluntary migration, such as resettlement (“po prizyvu”) to populate far-away places and to work on major construction sites and evacuations of wartime.26 The majority of these categories, however, are a part of the greater forced, or imposed, pattern of dislocation associated with massive human suffering and the brutal use of force. Each category can further be divided into several subgroups of smaller waves of dislocation, depending on the timing or the specificity of each. Some deportations involved several thousand people at a time, while others involved several hundred thousand people at any given moment. Table 2.1, based on Polian’s work, conveys a sense of the overall extent of forced migration in the Soviet Union, without an understanding of which it is impossible to appreciate the extent and “integrated-ness” of the displacement experienced by Soviet Germans. Although Germans were not subject to all forms of dislocation that found place in the Soviet Union, they were nevertheless an integral part of most of them. The overall time frame and geography of the deportations demonstrate that Germans were deported from vast territories, spreading across all European parts of the Soviet Union and many other territories, and their deportation lasted for over a decade. Thus it is crucial to discuss all of them and the legal basis behind these waves of deportations in some detail. Dekulakization campaigns of the early 1930s Dekulakization campaigns were never directed specifically against Germans but rather against all peasants deemed to be wealthier. Germans, however, were traditionally perceived as being well-off compared to Russian villagers. Hard hit

Many deportations and their legal basis 37 Table 2.1 A sample of Soviet deportations (forced migrations) 1 De-Cossackization (1919–20) 2 Dekulakization (1930–33) 3 Deportation of elites from Leningrad (1935)a 4 Deportation justified by preparation for war and “cleaning borderlines” (zachhistka granits) – massive and limited deportations 5 Massive deportations of “punished peoples” – preventive and punitive 6 “Compensationary” forced resettlement and forced “osedlost’”b 7 Deportation of entire religious confessions (Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) 8 Priests and the most ardent believers of various confessions 9 Members of “forbidden” (“zapreshchennyi”) political parties and organizations 10 Family members of “enemies of the people” 11 “Socially dangerous” elements 12 Citizens of foreign countries 13 POWs 14 Repatriated citizens (or assumed citizens) 15 Convicted of political charges 16 Convicted on criminal charges Source: Adapted from Pavel Polian, Ne po svoiei vole . . . Istoriia i geographiia prinuditel’nyh migratsii v SSSR, Moscow: Memorial, 2001. Notes a Political repressions raged after December 1, 1934, and reached their peak in the Great Terror of 1937–38. However, during this period a more specific incident qualifies as deportation. On 27 February 1935, in the wake of the Kirov assassination, a decree authorized the deportation of “counter-revolutionaries” from Leningrad and the Leningrad region. According to this decree, over 5,000 families were deported from this area. Social analysis of this group demonstrates, and subsequently revealed documents confirm, that the criteria for deportation was social standing. Thus, only “former people” were deported, including former members of the nobility, former officers, former wealthy merchants, and so on. (Reference: Pavel Polian, Ne po svoiei vole . . ., p. 86, ft. 115). b This type of forced resettlement was probably the most humane of all forced migration yet the least relevant form of it for the Soviet Germans. When the Germans and other ethnic and social groups were deported, they left a physical vacuum behind them. For the government, there was an urgent need to “refill” these spaces with new people to work the land and to produce food in equal amounts (at the very least) as did the deported peoples before them. Thus, for example, when Germans were deported from the Volga region, the plan was to settle in their place 17,400 Russians from local villages and 52,000 from the front lines. By the time new residents reached the Volga region, the formerly prosperous area of the German commune was “cleaned up” – almost all household items and agricultural tool and livestock were stolen or collectivized, farm land was abandoned and producing nothing. After massive famine in the area, only 4,200 families were successfully threatened into staying by 1945 (Polian, ft. 137, p. 132). As for the forced change from nomadic to settled style of life (osedlost’), for the same reasons many mountain peoples of Caucasus who were not deported were forcefully relocated to other villages and even towns, and were forced to abandon their traditional lifestyles (Polian, p. 133).

by the events of the 1920s, Germans nevertheless managed to maintain and run their farms better than their neighbors. Although some historians now argue that German settlers were not as wealthy as has been traditionally believed, they were perceived as such by the authorities and their neighbors. The main wave of dekulakization campaigns hit many Volga Germans in 1930–31 and ruined 3.7 percent of all households in the Volga region, resulting in the deportation of 24,202 Germans.27 Threatened with collectivization and these persecutions, a

38 Many deportations and their legal basis significant number of Germans fled Russia in a renewed wave of the emigration movement of Germans to their historic motherland and other countries.28 Even though the number of Germans deported in dekulakization campaigns was much smaller than the later wartime deportations and was comparable to other ethnic groups including Russians, the overall campaign had grave consequences for Volga Germans. The collectivization and dekulakization campaign resulted in a massive famine in the Soviet Union, and the Volga German Republic became one of the epicenters of this famine. Unlike as has been previously maintained by historians, German colonists suffered neither more nor less than their Russian or other ethnic neighbors.29 Yet this fact did not make the famine less devastating. Several regions (raiony) of the Volga German Republic such as Bal’tsersk, Mariental’, Kanemsk, and Marksshtadt regions were especially hard hit. Death rates were so high that the numerous dead could not be buried individually and were laid to rest in common burials, and cases of cannibalism were widely reported.30 Various hunger-associated diseases and consumption of inedible substances (e.g. dirt) became common causes of death in addition to deaths from starvation and bloating.31 Many Volga Germans appealed to both German citizens and the government of Germany for aid to ease this famine. This appeal is easily explained by the fact that ever since the establishment of the Soviet Union up until 1934, Soviet Germans were able to maintain contact with their relatives in Germany and/or various German humanitarian relief organizations. In 1933, when famine came to various regions of the Soviet Union, activists in Germany, with the personal approval and participation of Hitler and Hindenburg, posted banners and distributed leaflets with information about the situation among the Volga Germans and appeals for donations.32 Moreover, many such organizations, including “Brothers in Need” and “Union of Germans Abroad,” increased their aid to their starving fellow Germans in the Soviet Union. According to official Soviet documents, the Ukraine, Caucasus, and Volga Germans received 600,000 Deutschmarks and 14,500 US dollars in famine aid in 1934.33 Inevitably, such humanitarian relief campaigns received strong disapproval from the communist party officials in the Soviet Union.34 Accused of direct collaboration with foreigners and spying for Germany, about 4,000 Soviet Germans, most of whom were in charge of distributing this aid in the Volga region, were arrested in 1934, and many arrests followed in the years to come.35 This operation, staged in 1934, became the only operation which was aimed specifically at Germans prior to 1937. Crucially, the high level of interest that foreign states and individual foreign citizens expressed in relation to Volga Germans’ position and famine among them only heightened the Soviet suspicion of its ethnically German citizens. Increased contact between Volga Germans and various humanitarian organizations in Germany and elsewhere made it easier for the paranoid Soviet government to accuse ethnic Germans in the USSR of espionage for foreign countries. All of these factors, directly or indirectly, affected the Kremlin’s later decision to resettle Germans away from their homes deep in the interior of the country in 1941–42.

Many deportations and their legal basis 39 Religious persecutions If dekulakization campaigns and ethnic cleansing were based on class or ethnicity, religious campaigns were based on confessional identity. They spanned many years and hence defy chronological periodization.36 While Soviet people in general were subjected to anti-religious propaganda campaigns, some were arrested and sent to the Gulag, mostly clergy and particularly strong believers. Nowadays, long martyrologies attest to deportation and numerous deaths of the servants of kirche. While some Mennonites were allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1920s,37 many Lutherans and Catholics were less fortunate in this respect.38 Clear-cut statistics on the exact numbers of Germans arrested as a part of religious prosecution are unavailable; many cases were identified by denomination rather than by ethnicity. However, some sample numbers are available. For example, in the Volga region in 1936, ninety-eight cases were heard in Soviet courts and 1,441 people were prosecuted on charges of religious practices and religiously framed anti-Soviet propaganda.39 Based on this and other local reports, it seems reasonable to estimate that several thousand ethnic Germans were prosecuted on religious charges. The main characteristic of these early waves of repressions was that they were an inseparable part of the overall politics of terror practices in the country. Most often, they were not aimed directly at ethnic Germans. Rather, ethnic Germans were just one of dozens of nationalities and thousands of people who became victims of these policies. Of course, Germans were a part of other preethnic deportations, such as repressions against intelligentsia and those tried on charges of espionage, and German victims of these repressions numbered approximately 2,000 people.40 But all of the above discussed types of repression fit the pattern of country-wide repressions presented in Table 2.1.

Ethnic cleansing of 1937–38 The “German operation,”41 which was an integral part of ethnic cleansing of the 1930s and especially 1937–38, began on 20 June 1937, with Stalin’s note that “all Germans [working] in our military, semi-military and chemical factories, electric plants and constructions, in all regions all to be arrested.”42 Five days later, immediately upon receiving Stalin’s note, Yezhov signed NKVD operational order No. 00439 “to immediately arrest all German citizens.”43 As a result of these orders, various historians estimate, somewhere between 750 and 820 German citizens were arrested and returned to Germany. However, at least 200 of them never found their way home and ended up somewhere in the Gulag system or shot.44 Unlike other ethnic operations, the German operation was first intended to affect only Germans citizens residing in the Soviet Union, for example, German members of Comintern in exile from Hitler’s Germany. It only later escalated into a full-blown ethnic operation which affected many Soviet citizens of German descent. Although the procedures of the German operation were similar

40

Many deportations and their legal basis

to the Polish operation and even based on the latter,45 the German operation of the Great Purges in its full-blown version that included Soviet citizens of German descent lacked any clear-cut decree authorizing its beginning. The first mention of the operation appeared only on February 1, 1938 after the first order No. 233, signed by Yezhov, was issued to extend the operation (already underway for at least three months46) to April 15, 1938.47 As was the case in many Soviet NKVD operations, the goal of the German operation was to cleanse the USSR of spies and saboteurs. Hence the operation first concentrated on the border regions and regions with “the most industrial concentration” and included various parts of Ukraine (Donbass, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa), Crimea, Black Sea region, West Siberian regions and Kazakhstan, and such strategically important places as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Several categories of Germans fell under suspicion and were arrested immediately, although the list of those to be prosecuted was expanded to include Germans almost at random. The six categories of Germans arrested first included former German nationals (former citizens of Germany who now possessed Soviet passports, most of whom were engineers and workers who immigrated to the Soviet Union in the late 1920s to early 1930s; there were also some German Communist exilees in the Soviet Union); Soviet Germans who were in contact with “foreign” Germans; Russian soldiers and officers who were POWs in Germany during World War I; Germans who at one time or another worked for German companies in Germany or Russia; wives of Germans already convicted; and Germans who were accused of espionage for the German government. The overall numbers of Germans arrested from June 1937 through September 15, 1938 are presented in Table 2.2. Peculiarly, in West Siberia the distinction between dekulakization and the German operation became blurred. The late coming of dekulakization to West Siberia in 1934–35 made it almost indistinguishable from the early efforts at Table 2.2 Victims of the “German Operation,” 1937–38 Arrested Convicted

Freed Othersa

56,787 55,005 of those arrested 41,898 shot or sentenced to 25 years of labor camps 10,247 10 years 1,913 5–8 years ,23 3 years ,924 other means (exile, deportation, etc.) ,40 2,420

Source: various documents from RGANI (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Noveishei istorii) published in Okhotin, Roginskii, “Iz istorii ‘nemestkoi operatsii’ NKVD 1937–1938 gg,” in Nakazannyi narod, pp. 68–75. Note a “Others” included 916 cases when additional information was needed; 678 were sent to military tribunal and courts, and 826 changed from the “fifth column” to criminal cases.

Many deportations and their legal basis 41 ethnic operations. Many facts suggest that this merge of dekulakization and ethnic cleansing was very effective in the German villages of Siberia and the Altai regions.48 Curiously, an analysis of the reports by “special troikas” which prosecuted Germans suggests that “German” was a very ambiguous term. Anyone arrested according to any decree related specifically to ethnic Germans was not necessarily German, and Germans were not necessarily arrested according to “German-specific” decrees. Thus, 490 Germans were condemned in the Polish Operation, eighty-one in the Harbin operation, seventy-six in the Latvian operation, fifty-one in the Estonian operation, and so on. On the other hand, in the German operation special troikas condemned 24,471 people, of whom only 66.67 percent were ethnic Germans (16,316 people). The rest consisted of 14.64 percent Russians (3,585); 7.24 percent Ukrainians (1,774); 2.04 percent Poles (500); 1.45 percent Jews (365); 0.94 percent Belorussians (232); 0.79 percent Hungarians (194); and others.49 Overall, the mass operations of 1937–38 resulted in 69,000–75,000 Germans being convicted and persecuted. Approximately 40,000 of these were prosecuted as a part of the “German operation,” over 20,000 were prosecuted in the “Kulak operation” tried by special troikas, and others were victims of special resolutions and decisions reached by local courts and NKVD organs.50 These numbers, in combination with various statistics offered above, suggest that prior to 1941, at least 100,000 ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were arrested, forcefully removed from their places of residence and sent or deported to various Siberian or Central Asian parts of the country, although the number may have been much higher.

Wartime deportations “The Crimean evacuation” 51 On 22 June 1941, at the very onset of the war, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to evacuate every person from Crimea who might be considered “socially dangerous.” Hence, in the wake of German invasion, many Germans from Crimea were not deported but rather evacuated from their home towns.52 The Crimea Germans were the first wartime deportees who would be followed by many other Germans who subsequently ended up in special settlements. Although the Crimean evacuation decree stipulated that men and women over sixty years of age should remain in their homes, subsequent reports demonstrated that when it came to Germans, the entire German population of Crimea was deported. Whereas the 1939 Soviet Census listed 51,299 Germans residing in Crimea,53 one document reported that at least 52,000 Germans were evacuated,54 and some documents even stated that as many as 60,000 Germans were subjected to evacuation.55 The majority of those evacuated were originally sent to the Ordzhonikidze district of Stavropol’ region in southern Russia not far from Crimea. However, already en route to this location, over 3,000 Germans

42

Many deportations and their legal basis

were separated from their echelons and their families, and were dispatched to the nearby Rostov region and subsequently sent to Kazakhstan immediately.56 It is not surprising that some evacuees were lost on the way, since even NKVD officials were shocked by the lack of organization during the evacuation. “The process of evacuation is not thought out,” reported one official. “There was a lot of unnecessary rushing. Evacuees, as a rule, were not told where they were going, how long they are going to be en route, how much food to take with them.” As a result, many evacuees exhausted their food supplies almost immediately, after one to three days, and were starving by the third day.57 Yet at this moment, there was no system in place to supply food to the evacuees. These evacuated German families, however, found little peace in the place to which they were evacuated. Shortly after their removal from their homes in Crimea, they were further deported to Kazakhstan in accordance with the decree of October 1941 on the resettlement of Germans from Krasnodar and Ordzhonikidze regions.58 However, these families were often sent to settlements other than the ones in which the earlier lost Germans from Rostov region were settled. Hence many families remained disunited. While officially everyone evacuated from Crimea was registered separately from other settlers, the Germans from Crimea were often “mixed up” with Germans from Ordzhonikidze district and surrounding areas.59 The deportation of Volga Germans The deportation of Volga Germans in August 1941 is the best studied aspect of all German deportations. Many excellent studies of this deportation provided statistics and published official documents on this single largest wave of deportation, which inevitably overshadowed other deportations.60 Over 400,000 Germans were uprooted during the deportation of the Volga Germans and sent to Kazakhstan and Siberia. The order for the largest dislocation of ethnic Germans, issued on August 26, 1941, called for “the resettlement of all Germans from the Republic of the Volga Germans and from Saratov and Stalingrad regions numbering overall 479,841 individuals . . . without exception, both townsmen and the rural population.”61 While various decrees ordered the resettlement of all ethnic Germans and ethnic German families, deportation was complicated in the cases of intermarriage. Writing about the years immediately preceding the deportation, Richard H. Walth says that “the data in the [Volga] village reports show that mixed marriages still were the exception and that assimilation did not occur . . .. Settlers and indigenous people lived side by side but not with each other – and that’s the way both sides generally wanted it.”62 Nevertheless, cases of intermarriage were common enough to result in the mentioning of intermarriages in official decrees and documents and were often mentioned in the testimonies of witnesses. The original law issued for the removal of ethnic Germans stated that all families in which the head of the household (husband) was German were to be subject to removal, all family members inclusive.63 This led to numerous

Many deportations and their legal basis 43 requests on the part of non-German women to “deal with this situation” and “to free them from the settlements and the stigma of being a damned German.”64 Moreover, it led to repeated requests by German men to change their nationality on the basis of marriage to a Russian wife (which was occasionally granted).65 However, these requests had no immediate results on a massive scale as there were no official resolutions or decrees authorizing this. Only on November 24, 1955 were women deported because of their relatives (i.e. Russian and other non-German wives of German husbands), released from special settlements along with ethnic German teachers, single invalids unable to take care of themselves, and war veterans.66 There were also numerous reports of Russian women who tried to quickly divorce their German husbands when the decree on the resettlement became known. However, NKVD officials made repeated attempts to track down such women and include them in the list of persons subject to deportation.67 On the contrary, German women with Russian husbands were not subjected to resettlement.68 Many Russian women married to Germans later complained that it was unfair to them to have to live in exile while “German women with Russian husbands remained in their places [of residence] and live [hiding behind] their husbands’ [backs] (za muzh’iami).”69 In practice as well as under law, German women who married Russian men were often allowed to remain in their places of residence and were encouraged to “blend in” as much as possible to avoid possible problems and deportation. These women never constituted a large portion of the Volga German population and often consisted of less than 1 percent of the overall female ethnic German population in any particular location. Yet even in the Volga region, one of the most tightly knit German communities in the Soviet Union, 1,094 women and children were allowed to stay as their husbands and fathers were Russians (compared to the overall number of 116,917 German women and 178,694 children deported from the Volga region).70 As was often the case with Soviet decrees, official regulations for this (and subsequent) deportations sounded much more humane (in relative terms) “on paper” than in reality. The decree required that the deportees be allowed enough time to collect their belongings and pass the rest of them to relatives for later sale and money transfer. The only exception was real estate (land and houses) which officially belonged to the state and hence was confiscated. Deportees were allowed to take 200 kilograms of belongings per person with them, but this amount was not to exceed one ton of possessions per family. Deportees were allowed to bring small livestock, clothing, shoes, bed linen, all types of kitchen utensils, food, small and portable tools for work around the house and in the field or garden, unlimited amounts of money and all valuables such as earrings, bracelets, and so on. Moreover, deportees were required to take along enough food to last them for a month. They were to be informed by the officials right away that sufficient provisions would not be available to them during the first month of deportation, although the best possible effort would be made to replenish their supplies and feed them along the way. The escorting officials were

44

Many deportations and their legal basis

expected to receive six rubles per person per day to feed the deportees en route to their new places of residence. Once loaded, each train was supposed to have at least seven or eight wagons for personal belongings and at least one wagon for medical assistance. At least one doctor and two nurses, equipped with all necessary medical instruments and supplies, were to be assigned to each train and were expected to offer medical services to deportees.71 Furthermore, the deportees were not intended to lose their large livestock and their housing permanently. All deportees were given promissory notes for their livestock and housing, and local collective farms (kolkhozy) in their new places of residence were supposed to compensate deported Germans for these promissory notes with corresponding quality and quantity of livestock and housing. If housing was unavailable, officials were supposed to compensate settlers with building materials or to provide them with government loans (ssuda).72 The same was true of the grain that exceeded the allotted norm, both for seed grain and grain for personal consumption.73 In reality, however, deportation proved to be very different than the decrees indicated. Most deportees remember that they were given only a few minutes to pack their things, and no more than two or three hours in the best case scenario. Moreover, the authorities never had enough transportation to carry deportees to the train stations and were generally unwilling to let Germans take away more than what they were able to carry in their own hands. Even Germans who were able to collect their belongings were often ordered to leave them at the station as the trains did not have enough room to take all personal possessions. Finally, many Germans did not have a ready supply of food to feed their families for a month. Hence meager food supplies ran out shortly after deportees left their homes. In a word, almost all accounts reveal that the most disturbing feature of deportation was the lack of organization, and this theme of disorganization would run through all the deportations. For example, deportation decrees ordered train guards to allow women to collect hot water twice a day.74 Yet for many women these stops were useless. Having to prepare for deportation in great haste, they had no time to grab many belongings and lacked containers to store water during the train ride. Most importantly, while the deportations affected both men and women, their routes were often different, or at least separate. In many cases, women were deported in different wagons from men, or while their fathers, husbands, and sons were away. Thus, a newspaper entitled Tevija, which was published in Latvia during the Nazi occupation, printed on 20 September 1941 a “secret” order from Stalin which read: After the house search, tell everyone who is scheduled to be deported that, according to the government’s decision, they are being sent to other regions of the USSR. Transport the entire family in one car to the train station, but at the station, heads of the families [read: men] must be loaded in separated train cars prepared especially for them . . .. Their families are deported to special settlements in the far away regions of the Union. [Family members]

Many deportations and their legal basis 45 must not know about the forthcoming separation from the head of the family.75 While historians now question the authenticity of this document, there is considerable evidence that such policy prevailed in the deportation of Latvian and Polish families and the deportation of ethnic Germans from the Volga region. While the massive disproportion of women to men among ethnic Germans could be explained by a number of other reasons which will be discussed later, official orders for family separations was one of the main factors which led to the phenomenon of “female echelons” going to Siberia and Central Asia. As was the case with the lack of organization, this phenomenon of “female echelons” would become commonplace in other deportations as well. Deportation from other locations in 1941–42 In the year following the deportation of Volga Germans, Germans were relocated from forty-three different provinces, all of which are spelled out in the legal orders listed in the Appendix.76 For example, on August 31, 1941, Germans from Leningrad region were sent to Kazakhstan.77 Only days later,78 another order stipulated the resettlement of ethnic Germans, numbering 302,288 individuals, from thirty-nine regions and provinces.79 Although the major wave of deportation ended with the decree of September 6, 1941, on the resettlement of Germans from the city of Moscow and the Moscow and Rostov regions, who overall numbered 31,000 people,80 deportations of Germans continued well into 1942 and to a more limited extent into 1944. As mentioned earlier, deportees were allowed to get food and water during their train ride according to the instructions, because the food that they hastily collected in the short time allotted to them prior to deportation was not always sufficient. But some of them forget containers for food and water and so could not collect any water along the way. Often there was a lack of sufficient supply of food. But the dismal food situation had another dimension. There were long waiting lines for food, which always consisted only of a liquid soup-like substance of little nutritional value, at various stops en route. As a result, many people were left behind after their echelons took off without warning. Those left behind were treated as deserters and were sent to other settlements apart from the rest of their families, or were even sentenced to the Gulag for desertion. Occasional documents reported numbers of those left behind. For example, one of the trains left as many as 334 people behind.81 While the numbers of missing persons were also affected by deaths and births, many echelons arrived with more than 100 people missing, some of whom were simply left behind.82 Needless to say, this phenomenon was another reason for a high incidence of separated families, which has never been fully accounted for in previous discussions of deportations. Despite the various hardships, the process of deportation looked better (at least on paper) for those who were being deported in the later months of 1941

46

Many deportations and their legal basis

throughout 1944 as compared to the earlier dekulakization deportations, the Volga German resettlement, and later repatriations in 1945 and thereafter. The Volga German resettlement was conducted too suddenly and on too large a scale to be properly organized, but in late 1941–44, the government had more time and experience to organize deportations more effectively. Instead of general talk about food provision during the deportation, the government now ordered that each deportee transported received a certain amount of food en route. The daily ration per person was 500 grams of bread; 70 grams of meat or fish; 60 grams of cereal; and 10 grams of fat. In the war-torn country, each echelon of resettlers was scheduled to receive all of these products in sufficient amounts in accordance with this daily ration.83 This degree was almost always satisfied at least partially and often fully. The only exception to this was the deportation of Germans from the Caucasus because they were transported by water, rendering it difficult if not impossible to supply the deportees en route. Deportation from the Caucasus Deportations were very disorganized when it came to Germans from various parts of the Caucasus. Statistics on the exact numbers of deportees of German origin from this region differ,84 but official NKVD documents list 31,171 Germans (8,214 families) as being deported from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia SSRs.85 However, there was something different about Germans from the Caucasus compared to other German deportations. All survivors remembered that prior to 1941, Germans in the Caucasus, prompted by Hitler’s coming to power and rumors about possible Soviet actions, were getting ready to leave their homes for a new place of residence. Of course, most of them hoped to escape to the border regions and to Germany, and few if any thought that they would be moved to Siberia and Central Asia. Nevertheless, starting in the late 1930s and continuing until their deportation at the end of 1941, Germans in the Caucasus attempted to convert their real estate and various possessions into mobile assets such as money and gold jewellery, leaving only essentials to live on. Moreover, some Germans were practically already packed as they were getting ready to leave when the NKVD came for them. As a result, they were more or less “prepared” for relocation, even if it took them in a different direction than they had anticipated. Nevertheless, this unusual degree of preparedness did not at all facilitate the removal of Germans from the Caucasus. The NKVD thought that these people carried too much luggage and did not allow Germans from the Caucasus to take much of anything, citing lack of space as the reason. Hence, the deportation of Germans from the Caucasus was no less tragic than the deportation of other Germanic groups from other parts of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, unlike the Volga Germans, Germans from the Caucasus were deported in several waves and had to undergo a voyage across the Caspian Sea, which made the deportation process even more miserable for them than for any other Germans in the Soviet Union.86 Germans from the Caucasus remember that they were put on

Many deportations and their legal basis 47 boats to sail across the Caspian Sea to their new places of residence and told that such a trip should not last more than a few days. However, many ships were dragged back and forth for months, and the result was mass starvation and numerous deaths, especially of young children, the ill, and the elderly. The officials in charge lacked clear instructions as to where to go with these ships and were not authorized to land anywhere. The government had other things to worry about, and wartime chaos resulting in lack of organization and lack of means was one of the key explanations for the abnormal suffering of Germans from the Caucasus during the deportations. Labor mobilization (trudarmee) and the second wave of deportations The form of labor obligation, which has become known in recent historiography as “trudarmee,” in its correct transliteration should appear as “trudovaia armiia.” The term itself made its appearance during the Russian Civil War and really meant existing “revolutionary armies of labor.”87 During World War II, however, the term “trudarmee” was not mentioned in any official documents, which instead referred to “labor obligations,” “labor regulations,” or “labor reserves.” It was the people themselves, and mostly Soviet Germans for that matter, who used this term to describe their obligatory labor conscription, in contrast to other civilians who worked for the war effort and could choose their own workplace and move about freely. Only in the late 1980s did historians begin to mention that many deported peoples served “in the so-called labor army.”88 Needless to say, many nationals served in trudarmee during the war years. But the Germans of the Soviet Union were the only ethnic group to be subjected to labor mobilization almost in its entirety.89 An official decree, issued on January 10, 1942, ordered labor mobilization of all German men aged between seventeen and fifty. Roughly half of them were to be sent to timber felling and cutting and half to building railroads.90 Shortly thereafter, on October 7, 1942, the Ministry of Defense under Stalin’s signature issued a decree on additional mobilization of all “German men aged 15–16 and 51–55 inclusive,” along with “all German women ages sixteen to forty-five inclusive. The mobilization requirement is to be lifted for German women [who are] pregnant and have children under three years of age.”91 Also spared were “Russian women, whose husbands and children are Germans.”92 The trudarmees, or labor armies, did not in and of themselves imply deportation. But in fact, the labor mobilization of special settlers led to a massive second wave of deportations of Germans from Siberia to the Far North in 1942 and shortly thereafter. Thus, thousands of Germans were deported from the Novosibirsk and Omsk regions to the Khanty-Mansiysk and Amalo-Nenetsky regions.93 This second wave of deportations affected thousands, if not hundred thousands, of Germans and hence merits further separate discussion in Chapter 3. It needs to be only added here that ethnic Germans residing in the locations of deportations (i.e. Central Asia and Siberia) were not initially subjected to resettlement. However, the labor mobilization decree was applicable to all ethnic Germans

48 Many deportations and their legal basis including those who did not reside in special settlements at the time. As a result, conscription in the trudarmee resulted in the de facto deportation of the ethnic Germans of Central Asia and Siberia. Demobilized Germans The exact number of Germans who served in the Red Army on June 22, 1941 is still being disputed. Some studies estimate that there were 64,600 Germans serving in the Red Army,94 while other works cite figures only half of this number. Documents report that 33,516 men of German ethnicity were demobilized from the Red Army, deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan, and later assigned to the trudarmees. Of these former soldiers, 27,724 were privates; 4,292 were sergeants; and 1,609 were Red Army officers.95 According to NKVD Order No. 002303 of October 22, 1942, German women who were married to men serving in the Red Army were allowed to be freed from deportation and receive their passports as did other qualified citizens of the Soviet Union.96 But this decree was nothing more than a tragic irony for German men who served in the Red Army. First, many of them were demobilized and were no longer considered to be Red Army soldiers. Second, this decree was de facto applicable only to German women who were married to Russians in the Red Army. Nevertheless, many ethnic Germans became war invalids. In 1955, there were 15,160 German invalids with their families in special settlements who had become disabled during their service in the Red Army during the early years of World War II. In addition, there were 14,960 Germans who belonged to this category but who were also awarded various medals and honors for their military service. With the addition of 9,604 family members who were invalids and were related to ethnic Germans killed during service in 1941–45, the settlements registered 39,724 ethnic Germans who were crippled and/or unable to provide for themselves as a direct result of defending the Soviet Union in the ranks of the Red Army despite the relatively early date (October 1942) of the NKVD Order No. 002303.97

At war’s end Repatriations With the advance of the Red Army into Central and Western Europe, many Soviet citizens who ended up abroad during the war were forcefully repatriated and sent back to the Soviet Union.98 Among those were over 200,000 Germans,99 who had to be forced or tricked into going back, only to be deported to far-away regions of the Soviet Union as special settlers. Although the term “repatriation” usually refers to one’s return to the motherland, for ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union this term had a double, or rather different meaning. For ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union, or at least some of them who had resided in Nazi-occupied territories and were not deported earlier, this was their second repatriation. In the

Many deportations and their legal basis 49 earlier years of war, they were repatriated to their historic motherland Germany, while now they were forcefully sent back to the country of their citizenship, their patria, prior to 1939. Among these Germans were some, like the Germans who previously lived in the Ukraine and the Baltic States, who had been deported to Germany by the Nazis as forced laborers during the war. Others, who might have been collaborators or simply Germans returning to their long-since lost motherland, fled with the German occupiers to the Third Reich after the Nazis were expelled from the USSR, and some of them even received German citizenship in Germany. Still others, German political refugees from Hitler in the Soviet Union and largely fervent communists, were transferred to Germany before World War II under the terms of the 1939 Nazi–Soviet Pact.100 Despite the large number of repatriated Germans in special settlements (see Appendix for more details), very few scholars have engaged in more than a superficial discussion of repatriated Germans in their works on national deportations.101 The first Soviet law ordering the repatriation of its citizens, entitled “about the organization of reception [priem] of Soviet citizens returning to the motherland, [who were] forcefully driven by Germans from their homes, and also those [who] ended up for various reasons behind the borders of the USSR and Poland,” was signed in by the Soviet government on August 24, 1944.102 Two days later a similar decree was issued concerning Soviet citizens in France and Italy.103 These legal documents, however, assumed significance only after the Commission for Repatriation began its work on October 23, 1944. This Commission sought the “voluntary return of Soviet citizens” and helped to facilitate their “disorganized and individual return” to the Soviet Union.104 However, Moscow received an avalanche of reports saying that Soviet citizens abroad feared repatriation and refused to go, and that “DPs [displaced persons] have threatened mass suicide and in certain cases have committed suicide. When they refuse to return, they can only be put into transport for the repatriation by physical force.”105 The opposition to returning “home” was shared by many Soviet Germans abroad, and especially by women. There were several reasons as to why this was the case. First, it became instantly known that many Germans (and others) had been tricked into going back to the Soviet Union. They were promised reunions with their families, and since the location of many German men was unknown to their families, women had no reason to suspect that they were tricked into going back. But instead of the promised reunions, repatriated Germans were sent to labor camps or special settlements where they remained for the next twenty to twenty-five years.106 Second, part of the reason why so many people sought to avoid repatriation was the abuses they had heard about or experienced in repatriation camps in the first months of this process. Many accounts of the Soviet “liberation” of Eastern Europe included incidents of Soviet soldiers raping local and displaced women. “The Soviet occupation of eastern Europe,” says Moeller in War Stories, “commenced, literally and symbolically, with the forceful occupation of German women’s bodies. Accounts reported victims from nine to ninety, prepubescent girls and pregnant women.”107 Although the women in such reports were

50

Many deportations and their legal basis

primarily of foreign citizenship (like Germans in Germany proper), the accounts of ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union indicate a widespread fear of rape and rumors about rape among them. Some of them said that the most unfortunate were the Poles, who night after night were abducted and raped by Soviet soldiers. Yet many of these accounts testified that the position of “Soviet Germans” seemed to be more favorable than that of Reichsdeutsche or women of some other nationalities – Soviet soldiers “prowled around the camp but did not dare to do anything violent. They had been warned not to touch any of us because we were considered ‘Soviet citizens’.”108 Although this sense of security was often justified, hardships of previous years under the Soviet regime; rumors and stories of Soviet Germans’ deportations, exile, and even imprisonment; insufficient food provision and inadequate housing; and finally various restrictions and humiliations in the camps, were enough to scare Soviet Germans away from wanting to return to the Soviet Union or spend any time in these repatriation camps. It did not take Soviet officials long to realize that various rumors and facts about abuses committed against repatriated citizens prevented many from returning or wanting to return home to the Soviet territories. On November 22, 1944, Fillip Golikov, head of the Soviet Commission for Repatriation, issued a statement to TASS that the Soviet Union looked favorably on all returnees, even those whose behavior under occupation was questionable from a patriotic point of view.109 The infrastructure of the repatriation commission grew in the next few months,110 and the repatriation law was upheld by the Yalta Conference. On February 10 and 11, 1945, it was decided that all countries represented there would support total and unconditional repatriation of their citizens regardless of the individual desire of any citizen.111 The next crucial question was to determine who exactly qualified as a “Soviet citizen.” Then and there it was decided that Soviet citizenship should be established on two basic criteria: residence on any Soviet territory prior to September 3, 1939, and/or military capture after February 11, 1945.112 Although appearing simple, these criteria created serious problems from the Soviet point of view. Thus, US and British officials stated that they did not recognize Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, western Ukraine, and western Belorussia as Soviet territory prior to the Yalta agreement. Hence repatriation of people formerly residing in these territories was impossible. As many historians acknowledge, a legal agreement on the repatriation of people from these areas was never reached,113 although after repeated efforts on the part of Stalin and especially Molotov, repatriation did take place on a quasi-legal bases. Moreover, various documents acknowledge, for example, that there were many “Russians” in different locations across Europe who were PWX (former prisoners of war) and DPs (displaced persons), not distinguishing between various nationalities and groups of Soviet citizens.114 Yet another report was more specific on this subject and revealed the exact problem which authorities and civilians alike had to face with this agreement. This report stated that:

Many deportations and their legal basis 51 Under the terms of the Yalta Agreement all DPs, who have been identified as Soviet Citizens to the satisfaction of the Military Authorities, are to be repatriated regardless of their personal wishes. This ruling has led to two difficulties: (a) The method of ‘identifying’ Soviet nationality. (b) The enforcement of compulsory repatriation. When repatriation did take place, it affected mostly women who were sent “home” (i.e. to special settlements) separately from their men. Ethnic German women, who were repatriated despite their best efforts to remain abroad, underwent a journey exactly like their fellow German women in 1941. The term “female echelons” was equally applicable to the postwar echelons as it was to the deportees of the war years. Lack of organization once again made their journeys intolerable, and often a large number of children and elderly and sick women died en route. Once again, the massive human loss to starvation and disease was the result of poor preparation for deportation, as well as a result of deplorable existing living conditions in a war-ravaged land engulfed in famine and privation. While tens of thousands of ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union were repatriated shortly after entering the DPs camps, some had to wait for years while living in the camps. According to a report dated December 31, 1947, special camps in Germany under Soviet control contained as many as 33,641 Soviet Germans awaiting repatriation.115 During the months immediately proceeding August 1, 1947, 19,307 repatriates were sent to the Soviet Union.116 For these people, the living conditions in Soviet camps in Germany were a signal of what might happen to them upon repatriation. On the one hand, while awaiting repatriation, Soviet citizens were not required to work,117 except for a few who worked to improve their living conditions and provide basic services such as shoe and clothing repair and haircuts.118 Moreover, these displaced persons were supposed to receive adequate housing and sufficient food.119 On the other hand, by the standards of the time, 550 grams of dark bread, 10 grams of flour, 78 grams of porridge, 78 grams of fish or meat, 9 grams of sugar, and 12 grams of fat per day were deemed sufficient.120 These provisions were based on a 1,700 calorie/day diet. Although it was acknowledged that sick people needed at least 2,800 calories a day to get well, they still continued to receive 1,700 calories a day at the most.121 Needless to say, such meager provisions were not always available and many repatriated “Soviet” Germans ended up in special settlements suffering from severe dystrophy. Similarly, “adequate housing” in reality was rarely more than 1.1 square meters per person. Moreover, any sort of communication on the part of returnees with the “outside” world was strictly prohibited. Those who attempted to smuggle out letters to relatives received harsh punishments.122 Historian V.N. Zemskov noted in his work that such restrictions may have been necessary to prevent the spread of disease which was blossoming in the camps.123 While it was true that many

52

Many deportations and their legal basis

repatriates suffered from tuberculosis, skin diseases, venereal diseases like syphilis, and a wide range of other sicknesses,124 it is unlikely that health concerns were a driving motive behind the prohibition on contact with the outside world (including sending letters). Volksdeutsche and collaborators The majority of Volksdeutsche125 were deported from the Caucasus following the defeat of the Nazi Army. While their numbers were small (see Appendix), they nevertheless always attracted special attention from the Soviet authorities and inspired an avalanche of official resolutions and decrees regulating their legal rights and position.126 The Soviet government had no particular difficulty identifying Volksdeutsche, especially since many Germans with Russian surnames (predominantly women) became easier to identify following rather than prior to occupation. During occupation, the Nazi treatment of the Volksdeutsche was outlined in “Aufgaben und Ziele der Militär-Verwaltung. III. Politische Aufgaben Volksdeutsche.” This document assured that the Volksdeutsche would receive special treatment and it distinguished their position clearly from the position of other Soviet peoples under German occupation. But whereas in the beginning many Volksdeutsche expected to receive new documents, the German government eventually decided to return previously confiscated Soviet passports to the Volksdeutsche with an appropriate mark confirming their origins as Volksdeutsche. As a result, many women with Russian surnames, who could have previously escaped postwar identification as Volksdeutsche, lost their chance to do so.127 “Peaceful” deportations The end of World War II and the subsequent end of repatriations did not signal the end of deportations for ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union. For Germans in the Kaliningrad region, deportations continued well into the 1950s. As is the case with many other deportations, this fact was barely reflected in studies of Germans in the Soviet Union and a very limited number of scholarly works are devoted to these deportations.128 The major wave of “peaceful” deportations, however, affected Germans who had previously resided in the Baltic States. The majority of Baltic States Germans ended up in Germany as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939. Thus, for example, in the years 1939–41, 21,400 Germans from Estonia went to Germany as a part of the agreement. Some of them later ended up among the postwar repatriates, as discussed above. However, after World War II there were still Germans in the Baltic States who had never left their homes and who remained there throughout the war years. The Soviet government decided to deal with these people separately. An order, issued on February 7 and enforced on August 15, 1945, stipulated the deportation of all Germans residing in the territory of Estonia to Komi ASSR. Based on the memoirs of these deportees, the removal process was not much

Many deportations and their legal basis 53 different from that experienced by the Volga Germans, although it occurred on a much smaller scale. Deportees were given only a short time (usually from one to four hours) to pack their possessions, and were denied the right to inform their relatives about their departure. Immediate family members (spouses and children) who were not of German origin were given the right to choose whether to stay in Estonia or to depart with their German spouses and parents for Komi ASSR. Those who decided to go were treated as if they were Germans.129 However, a recently discovered document demonstrates that the Soviet government had intended to rely on much harsher methods in deporting ethnic Germans from the Baltic States. But these regulations were not implemented because these orders arrived a few days after the actual deportation took place. This harsh resolution included, among other things, confiscation of all personal belongings from Germans and subsequent distribution to poor families; the forceful deportation of all family members regardless of their ethnic origins; the removal of all family members even if one of them served or was serving in Table 2.3 National composition of the Baltic Statesa 1935, numbers (in thousands)

1935, percent

1959, numbers (in thousands)

1959, percent

Lithuanians Jews Germans Others

2,000 ,175 ,100 ,225

Lithuania 80 7 4 9

2,151 ,25 , — ,535

79.3 0.9 — 19.8

Latvians Russians Germans Others

1,463 ,234 ,62 ,192

Latvia 75.5 12 3.2 9.3

1,298 ,556 ,— ,239

62 26.6 — 11.4

Estonia 88.1 8.2 1.5 2.2

893 240 — 64

74.6 20.1 — 5.3

—

—

Estonians Russians Germans Others Total number of Germans

992.5 92.5 16.5 25 178.5 (out of 5,577.5ppl)

3.2 (average % for BS)

Source: These numbers are calculated based on Erich Holdhagen, Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union, New York: Praeger, 1968, pp. 200–201. Note a The table reflects the largest and second largest groups represented in each republic and only then ethnic Germans and others (including: Russians, Belorussians, Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Swedes, Finns, and occasional others).

54

Many deportations and their legal basis

the Red Army; and finally forceful deportation regardless of physical condition, even if people were ill and unable to move on their own.130 The immediate result of the poor preparation for the various waves of German deportation, as well as of the early living conditions in exile which will be discussed in subsequent chapters, was the massive loss of human lives to starvation and disease. The overall number of deaths during various deportations and immediately thereafter was rarely reported, especially when it came to the casualties of deportation, and this number tended to vary significantly when mentioned. However, a sample document reveals the extent of such losses. In the first half of 1942, 5,181 out of 43,856 settlers in Bogoslovsk raion died, reaching a death rate of 11.81 percent in six months. This percentage increased to as much as 17.6 percent in some smaller localities.131 These numbers appear to be roughly the same for all settlements, varying from 7 to 17 percent death rates in this period. Furthermore, we can calculate the approximate loss of life during the first years after deportation. Statistics on Germans living in special settlements are at times contradictory, especially for the later years. However, all statistics show that by 1948, out of approximately 1.2 million Germans deported to Siberia and Central Asia, only roughly 928,000 remained in special settlements, suggesting a 20 percent loss.132 This statistical change is not explained in official documents, although these documents suggest that the decline in the number of deportees was mainly caused by high mortality rates among settlers. Documents suggest that over the course of the first five to seven years after deportation, almost one-fifth of all ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union died, although many historians estimate the death rate at about 10 percent or even lower.133 Personal accounts confirm the high death ratios. All such accounts report numerous deaths, especially of children and elderly women, and sometimes the deaths of entire families. One such account mentions the deportation of a young woman with seven children, six of whom died within a matter of months. When the last child died shortly thereafter the mother went insane, sitting on the burial place of her six children with the dead body of the seventh in her hands until her own death several days later.134 This human loss was accompanied by another tragedy. Many German deportees remembered the trauma caused by the failure to bury to dead en route to the deportees’ new places of settlement. Although deportees were allowed to bury their dead during short stops along the way in open fields or steppe, with neither tools nor time to execute burials, many dead bodies were simply thrown out of wagons or overboard, depending on the means of transportation. The phrase “gone without a trace,” which is the title of a collection of memoirs about the deportation, refers to those who died along the way but were neither buried nor provided with any identification mark by which one could remember their location later. As is often the case in times of extreme hardship, the first to go were the elderly, the ill, and children. Among personal testimonies of deportations, not a single account fails to mention the death of a child and a grandparent in the family.

Many deportations and their legal basis 55 Besides a dramatic decline in the overall ethnic German population of the Soviet Union accompanied by severe psychological trauma, ethnic Germans had to face abnormal gender imbalances among the deportees. Gender imbalance is one of the problems that will resurface for ethnic Germans over and over again. To be fair, it should be noted that even prior to the deportations, men were often in short supply among ethnic Germans (as well as among many other nationalities of the Soviet Union). In early 1941, in the Volga German Republic, the number of men was 1.4 times fewer than the number of women.135 In other areas the difference was a ratio of 1 man to every 2.5 women, reaching an astonishing 1 to 5.9 ratio in some rural areas.136 Karl Stumpp attributed these differences to earlier persecutions and referred to the above-mentioned decree of 1941: Those men who were banished in the years 1937–38 were never again allowed to write to their wives, who had to live or must still live with uncertainty as to whether their husbands are alive or have succumbed to physical and psychological stresses. In the meanwhile, a secret order, relative to the banishment of the Volga-Germans (1941), has become public, according to which the men were to be separated from their families and banished into distant areas.137 Besides separation and exile, higher death rates among men during famine than among women; repressions of earlier years (e.g. the dekulakization campaigns and various political repressions); earlier casualties of World War I; and overall lower life expectancy for men than for women were just some of the factors which could explain this gender imbalance among German deportees. Of course, there was some gender imbalance in the overall Soviet Union during the war and as a direct result of the war. Thus, as of January 1, 1941, only 4.4 able-bodied males worked in the Soviet agricultural workforce as compared to 17.5 million able-bodied females, resulting in a ratio of one male to four females. This proportion was somewhat better in the industrial sector, where women nevertheless constituted an average of 55 percent of the workforce.138 If some of these missing men returned home after the war, many millions of them did not. But even though many historians previously relied on an assumption that there existed a demographic and gender imbalance in the entire war-torn Soviet Union due to predominantly male conscription into the Red Army and heavy male casualties in World War II,139 historians now argue that the gender imbalance was not as great as had been previously estimated.140 It is entirely correct to say, they acknowledge, that the losses of the Red Army were predominantly male. Only 490,000 to 530,000 women fought actively during the war years as compared to roughly twenty-five million men.141 Although many of these women died in action, their proportion was still relatively small to the male casualties of the Red Army, estimated at 8.5 million dead. However, the civilian casualties, estimated at roughly seventeen million, turned out to be predominantly female (often simply because there were no males left) and outstripped male casualties by at least 40 percent.142 Hence, based on extensive

56

Many deportations and their legal basis

calculations of various data for overall wartime casualties, immediately following World War II after the mass demobilization of the Red Army, the overall Soviet disproportion of males to females was roughly eighty to eighty-eight males per every 100 females of marriageable age (18–45).143 Alhough this gender imbalance in the war-torn and postwar Soviet Union was significant, the gender imbalance was much more pronounced among the deportees. As a result of the deportation, in 1947 the special settlements reported a population of 905,184 ethnic Germans, of whom 199,522 were men, 351,008 were women, and 354,654 were children.144 The analysis of any individual settlement demonstrates that this 1:2 male–female ratio was almost universal (e.g., the Kostroma settlement counted 1,656 men to 3,387 women, and 3,466 children).145 But even this ratio and these statistics were misleading and did not tell the full story, as many of these “men” were only children who reached the age of sixteen during and immediately after the deportation. For example, Alexander Schwartz notes that in Novosibirsk area in early 1940s, there were 6,039 men and 11,074 women of German ethnicity eligible for labor mobilization. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes obvious that of those 6,039 men, 4,133 were either fifteen to seventeen years old or over fifty-five years of age, and only 1,906 were men between eighteen and fifty-five and most of these were crippled and disabled.146 Later on, the lack of men among special settlers also became evident in the pattern of employment and labor mobilization. For example, Novosibirsk factories No. 564 and No. 65 were staffed exclusively by women, and only factory No. 69 and the “Sibstankostroi” and Gorstroitrest industries employed both men and women.147 This division was not the result of a conscious policy on the part of factory managers but rather of a short supply of male workers. Hence, besides the trauma of the loss of loved ones and resettlement, the availability of ethnic German adult men for ethnic German adult women was extremely limited, and the consequences of this situation, as we will see, echoed into the later “Soviet experience” of ethnic Germans.

3

Intentions and realities of early years, 1941–45

In shaping the life of Germans in the Soviet Union, deportations played a key role, as did the regime of special settlements where these Germans were placed to live in exile until 1956. Thus as it is crucial to see the deportation process, it is equally significant to illuminate the legal, economic, managerial, and social constraints of life in the special settlements. To begin with, there is a real need to address several questions. First, we need to see whether the Soviet government sought to exterminate the deported people or whether the massive human loss during deportation and immediately thereafter was a result of other circumstances.1 Second, we need to trace the legal status of the settlers, their private and public rights, and the changes that occurred in these rights throughout the existence of the special settlements. Finally, we need to illuminate the particular dimensions of settlers’ lives in exile, such as housing and living conditions, as well as access to education and jobs.

“Warm welcome” As we have previously discussed, the majority of the deportees were issued promissory notes to compensate them for livestock and housing that they left behind. During deportation and thereafter, however, many Germans experienced famine, lived in primitive dug-outs without windows, and worked eighteen hours a day. Many people died, and many children became orphans. Before examining life in exile, it is crucial to find an answer to whether this reality was the intention of the Soviet government. Looking at the central archival documents and reports of misery and mortality statistics among deportees, many historians concluded that the deportations were “genocidal massacres”2 and that the extermination of certain ethnic groups was the main aim of the Soviet government in deporting what Aleksandr Nekrich has called “the punished peoples.”3 Those who searched for somewhat more balanced explanations noted that Moscow cared little about the destiny of the deported peoples and attempted to exterminate these ethnic minorities as a potential threat to the Soviet war effort. However, there is no evidence in local archives of the former Soviet socialist republics to support the claim that deportations were a part of conscientious and

58

Intentions and realities of early years

planned genocide, a mere continuation of the politics of terror. Quite the contrary, there is abundant evidence to show that the Kremlin and local officials made considerable efforts to accommodate the deportees and make their life less miserable, often at the expense of the local population. What happened to the deportees en route and after deportation – massive deaths from disease and starvation, the separation of families – was not the result of plans but rather a tragic reality of wartime, which affected people of the Soviet Union unevenly but universally. After all, overall Soviet death rates during the war were far higher than normal peacetime levels for all strata of Soviet society, and malnutrition affected everyone in the Soviet Union of 1941–45, even if the degree of undernourishment varied from one group of people to another. Hence the deportation of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union was never meant to be genocidal, even if the death rates among the deportees were substantial due to poor or non-existent planning and the lack of adequate resources to support deported peoples en route or in the areas that received deportees. It is very probable that a similar argument can be advanced for other ethnic deportations, though there is a need to conduct a separate study that would address this argument as applicable to all wartime deportations. Needless to say, the reality of life in special settlements can only be understood against the backdrop of the immediate situation in the country as a whole. During the war, maintaining the mechanization of agricultural production became virtually impossible; all resources and especially machine building went into the war effort. In those rare instances when machinery was available, its use was sabotaged by the lack of fuel. Moreover, previous collectivization campaigns also eliminated any chance of substituting machinery with livestock in agriculture because most livestock was destroyed in these campaigns and was not yet sufficiently replaced. As a result, the harvests of the war years and immediately thereafter declined progressively from year to year. In 1945, the harvest of wheat constituted only 60 percent of the 1940 harvest,4 and this figure decreased dramatically in 1946 during the postwar famine.5 Besides lower harvest figures and the decrease in mechanization, the countryside suffered due to the state-imposed production quotas, which sought to support the war effort but drained the countryside of produce. Oftentimes, more than 90 percent of the harvest went to the state to support the war effort, and only 10 percent at best remained for local consumption. The war also took its toll on labor resources. Most able men left agricultural and industrial production to join the Red Army, and the collective farm labor force came to consist of children over ten years of age, women, and all physically able elderly men. But this workforce of women, children, aged, sick and crippled had to survive and work on less food than before. Taking the level of production in 1940 as 100 percent, during the war the overall production of grain plummeted to 50 percent of the 1940 level; oil to 37 percent; meat to 45.5 percent; sugar to 21.7 percent. A similar situation existed in light industry, which by the war’s end produced only 30 percent of the prewar output of shoes, 45.5 percent of fabrics, and 33 percent of soap.6 The poor harvest of 1946, which was mostly a result of severe drought and

Intentions and realities of early years 59 devastating Soviet land policies in the two main agricultural producing areas of Ukraine and North Caucasus, made the postwar situation in the war-torn economy of the Soviet Union even more difficult. In many collective farms (kolkhozy) of the country, workers did not receive any payment or were only paid nominally in 1946. The average kolkhoz worker received less bread in 1946 than in 1943, the most difficult year of the war. Compared to 1940, the consumption of bread in 1946 had declined by 40 percent; potatoes by 75 percent (to 25 percent), while the cash income of collective farmers declined to onethird of the 1940 level. According to the statistics collected by V. Zima, close to two million people died in the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1948 as a direct result of starvation and various diseases associated with malnutrition (e.g. typhoid fever). Millions more became crippled or invalids after consuming in desperation inedible products as a food substitute. The number of people living in extreme poverty in the USSR grew by four to eight times.7 The needs of wartime economy and ever-declining agricultural and industrial output figures turned well-meaning official regulations to help deportees into pitifully insufficient attempts to mitigate the circumstances of harsh reality. But when it came to regulating the life of newly deported peoples during and immediately after the war, there was nothing in official efforts to suggest that the difficulties the deportees faced during and after resettlement were the deliberate results of Soviet policies. Central authorities made sure to issue repeated orders to aid the resettlers. References to the earlier, pre-war deportations to Central Asia that are scattered through the documents indirectly confirm that prior to the war, deportees were much better off and suffered fewer human casualties than the wartime deportees. Peoples deported prior to 1941 adapted much more easily to their new places of residence. Deaths rates among Koreans, Persians, Kurds, and other settlers deported in the 1930s never reached the dramatic proportions of the wartime deportees. By the onset of the war, earlier deportees were employed by local state (sovkhozy) and collective (kolkhozy) farms and various branches of industry, and possessed sufficient housing and food supplies.8 An analysis of the situation in three Central Asian republics – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan – offers sufficient examples to show how the relocation of wartime deportees was planned. Although the documents do not always address the problem of German deportees directly but rather the problems of deportees in general, the situation of the Germans was oftentimes quite similar to the others. Indeed, the documents often note that it is precisely the lack of differentiation among various ethnic groups of recently deported people which explains the lack of direct references to Germans. During the war Kazakhstan housed over 500,000 evacuees from the western parts of the USSR so the massive influx of special settlers was a major test and challenge to the economy of this Soviet republic. Over 700,000 settlers9 and half a million evacuees meant to the KazSSR officials, at the very least, that 1.2 million people urgently needed some place to live. Overall, from the onset of ethnic deportations in 1941 to January 1, 1947, local officials built 23,151 houses for special settlers, renovated 15,915 houses, purchased and renovated

60 Intentions and realities of early years 30,141 houses, and obtained by other means 28,938 houses. These new and renovated buildings were able to accommodate in relatively decent conditions 97,145 families.10 If we assume, as was done during collectivization and earlier deportations, that each deportee family comprised five persons on average, the number of housed families was roughly equal to 425,000 individual deportees. Officials clearly recognized that these houses did not solve the housing problem among the deportees. When already-existing houses were not available, officials attempted to offer some basic building materials to the settlers to facilitate their resettlement. Many regulations on the resettlement of deportees included specific orders for the distribution of goods or the issuance of loans of various types. For the resettlement of 11,000 Karachi and Balkar families in Iuzhno-Kazakhskii region, 200 wagons of timber, ten tons of nails and 10,000 square meters of window glass in the last quarter of 1943, and 400 wagons of timber, fifteen tons of nails and the same amount of glass in the first quarter of 1944 were allocated to provide for these families’ housing needs. When this order was not fully implemented due to the lack of resources, a new order, dating from January 16, 1944, assured a better realization of the plan – the settler families received these supplies in full and were able to construct their own homes.11 To facilitate the resettlement of Karachai and Balkar families,12 5,100 tons of flour, 2,550 tons of cereals, and 550 tons of gasoline were ordered to be distributed, and this order was fully executed.13 For the 27,833 settlers from Georgia, on orders from the Center, local authorities distributed in exchange for promissory notes 970 tons of potatoes and 229.8 tons of corn14 in November 1945 and January 1946.15 In addition, throughout 1944, all settlers (regardless of nationality) were supposed to receive two million meters of fabric (four meters per person) plus 1.2 million meters of cotton fabric for personal needs to help them cloth themselves. Days later orders were issued to also distribute 2,134 pieces of sheepskin and 8.5 tons of raw wool for the same needs. Although the settlers received only 390,000 of the two million meters of fabric promised them, the rest of the order was completed in full.16 Faced with an insufficient supply of fabric to clothe all settlers, officials issued an appeal for voluntary donations of warm clothing by locals for settlers. In January 1944, in Akmolinskii district alone, which housed 26,151 settlers, local residents donated over 4,000 pieces of warm clothing, ranging from coats to gloves.17 Even as late as 1947, 120,000 rubles were allotted to the settlers from the latest wave of deportation (numbering 1,935 people) to purchase grain.18 On another occasion, a local Kazakistani official reported that ethnic Germans who were repatriated in late fall 1945 did not have any resources to feed themselves and had not worked long enough or at all in any of the kolkhoz to receive payments according to their work measured in labor days (trudoden’). So these repatriated special settlers, and especially the 70,000 who were chronically malnourished, needed special help to survive the winter. Officials requested permission to distribute among these people flour to bake bread based on a ration of six kilos of flour per person per month19 for at least six months.20 Requests of this nature were continuous and abundant.21

Intentions and realities of early years 61 To settle the promissory notes that the deportees were given at the time of their relocation, in 1944 alone the Iuazhno-Kazakhskii region of Kazakhstan which had to provide for 57,410 deportees turned over to them 3,135 horses; 500 bulls; 20,101 heads of “productive” cattle (e.g. cows, sheep); and supplemented this livestock with 3,000 pieces of leather and 20,000 pieces of sheepskins.22 More orders required that all promissory cards issued in 1941 be compensated no later than 1942.23 Kyrgyzstan officials, like the officials in Kazakhstan, also made various attempts to settle the question of promissory notes. Table 3.1 clearly demonstrates this point. But it is not only this table that shows how few surplus resources local kolkhozy possessed that could be shared with the settlers. On March 15, 1944, a local official reported that in his kolkhoz twelve indigenous families suffered from dystrophy and another seventy local families possessed no cattle or food and were already undernourished and on the verge of severe dystrophy. All of these families were local residents and had relatives serving in the Red Army, a fact that usually ensured superior provision for the families. In a nearby kolkhoz, 1,298 local families had no clothing or food, and 154 people were bloated from hunger; several died of starvation. Local officials were never able to satisfy the need for basic food supplies for this indigenous population as they had no resources to help them.24 Officials also reported on a daily basis the death of local people mobilized to work for the war effort. For example, on February 23, 1944, three people – Imanbai Tokhmobaev, Muhamed Urazaliev and Uysuz Menzikaev – were reported dead due to illnesses acquired as a direct result of their working conditions.25 Table 3.1 Distribution of livestock to settlers in Kyrgyzstan, 1944 Districts

Ogi Karasu Aravan Uzgen Mirza-Aki Kurshabskii Naukatskii Molotovo Frunzenskii Kzyl-kiia Iangi-Naukatskii Liailakskii Suliukta Overall:

Moscow plan Large cattle

Small livestock

,180 , 50 ,333 ,203 ,200 ,215 , 50 ,175 ,155 ,160 ,175 ,132 ,30 2,058

■

Already distributed

■

Left in stock

Large cattle

Small livestock

Large cattle

1,550 4,320 1,120 3,500 2,400 2,850 1,350 1,900 2,100 2,040 1,800 1,730 0,400

– – – – 8 – 9 10 – – 20 – –

– – – 0,148 0,181 1,737 0,375 0,500 – – 0,289 0,164 –

– 137 20 – 90 30 5 – – – 60

0,90 0, 0 0, – 0,800 0,– 0,70 0,30 0,100 0, 50 0,– 0,– 0,– 0,150

27,060

47

3,394

347

1,290

5 0

Source: TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 198, l. 299, dated 1 August 1944.

Small livestock

62

Intentions and realities of early years

After a few complaints reached local officials that some of these hardstrapped kolkhozy did not want to share their meager supplies with settlers but rather preferred to use them for their own local people,26 the Soviet of People’s Commissars (SNK) of Kyrgyzstan on June 3, 1944 ordered the establishment of a special Resettlement Commission in order to expedite, improve, and facilitate the process of adapting special settlers to their new place of residence.27 Some kolkhozy, on the other hand, were so short of workers that they were willing to promise (if not to deliver) housing, food supplies, and seed loans to the settlers sent to their collective farms to work.28 Promises aside, local officials in Kyrgyzstan made various attempts to deal with settlers, just as they did in Kazakhstan. In the Issyk-Kul’ region of Kyrgyzstan, local officials had to take care of 701 settler families as of May 13, 1944. Of those families, 687 (or 98 percent) had received land plots for gardening and 437 of them (or 62.3 percent) had already planted some vegetables by that time. All 701 settler families here had received food for consumption and seeds for planting,29 and it was later reported that they were all provided with sufficient housing.30 In the Djalal-Abadsk region, out of 5,517 families, 1,579 (28.6 percent) were given permanent housing, 3,848 families (69.7 percent) received land plots for gardening, all received some sort of food aid, and 2,993 (54.2 percent) received seed loans for sowing.31 In another district, for 8,169 families of special settlers, 1,578 houses were built and renovated by August 1944. By then, the rest of the families had moved in with local families in various kolkhozy.32 Overall, the average rates for Kyrgyz SSR were as follows: 76 percent of settlers were given land plots for personal use to supplement purchased food; 80 percent were given seed loans for planting, and about the same percentile received some sort of food aid, either in the form of food loans or free distribution of basic necessities.33 As in the case of Kazakhstan and other regions of Central Asia, Uzbekistan in the first two years of the war housed over 800,000 evacuees,34 whose position was more favorable from a legal point of view than that of deportees.35 Deportees here too were sent to a region that was already supporting many outsiders. Nevertheless, on January 4, 1945, at the earliest possible convenience, financial resources were allocated to help special settlers build their homes. Some 3,500 rubles were distributed per family for housing needs in kolkhozy and sovkhozy36 (mostly to purchase construction materials) and 3,000 rubles per family were allotted for housing needs of settlers working in any industry. Three thousand rubles for major repairs and 2,500 rubles for minor repairs were allowed on houses of settlers who already had basic housing in villages, and 2,000 rubles for major repairs and 1,500 rubles for minor repairs respectively to settlers working in industry. More funds were allocated for everyday needs of settlers to the amount of 1,500 rubles per family in kolkhozy and 2,000 rubles in industry to allow them to establish “a household economy” (khoziaistvo), i.e. to acquire the possessions that a family needs to survive.37 The next report on housing conditions among settlers showed that as many as 2,412 settler homes, or 14 percent

Intentions and realities of early years 63 of the overall number,38 were still in urgent need of immediate repairs. But the report further stipulated that local officials were required to distribute food aid, like grain and vegetables, among settlers immediately and to provide shoes and other products of prime necessity.39 Indeed, 10,000 pairs of shoes were distributed among 13,649 settler families40 immediately thereafter,41 going in varying amounts to several districts depending on the number of settlers there.42 Similar orders were issued for various other groups of deportees. For example, for settlers from the Crimea who numbered 9,115 families, 13,099 rubles were spent to feed them meat and salted pork fat (salo) in the first days after their arrival in Uzbekistan.43 A few weeks later still more people arrived. For 147,170 resettlers, or 37,235 families, from the Crimea (mostly Crimean Tartars but including many other nationalities as well), local kolkhozy received 2,280 horses, fourteen oxen, and 203 donkeys for redistribution starting on November 15, 1944; money to compensate former beekeepers among the settlers for the loss of 5,943 apiaries; 6,060 tons of various grains, based on a ration of 8.2 kilos per person per month;44 109 tons of wool; 50,000 meters of fabric; 1,258 pieces of leather to make 10,000 pairs of “quality shoes”; and various construction materials for housing.45 It was reported later that as of January 1, 1946, 85.4 percent of the plan to reimburse settlers for cattle and livestock was fulfilled, numbers given as an average for the entire Uzbekistan Republic.46 Official treatment of deportees may be further discerned from a resolution issued when special settlers from Georgia were deported to Uzbekistan.47 In exchange for the promissory notes given to them when they departed, UzSSR officials were required to distribute: 11,500 heads of cattle each weighting no less than 180 kilos, supplementing smaller animals under the required weight with goats and sheep; 315.4 tons of sheep; 736 horses and 981 donkeys; 4,594,500 rubles to compensate for orchards and beekeepers’ apiaries left behind; 975 tons of wheat and 2,257 tons of barley; 8.5 tons of wool; 1,826 tons of potatoes, 261.8 tons of vegetables and 180 tons of fruits; finally, one head of milking cow for each family free of charge even if they lacked promissory notes.48 When recalculated on a per capita basis, these numbers might not appear very impressive. Yet for the war-torn country and resource-exhausted and overtaxed Central Asia, even these amounts were often beyond anything that existed on hand. In cases when various resolutions were not fully implemented due to a general shortage of supplies, other decisions were made to facilitate settlers’ adaptation to their new life. Settlers were exempted from some taxes imposed on the Soviet population, including the agricultural (sel’skohoziaistvennyi) tax, income tax, “cultural tax,” and obligatory insurance payments for the first full two years. Deportees were also freed from other obligations to the government, such as mandatory procurements of wheat, rice, meat, butter, milk, and wool for three years. Fifty percent of settlers’ building loans were subsidized by the government, as well as 35 percent of other types of loans.49 Orders were issued again and again to local officials to distribute shoes and other necessities among the settlers.50

64

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When promissory notes were not redeemed, special settlers did not hesitate to complain about insufficient or improper reimbursement. Numerous complaints were made that many settlers were not given any promissory notes in exchange for the household goods, food and livestock they left behind in the rush of deportation.51 Local authorities were required to report to their superiors what they had done to remedy these complaints. In these cases, officials faced a real challenge; it was almost impossible to find out which people actually left livestock behind in their former places of residence and who were just trying to use the confused circumstances to get more than they were entitled to. In most cases, dilemmas such as this were settled by a simple fact of reality – kolkhozy and local officials lacked resources to fulfill even existing promissory notes, let alone the non-existent ones. These concerns, however, were repeatedly expressed by local officials. When local officials failed to provide for settlers’ adequately, they received reprimands for their “improper” conduct. In one instance, they were told it was “intolerable” (nedopustimo) that scientists, artists, and other members of intelligentsia of various nationalities had been sent to cut timber.52 The intelligentsia was to be spared, at least officially, from being sent to work in physically demanding jobs. Other cases were much more specific. For example, in a small region of Pavlodar district, Kazakhstan, local authorities ignored various orders to support special settlers by distributing food and other basic provisions. As a result, many families were starving and by May 24, 1945, 230 special settlers had died from malnutrition. In some kolkhozy, special settlers who died were not even buried or they were buried ten to seventy days after their deaths. In the kolkhoz “Zaria Sovetov,” twelve corpses were left to decompose for over two months without burial. In the kolkhoz “75th Anniversary of the October Revolution” (“75-aia godovschina Oktiabria”), thirteen corpses waited for ten days before burial. In the kolkhoz “Tsiurupa,” two bodies were thrown out on the street where they lay for over two months. When these facts became known to the Central Executive Committee of Kazakhstan (TsK(b)K), the directors of the offending kolkhozy were prosecuted “according to the law,” both for the neglect of the settlers which led to their deaths and for failure to provide prompt disposal of the corpses. The responsible officials were expelled from the Communist Party and sent to prison on criminal charges of negligence resulting in numerous deaths. The kolkhozy involved were also ordered to immediately (nemedlenno) distribute food among special settlers to prevent further starvation.53 Extreme measures were taken in other situations as well. Due to poor harvests the previous year, the winter of 1946–47 was very difficult for settlers and residents alike; people in general were already undernourished from years of wartime privation, and this was especially true for 12,971 settlers in one of the regions of Kazakhstan. The authorities were particularly concerned about the fate of the settlers with the coming of the spring as food supplies normally ran out in bad years before the new harvest. Officials noted that the major cause of death every spring since the beginning of the war was not starvation or malnutrition per se but a particular disease caused by eating grain infected with bacteria.

Intentions and realities of early years 65 People collected grains left in the fields after harvest the previous fall which were easily seen once the snow had melted.54 This grain, however, after being buried under the snow for the winter, was infected with bacteria which caused mass epidemics of septic tonsillitis in whoever consumed it. Easily treated nowadays, this illness had a high percentage of chronic complications and was often lethal in the Soviet Union at this time.55 The Ministry of Health, rather than the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Industry, was ordered to accumulate enough grain supplies to allow the exchange of safe wheat ears for unsafe ones. Neither local officials nor “higher” authorities ever believed that they had the means and the resources to prevent collection of grain in the fields. They only hoped that with proper explanations and an abundant supply of decent wheat to exchange for infected wheat, special settlers would be willing to exchange what they had collected for good grain so that a major epidemic would not occur.56 Regardless of the promises made in official documents, food was still in short supply among settlers. Many people died from hunger and hunger-associated diseases, and officials were fully aware of this. Making inspections on various kolkhozy, authorities often reported that many people were dying of starvation and were showing signs of dystrophy. However, Moscow officials also acknowledged that the kolkhozy affected did not have any grain to distribute.57 But some kolkhozy used money and grain allocated to settlers for other needs, such as compensating for the difference between the local grain harvest and state grain quotas or distributing food among the local starving people.58 Inevitably, there might have been cases of corruption as well. But lacking resources, kolkhozy were even willing to reward special settlers at the expense of the local population in so-called “socialist competitions.” In 1943, several hundred settlers received diplomas for the best results in railway building and field work, and 120 of them were given monetary awards as well.59 Thus, the housing problems of special settlers remained acute. Starvation was widespread and the death rates among special settlers could easily support claims made by historians of genocide of ethnic Germans. As a result of poor housing conditions, lack of medical facilities and poor quality of food, many reports mentioned that the number of sick people grew by the hour, especially when it came to dystrophy and various diseases related to malnutrition. Death rates were sky-high, in some regions reaching as much as 9 percent annually.60 However, this dreadful situation can only be understood in the context of the war and famine, and was by no means the result of thought-out and well-planned intentions on the part of either the Kremlin or local officials to starve and kill the settlers. If the aid offered to settlers was insufficient compared to their overall numbers and needs, it was often the lack of resources that restricted the amount of aid the settlers received, not the intentions of Moscow or local officials. Although the deportations were driven by political factors rather than by any concern for the deported “punished peoples,” it seemed that at least on paper Moscow never meant to leave these people under the open sky, and the Soviet government attempted to allocate resources in proportion to the country’s

66

Intentions and realities of early years

wartime means. Unfortunately, official resolutions on distribution of goods affected deportees in very limited ways and did not remedy their hardships. But if these attempts and these documents did not directly affect the life of the deportees, what regulations did? And what was the life of deportees in special settlements like?

Laws and regulations On June 13, 1951, a letter from Viktor Shnaider to Stalin was published in Pravda. In this letter, “our, Soviet German” complained that, besides many other things, he was “stripped of the right to move to any Soviet republic or region” he chose and was treated with suspicion “in employment and in politics.”61 Although riddled with emotion and mistakes,62 this letter conveys a sense of the limitations placed on special settlers in terms of freedom of employment and freedom of movement. The legal structure of a special settlement regime was finalized only in the second half of the 1940s and will be discussed in subsequent chapters. But an analysis of its development during the war years is crucial for understanding problems and difficulties that the settlers faced. To address various problems facing the special settlers in their new places of residence, an order of August 28, 1941, signed by NKVD chief Lavrentii Beria, created a new government agency, the Sector of Special Settlements, within NKVD SSSR (OSP, or otdel spetsposelenii). NKVD major I.B. Ivanov was appointed to head this Sector, and NKVD captain M.B. Kondratov was appointed as second in command. The latter served simultaneously as the head of trudposelenii, or labor settlements in the Gulag system.63 This law meant that in fact there existed a legal difference between kulak settlements and special settlements of ethnic minorities. Whereas the kulaks living in settlements were called labor settlers (trudposelentsy) and ethnic minority deportees in settlements were called special settlers (spetsposelentsy), the two are often mixed up in existing literature. In fact, kulaks were under the jurisprudence of the Sector for Labor Settlements (OTP) of the Gulag administration (NKVD USSR) (otdel trudposelenii glavnogo upravleniia lagerei NKVD), while ethnic special settlers were under the wing of the Sector of Special Settlements (OSP) NKVD (otdel spetsposelenii NKVD). Insofar as the Soviet government was concerned, this division of administrative responsibilities assured the different status of these two groups of settlers.64 In 1946, the split of NKVD into MVD and KGB led to a de facto dual control of special settlers by both organizations. Despite the creation of the OSP in August 1941, when the first deportees arrived in Siberia and Central Asia in the fall of 1941, local officials did not have any clear-cut instructions on how to treat these people. Many German (former) deportees remember and various reports indicate that local officials immediately decided that the easiest way out of this dilemma was to regard German deportees as evacuees from war zones or areas that were soon to become war zones. Legally, this meant that in the first days after the 1941 deportation, Germans “lived like all other [Soviet] citizens, without any restrictions on

Intentions and realities of early years 67 their rights, except they were prohibited from leaving the region [to which they were deported] without special permission.”65 But even this latter restriction was not strictly enforced initially.66 The lack of instructions influenced all aspects of early life in settlements, including even the pattern of employment of German settlers. The authorities believed that each person should be employed according to their specialization and professional qualifications, so numerous German deportees were, paradoxically, given administrative and leadership positions of major importance.67 These “mistakes,” however, were quickly remedied. On January 10, 1942, a strictly phrased law stipulated that the movement of all German deportees had to be restricted to the area where they were resettled, and any further relocation had to be closely monitored. This law stated explicitly that German deportees who voluntarily moved from one location to another be denied their registration stamp in their new place of residence and sent back to their original place of relocation. In fact, this law created at least two difficulties for ethnic Germans. First, any hopes German deportees may have had of uniting with their families quickly evaporated as it became more and more difficult to get permission to move to another district to live with their divided families. Second, a residency stamp was required for employment since employers were not allowed to hire people without such stamps. Hence this regulation also restricted the employment options available to German deportees. However, German settlers were given no time to appreciate the new challenges and changes posed by this regulation. On the same day, January 10, 1942, a new law was issued “about the manner of [labor] usage of German-resettlers of military draft age, 17 to 50 years old.”68 This law stipulated that 120,000 draftage ethnic German males who had been deported to Siberia and Central Asia be subjected to mandatory labor conscription. However, this decree was never fully implemented. At this early date of January 1942, wartime chaos ensured that the Soviet government did not possess sufficient control over German settlers to guarantee successful labor conscription, although some attempts were made to “count” settlers hastily two days before the onset of labor mobilization.69 Many Germans were unwilling to leave their families and were able to avoid mobilization (at least for the first few days). German deportees also resented labor mobilization because none of them knew the reason for this, where they were to be sent, and even whether they were being mobilized for the army or for civilian employment.70 The real meaning of this new resolution was to create a precedent for the decree of February 14, 1942, “On the mobilization of German men of military draft age of 17 to 50 years, permanently residing in districts, regions, autonomous and Soviet republics.”71 According to this decree, all ethnic German male settlers between the ages of seventeen and fifty were to be mobilized to work in various industries in the Soviet Union, mostly to support the war effort. This decree implied the separation of the few German men remaining among the deportees and German women deportees, who were mobilized at a later date. On October 7, 1942, another law “on the additional labor mobilization of Germans

68

Intentions and realities of early years

in the USSR” required the conscription of all remaining German men and men aged fifteen to sixteen and fifty-one to fifty-five in the labor army, as well as all German women aged sixteen to forty-five. The only exceptions were pregnant women and those with children under the age of three. The law also explicitly stipulated that German men and women be sent to different places.72 As a result of these two orders of 1942 on labor mobilization, 120,000 Germans were assigned to various construction projects. Of these Germans, 45,000 were supposed to cut timber, 35,000 were expected to build two factories in the Urals, and 40,000 were scheduled to work on building railroads. In addition, 20,500 Germans had to work in coalmining, over 50,000 in the oilfields, and another several thousand were sent to the forest industries, paper and cellulose production industries, and the mining of iron ore and various minerals.73 Although massive labor mobilization took place in 1942, this continued until well into 1945. As a result, during the war years, a total of 316,000 ethnic Germans were serving in labor armies by January 1945. Over 182,000 were forced to work on construction projects, and over 133,000 in various industries of the Soviet Union, especially mining.74 From the legal point of view (we will talk about personal consequences in subsequent chapters), these laws led to the de facto transfer of control over special settlers to local NKVD organs and other local officials supervising local industries who often did not know about the legal situation of special settlers. These officials had to deal with a major influx of new workers who were labor mobilized to their regions. Often the “highest” official in charge turned out to be a director in one of the local industries. Two later, smaller waves of labor mobilization created even more difficulties for these local officials. Moscow did not find the total labor mobilization of German deportees sufficient and ordered the reconsideration and re-evaluation of those who were left behind in their original place of resettlement. As a result of decrees No. 3095 (April 26, 1943), No. 3857 (August 2, 1943), and No. 3860 (August 19, 1943), an additional 30,000 Germans were mobilized to work for Soviet industries, the majority of whom were children who had turned fifteen years old in the case of boys and sixteen years old in the case of girls and now qualified for labor conscription along with women with children who had recently reached the age of three.75 In the next two years, relatively little was done to codify and legalize the situation of ethnic Germans, both those in labor armies and those who were left in the special settlements. So on November 22, 1943, Beria signed a resolution to reorganize the official apparatus of the special settlements, which shifted rankand-file NKVD officers from place to place. This resolution did not bring about any substantial changes, but this law was the first step toward an improved and more systematized control of special settlers. From an administrative point of view, the March 1944 resolution was important as it granted the “Special Settlement Department of NKVD SSSR” complete freedom from Gulag administration and the Gulag system.76 On February 7, 1944, a “Decree on raion and poselok special commandant offices” regulated how many NKVD officials were assigned to oversee special settlers. On average, two to five NKVD officers

Intentions and realities of early years 69 regulated the life of 400 to 4,000 settlers in towns (the number of special settlers supervised and the number of officials varied according to the size of the special settlements), whereas in villages one to three officials controlled between 300 and 1,000 German settlers.77 These officials soon became the local “tsar and god” of many Germans, as settlers sadly joked. One later decree dealt with the rights and regulation of the settlers. Beginning in February 1944, all settlers residing in urban areas were allowed to receive (though not everyone did so) new passports with a stamp reflecting their place of residence. Although this law did not affect rural residents, it was the first step toward the normalization of settlers’ lives, as a passport was the most important document in the life of any Soviet citizen. Officially, the same law also required that old passports be confiscated. But almost all Germans had had their old passports confiscated during the deportation process and very few people still possessed their old passports by 1944. This law for the first time even listed the rights of the settlers (as opposed to limitations). Settlers were allowed to enter any collective farm or even form their own collective farms, and they were supposed to be paid as any free worker regardless of their place of employment, type of labor, or place of residence.78 Overall, the period of 1941–45 was marked by the lack of clear-cut instructions and a system of control of the special settlers. New laws, and actually very few of them, were issued according to the needs of the moment. Only after the resolution of January 8, 1945 (to be discussed in Chapter 4) was the position of special settlers finalized in the form that persisted until the end of the special settlement regime. Hence the early years of deportation were marked by several dichotomies: the supposed organization of the settlements vs. real life chaos, official intentions vs. wartime realities, and finally life in the special settlements vs. labor mobilization.

Labor army Many Germans later remembered that the worst experience of their deportation and exile was forced conscription into the labor army during the war years. Let us repeat that the term used for this form of labor obligation79 made its appearance during the Russian Civil War and meant really existing “revolutionary armies of labor.”80 During World War II, however, the term “trudarmee” was not mentioned in any official documents, which instead referred to “labor obligations,” “labor regulations,” or “labor reserves.” It was the German deportees themselves who first used the term trudarmee to describe their obligatory labor conscription, in contrast to other civilians working freely for the Soviet war effort, and the term became deeply imbedded in the historiography of the deportations only in the late 1980s. When the orders on labor mobilization reached ethnic Germans, many of them realized that they had to relocate once again from their special settlements, to which they were deported, to new places of employment. This relocation meant that, besides the actual hardships of labor service itself that claimed the

70

Intentions and realities of early years

lives of many Germans, labor mobilization also turned out to be a brutal process that separated mothers from their children. While the few men who left their families in 1942 to work in trudarmee left their children with their wives, German women subjected to labor mobilization had very few relatives who were not mobilized and who were willing to take additional mouths to feed into their households. Although Table 3.2 is limited to German deportees in the Altai region of West Siberia, it is nevertheless indicative in terms of family separations, since similar situations existed elsewhere outside the Altai.81 For example, in Sverdlovsk krai, approximately 53,000 women who were registered in the trudarmee left behind 6,436 children, of whom 2,900 became orphans and were sent to local orphanages. The labor draft there also left 467 elderly and disabled Germans homeless and starving without an able-bodied adult to support and care for them.82 The statistics of separation are even more dramatic for the Altai region, as Table 3.2 demonstrates: 13,129 German women left as many as 6,310 children behind, leaving almost half of these children in orphanages. The most unfortunate fate, as Germans later remembered, awaited those children who were adopted by Russian families, especially those Russian families who adopted German children involuntarily under pressure from collective farm officials. Most children who ended up in orphanages lacked warm clothing. As a result, many of them, and especially younger children who quickly outgrew their poor clothing, were forced to spend their days in bed with other such unfortunate children, covered by a blanket and keeping each other warm. Because of the lack of sun and vitamins, children under five in orphanages almost universally displayed the signs of rachitis (rickets).83 Since there were no special clinics to isolate infected children, children with scarlet fever, measles, mumps, and scabs spent their days under one blanket with healthy children, quickly spreading their diseases.84 Furthermore, during labor mobilization German women deportees were intentionally separated from the few men left among them. German men and women worked separately in labor armies. Table 3.3 is a random sample of Germans working in various Soviet factories in the Molotov region, which is located on the east side of the Ural Mountains not far from Magnitogorsk. But it is very indicative in terms of the sex ratio and distribution of German male and female deportees mobilized for labor service. Statistics are given for 1943. Similar statistics existed for other enterprises and other areas. The exact number of Germans who worked in trudarmee was reported for 296 factories. Eighty-six of these 296 reports utilized a gender-neutral language and gave the total numbers of German deportees rather than gender-specific statistics. In the other 210 enterprises which provided gender-specific information, 135 had a sex ratio of 1:10 or more, and only seventy-seven of these enterprises had representatives of the opposite sex. Only thirteen out of these 210 factories had less than 1:3 sex ratio, with the rest falling between 1:3 and 1:10 ratio.85 Oftentimes, particular localities and specific jobs determined a predominance of one sex over the other. Thus, for example, Cheliabinsk was a place of labor

24,055

8,627

■

6,751 (78%)

Men

22,703 (94%)

Women

Showed upb

■ 5,689 (66% of original nos.)

Men

13,129 (55%)

Women

Nos mobilized

■ 4,343 (19%)

Women only

Family

1,246 (18%)

Men

health

1,608 (7%)

Women

Requirement lifted b/c of:

■

2,096

In the family

1,425

With relatives

2,789

With kolkhoz

Children left behind by mobilized womenc

Notes a this is an overall number for adult males and females in this particular area. b many women and men attempted to escape in order to avoid labor mobilization or never showed up and had to be forced into labor mobilization at a later date. c These numbers show how many children were left with the immediate family (in most cases it meant the mobilization of the father, then children remained with the mother); how many ended up staying with the relatives; and how many became a responsibility of the collective farm, the majority of which were forcefully orphaned and sent to orphanages.

Source: GAAK, fond 1, opis 18, delo 155, l. 343, as cited in Schwartz, fn. 283.

Women

Men

Previously eligible for mobilizationa

Table 3.2 Patterns of labor mobilization among ethnic Germans on the example of ethnic Germans in the Altai region (statistics are given for November 1942)

72

Intentions and realities of early years

Table 3.3 Gender distribution among German deportees mobilized to work in various factories: the example of the Molotov region, 1943 Molotov region

Men

Women

Building company No. 3 Stroimontazhnaia company Oil refineries “Oil exploration” firm [quotation marks in text] Ugokamsk factory Krasnokamsk construction company Kuketsks state farm Kungursk Machine Factory Molotov Oil Refinary Pavlovsk Factory Factory No. 5

0 7 0 5 0 33 2 0 10 0 0

1,400 ,900 ,120 ,50 ,570 ,410 ,400 ,230 2,380 ,170 ,120

Overall:

57

6,750

Source: GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 135, ll. 2–128.

mobilization for German males, while Molotov and Krasnoyarsk raions and Bashkirskaia ASSR mobilized German women deportees. Numerically, Cheliabinsk used the labor of 14,015 German male deportees and only 1,742 German women deportees, whereas Bashkiriia ASSR employed 6,600 German women and only 355 German men. An analysis by gender of all German deportees mobilized for labor service in all reported economic sectors confirms these regional differences.86 Unlike men, women attempted to use their “social vulnerability” to escape labor mobilization. The concept of “social vulnerability” as used by women in various circumstances, including German women deportees, implies the speculation for personal gain on the popular stereotype that women were “weak” and “socially vulnerable” as compared to men, regardless of whether this stereotype was upheld by the reality of life. In cases of German women in exile, most often women lowered the age of their children and argued that they were too physically weak to survive in the harsh conditions of the trudarmee, and that they themselves were the sole providers for their families. They further threatened authorities that their “female emotionality” merged with their distress over mobilization and separation from their children might lead them to commit suicide and/or kill their children.87 Approximately 20 percent of German women deportees were allowed to remain with their children as a result of such tactics,88 although this did not spare many women who were crippled by various illnesses or who were pregnant.89 Although the tactics of social vulnerability worked to only a limited extent, local officials themselves unintentionally adopted a similar discourse and utilized it sporadically in their daily interactions with German special settlers and in their reports. Throughout the existence of special settlements, local NKVD and collective farm officials often domesticated and depoliticized women. For

Intentions and realities of early years 73 example, when several deportees refused to contribute their meager income to Soviet state defense loans (zaem) in the 1940s,90 officials sought to persuade the “rebellious” Germans to sign up for these obligations. In dealing with men, officials tended to use threats of reprisals and other measures to force contributions from them. Most often, men were threatened that they would be registered as “loafers” and made to work extra hours, or that 25 percent of their income would be mandatorially extracted from their pay because of their “poor work habits.” But in working with women, the same officials tended to offer consumer goods in short supply to women deportees in exchange for their agreement to contribute money to the “loan.” These officials repeatedly promised German women deportees that if these women contributed, they would receive documents allowing them to purchase dresses or shoes.91 If local officials sometimes fell prey to notions of “female weakness,” Moscow did not appreciate or internalize such arguments as did local officials. For example, Germans who were sent to trudarmee occasionally managed to leave and visit their families and relatives left behind, and sometimes, although much more rarely, German relatives in special settlements who had not been labor mobilized were able to visit their family members in the trudarmee. In order to do this, German deportees needed permits issued by the local NKVD to allow them to purchase train tickets and travel to other places. Understanding the difficult situation of many women separated from their children, local NKVD officials were sometimes fairly lax in issuing such permits. Yet immediately after Moscow learned that German deportees were being allowed to travel, the central NKVD in Moscow stipulated that “the issuance of passes to relatives of Germans was against the [law], especially since the movement of Germans is overall limited.” As a result, German deportees were no longer allowed to receive NKVD passes to see their loved ones.92 Once the German deportees who were mobilized into labor armies reached their new places of employment, they learned that officially, Germans in trudarmees were to be treated and compensated for their work like any free citizen. However, realities and practices often differed considerably from these words about equality. The order about labor utilization stated that every male and female German worker was entitled to eight hours of sleep a day along with three days’ vacation per month.93 In practice, German deportees were forced to work in labor armies sixteen hours a day for two or three weeks at a time without any days off. No less important were numerous orders which prohibited the use of labor of ethnic Germans for anything except the heaviest work, which most often meant timber cutting and the loading and unloading of freight cargoes. It was especially prohibited to use Germans in lighter jobs on state farms, in office work, or in the service sector.94 Germans in the trudarmee were supposed to be paid equally on the same basis as other workers in the same industry. During the first days of mobilization, the chaos of the new situation prevented a well-organized system of compensation for labor. However, a new and stricter instruction of October 1, 1943 organized the payment of wages better and on a more systematic schedule.

74

Intentions and realities of early years

As Table 3.4 demonstrates, the average wage of deported Germans varied greatly depending on their type of work, the skills required, and the location of the enterprise in which they worked.95 Official resolutions that codified the pay of mobilized Germans were rather accurate in saying that mobilized German deportees were compensated on an equal basis to their fellow free workers. Historian Martin McCauley estimated that the average wage in the Soviet Union in 1940–46 ranged between 330 and 480 rubles a month.96 These overall figures, however, give no sense of how wages differed from one sector of the economy to another. However, statistics presented in official Soviet documents give a better and more detailed understanding of average wages during the war, although the overall numbers correspond roughly to those presented by McCauley. Wages rose in the period 1940–45 but wage increases did not necessarily reflect an increase in the purchasing power (rather, quite the opposite) and did not imply a steady, proportionate wage improvement from one year to the next. Table 3.5 summarizes the wage differentiation in various sectors (measured in rubles per month).97 The numbers presented in this table indicate that the average wage of labormobilized German deportees was roughly comparable to other workers. Then it needs to be explained what other factors (than the amount of wage paid) came into play in so far as the living standards of mobilized German deportees are concerned. What made the real difference for the labor-mobilized Germans was not the wages they received but the availability of other means to obtain food and basic necessities. On collective farms and factories, free Soviet workers at this time never relied on their wages exclusively to assure their survival. In the overwhelming majority of cases, free Soviet people supplemented their incomes by working on their own small plots of land (priusadebnyi uchastok) and growing potatoes, tomatoes, and other foods. These plots of land were distributed at the state’s discretion (they could not be purchased as the Soviet state did not recognize private ownership of land), and German deportees mobilized to work in trudarmee were not allowed to have such garden plots. Even in special settlements, as we will see in Chapter 4, these plots would not become Table 3.4 Average wages received by Germans mobilized to work in labor armies Place of employment

Payment in rubles/month

Aktubinsk Vosturlag Ponyshevsk Umal’tlag Construction workers, aluminum factory Oil extraction and oil refineries Collective farm workers Natural gas industry Forestry work (Leskhoz)

233 200 165 296 405 230–725 200–250 450 130

Source: GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, ll. 6–125.

Intentions and realities of early years 75 Table 3.5 Average wages of workers, by industry, during war years. Sector of employment

Agricultural sector, overall Agricultural workers, lowest Industry Workers in building enterprises Railroad services Store salesmen and clerks Education Medical sector (doctors)

Wage in rubles/month 1940

1945

339 219 358 307 340 261 337 255

442 223 495 360 525 288 488 394

Source: RGAE, fond 1562, opis 41, delo 113, ll. 161f&b, as published in Dokumenty sovetskoi istorrii: Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953, Moscow: Rosspen, 2003, pp. 501–502.

commonplace for Germans until well after the war. Yet historians agree that private plots were the main source of food rations for the average Soviet citizen, especially in the unoccupied territories during the war and in most regions immediately after the war. Thus, historians M.A. Vyltsan and V.V. Kondrashin estimate that in the 1940s, garden plots provided 85 to 90 percent of all food provisions for Soviet people and, as a result, yielded ten to twenty times more “profit” than work on collective farms.98 But free civilian workers on collective farms also never relied on wages alone but were given potatoes and grain in addition to monetary rewards as compensation for the number of work days they earned. Nation-wide, the average collective farm worker received half a kilo of potatoes and the same amount of grain per labor day.99 This food “supplement” can be better appreciated if the market value of these products is considered. In the free market, a kilo of meat cost as much as 250 rubles;100 the price for a kilogram of potatoes ranged from five to fifteen rubles, while milk was habitually sold at twenty rubles a liter.101 Although the price for loaf of baked bread was usually set at around twenty rubles, it could reach as much as forty to fifty rubles in some areas.102 With such prices, a labormobilized German with a monthly wage of 250 rubles could potentially purchase only ten liters of milk and a loaf of baked bread per month in many regions. In contrast to other workers, the authorities in charge of labor-mobilized deportees took the cost of food, housing, clothing, use of sanitary facilities, and “worn-out work equipment” out of salaries paid to the mobilized Germans. One document reveals that in fact, many Germans were allotted 12,500 rubles a month for a team of fifteen people (an average of 833 rubles each) but after all the deductions they received merely 130 rubles a person.103 Despite substantial deductions from their salaries for food and other goods, the situation with food among the deportees in trudarmee was dreadful. Food was distributed twice a day in the form of cooked meals, and its cost was calculated to include the cost of provisions, the cost of transportation and storage of these food supplies, the

76

Intentions and realities of early years

cost of maintaining cooking facilities, and finally the salaries paid to cooks, kitchen staff, and supervising administrators. Needless to say, according to these calculations, the cost of food exceeded reasonable prices.104 Even with the outrageous prices, the rations provided to deportees were very meager and were based on three categories. Production norms were the main determinant of the norms each worker received. Unsatisfactory performance (under 100 percent of the daily production norm) resulted in one’s placement in the first category of those who were given the lowest rations. Production at the rate of 100 to 150 percent of the daily norm put a worker in the second category and qualified them to receive more rations. Stakhanovites, or production heroes who exceeded the work norms by 150 percent or more and who were named after the famous worker Stakhanov, were placed in the third category and given “superior” rations. Although the official ration norms included meat and fats, these were often substituted for by other products.105 Overall, the official rations of food provisioning broke down in the manner presented in Table 3.6 (measured in grams per day for categories one, two, and three, respectively). The first category ration was barely adequate for survival and could not give workers enough strength to improve their performance. Indeed, today’s nutritionists would agree that the first category rations were insufficient to sustain bodily functions. Present-day physicians estimate that an adult person needs a minimum of 2,500 calories a day for physical labor and a minimum of 1,000 calories a day to survive, and teenagers and pregnant women need still more.106 Category one food rations, however, provided at the very most 580 calories a day. But when potatoes were replaced with rotten cabbage and fats were replaced with dried salted fish, the caloric value of this ration could scarcely amount to more than 400 calories a day.107 In brief, the widely reported hunger and starvation among the ethnic Germans in the trudarmee was mainly the result of the lack of control of the mobilized workers over their own food provisioning and the lack of means given German deportees (e.g. private garden plots) to supplement extremely meager official norms. The authorities realized that the special settlers could not survive for long on such a diet. Beginning in 1943, officials overseeing the work of labor-mobilized Table 3.6 Food rations distributed to German deportees in labor armies, in grams per day according to three categories (C1, C2, C3) Type of food

C1

C2

C3

Flour, oatmeal or pasta Fats, meat or fish Potatoes or vegetables Sugar Salt

45 73 320 13 8

130 107 480 13 14

150 152 640 13 14

Total intake

459

744

969

Source: GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, l. 120.

Intentions and realities of early years 77 deportees were forced under the circumstances to rely on “extraordinary measures” which often exceeded the limits of their authority. Thus, on April 7, 1943, NKVD issued a directive which stated that the condition of special settlers was declining rapidly and reported that cases of dystrophy and death were skyrocketing. This directive prompted local officials to adopt new measures. Beginning in summer 1943 and continuing until the war’s end, local authorities organized small teams of Germans headed by “responsible” non-Germans to visit relatives who were not mobilized and who, it was believed, lived in better conditions. Although these month-long trips gave deported women in the trudarmee a chance to see their children and relatives, the main purpose of these trips was to collect food from their relatives, send some parcels to those left working in the labor armies, and finally to bring back some additional food with them to their places of mobilization to assure personal survival for a little while longer. Most of these trips were undertaken in secrecy, and “Moscow bosses” were not informed of them. Similarly, all sick and crippled Germans (those mobilized into the trudarmee accidentally or who were crippled by their work) were organized into teams during the summertime to collect wild grasses and other greenery known to be edible and to have some vitamins in them. The most popular types of vegetation they collected were poison ivy (krapiva) and wild sorrel (shchavel’).108 After treatment with boiling water, these greens, both rich in vitamin C, were used in salads and soups, often as a substitute for the missing and otherwise insufficient supply of more traditional vegetables such as cabbage and carrots. These measures by no means solved the problem of food supplies among Germans mobilized to work in the trudarmee. But they at least gave German workers some chance of survival in an otherwise intolerable and hopeless situation. Malnutrition and chronic starvation in combination with harsh physical labor left many Germans, especially women, sick and crippled. By the end of 1943, local officials signed orders to demobilize a total of 17,482 Germans due to their complete inability to work.109 Moscow, however, could not tolerate such a high rate of demobilization, especially in 1943, and issued a harsh decree to put an end to “lax demobilization practices” in various localities.110 This resolution noted that some released Germans regained their ability to work several months after demobilization, and hence their demobilization was not justified by any means. The resolution called for new, and harsher, measures to control the entire process. Only special brigades of certified doctors were allowed to establish the criteria for demobilization, and all demobilization was to be replaced with sick leaves of absence. Leaves of absence for medical reasons were restricted to two months (compared to earlier sick leaves of up to six months or complete demobilization), and those unable to move on their own (the “bed-ridden sick”) were ordered to remain in place. Moreover, a special commission had to certify that illnesses and dystrophy were not self-imposed and were not a result of attempts on the part of workers to find an excuse to go home.111 Finally, women who were mobilized incorrectly due to the young age of their children (those with children under three years of age and those with three children or more) were no

78 Intentions and realities of early years longer to be excused, even if proof of mistaken mobilization had been undeniably established.112 The lack of external resources, however, affected not only the quality and quantity of food but also the quality of clothing that the labor-mobilized Germans possessed. The lack of winter clothing, however, was a problem unlike any other, since most ethnic Germans worked and lived in parts of the Soviet Union that had extremely harsh winters with daily averages of 5°F (
15°C) or even lower beyond the Arctic Circle. Even Kazakhstan was infamous for its extreme continental climate, with very hot and dry summers but very cold winters with average temperatures of 0° to
9°F (
18° to
23°C). Numerous reports were written about the poor quality of clothing among German deportees in labor armies, which stated, for example, that “out of 550 German women, only 50 percent had a second change of clothing, and 27 percent had extremely ragged clothing and no winter shoes,” or that “many Germans, including young women, wear clothing in such dilapidated condition that it revealed their naked bodies.” More specifically, in the Karaganda region of northern Kazakhstan, “out of 3,836 German women, only 1,044 had winter clothing, only 537 had shoes and 1,215 had underwear.” In Sverdlovsk region the circumstances were not much better: “out of 2,534 mobilized Germans, only 797 had sufficient clothing; 990 lacked some essential clothing, 677 had no shoes and eighty-four had neither shoes nor clothing.”113 This situation prompted government officials to adopt a decree on the distribution of basic clothing and goods among the labor mobilized. In the last quarter of 1943, one of the branches of industry, Narkomugl’, was required to distribute among roughly 56,000 settlers the following items: 13,600 quilted padded jackets (vatnaia telogreika), 6,200 pairs of pants, 11,200 tarpaulin doublebreasted jackets (brezentovaia tuzhurka, a coveted item at the time), 14,800 pairs of tarpaulin pants, 29,600 pairs of shoes, 19,100 mattresses, 45,890 pillowcases, 19,150 bed sheets, and 27,920 blankets.114 However, the previous discussion of “intentions” of Soviet officials showed that almost always such orders could not satisfy all the needs of the labor-mobilized German deportees and were only partially fulfilled due to lack of supplies. Furthermore, the situation with housing for the Germans mobilized in the trudarmee was not much better. If some German deportees were originally housed with local families or in previously built houses, those who were mobilized in the trudarmee were forced to live in dug-outs and small houses constructed especially for them, often by the mobilized workers themselves. Very few dugouts were built with any kind of timber. The majority of such primitive buildings had walls and ceilings made of a mix of clay and grass.115 Almost no windows contained glass, and during harsh winters, labor-mobilized Germans were forced to barricade these window openings with whatever materials they had to hand. Those who could find wood and sawdust to put in between wooden pliers were considered lucky, as their dug-outs were a little warmer than others. Warmth remained one of the most crucial problems for mobilized workers because very few of their homes contained any heating devices. Some of the

Intentions and realities of early years 79 mobilized were ingenuous and resourceful enough to construct their own ovens or Russian-style stoves; others resorted to sleeping two in one bed to keep warm.116 Yet sometimes two people (not necessarily relatives) slept in one bed anyway due to lack of space. One barrack, for example, had 460 square meters of space but housed 503 German women, which left each woman with less than a square meter of space.117 In the Tulsk region, mobilized Germans utilized the space under benches as additional sleeping places. In Sverdlovsk oblast’, many Germans were forced to sleep outside the barracks even in sub-zero temperatures as there was no physical space for them even to stand in the barracks, let alone sleep in them. In other places, the situation was considered somewhat better.118 For example, in Uzhnensk, each ethnic German woman had as much as two square meters apiece in the barracks. Only Stakhanovites, the hero workers mentioned earlier, were allowed to have more room, and even for them very often this additional space existed only “on paper” in the rules and regulations governing the trudarmee, not in reality. The accommodation provided for these “exemplary workers” resembled Soviet sleeping-car wagons with three layers of benches one above the other, six benches to a small room. Although this accommodation was by no means spacious, at least these few privileged workers had their own space assigned to them individually to lay down and rest.119 Labor mobilization for many German men and women alike was only one among many hardships they had to experience in exile. In addition to harsh living conditions, the separation of families, and the struggle to survive in the wartime chaos, the experience of labor mobilization turned out to be decisive in one other respect. The labor conscription that Germans were forced to endure resulted in a massive occupational change among these deportees and especially women which survived into the postwar era. While officially the regime of trudarmees ended with the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, these labor regulations continued to be applied to many Germans for years to come. Those who were able to return to special settlements from their wartime mobilization experienced a major occupational change compared to the pre-war years. After the war, just as was the case in trudarmee during the war, most of these Germans were employed in timber cutting and other heavy physical labor. The German deportees quickly found that no other employment was available to them even after the war’s end. A typical report noted that a settlement possessed “48 specialists (professionals with secondary and post-secondary education), of which only 14 [were] employed according to their educational qualifications. [There were also] 131 skilled workers (tractor drivers, combiners, carpenters, etc.), of which only 69 were employed according to their qualifications.”120 All these professionally and vocationally trained individuals had received their training before deportation, but few used their training after deportation. While it is difficult to estimate how many women possessed commercial skills or worked prior to the deportations, we can say with some degree of certainty that for many German women the change was either from domestic duties and

80 Intentions and realities of early years agricultural work to hard labor or from occasionally professional employment to logging. The roots of this change in labor pattern after the war were directly linked to the experiences of labor mobilization during the war. It remains to be seen what awaited Germans who returned to special settlements with the end of labor mobilization in 1945, and what was the experience of the few Germans who stayed behind in special settlements during the war years. It is the purpose of the next chapter to address these questions.

4

Life in special settlements

Up until 1945, various attempts on the part of the Soviet government to regulate the position of special settlers and establish the regime of special settlements were sporadic and incomplete. Not until 8 January 1945 did Order No. 35 “On Legal Regulations and Rights of Special Settlers” finally officially codify the position of special settlers.1 The settlers were given “all the rights of USSR citizens but with special limitations.” These limitations, however, effectively annulled many rights that special settlers presumably possessed. German settlers were responsible for “working hard” at various jobs according to their employment distribution and assignments. They were stripped of the right to move from their present residence without special permission and subjected to numerous security checks (e.g. monthly registration with local authorities). The settlers were required to inform the authorities about any changes in their families (births, deaths, marriages) within three days of the event. Finally, settlers were required to “obey the regime of special settlements” and “keep themselves in good administrative order.” The last two statements left much room for personal interpretation, intervention, and control on the part of local officials. Local officials were allowed to fine settlers up to 100 rubles for disobeying any section of Order No. 35. This order was later supplemented by the 28 July 1945, Order No. 1927 “On the Rights and Privileges of Special Settlers”2 which established even closer supervision by local officials of various activities of special settlers (e.g. registration checks or employment). In order to supervise the enforcement of these orders, the NKVD organized a well-functioning system of offices known as komendatura (komendatury plural), which was created exclusively for the control of special settlers and run by komendants (commandants). Although earlier there were attempts to establish a similar system which occasionally even existed in practice in sporadic settlements, this final system came into existence only in 1945. Besides being at the heart of special settlements in terms of administrative control, komendatury were also located at the center of special settlements in geographic terms. When choosing their location, the goal of local officials was to have komendatura equally accessible and located in the same distance from all corners of the settlement. The komendants were officially a part of the NKVD apparatus and fell under its jurisprudence. In 1946, the NKVD changed its name to MVD

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(Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del), or Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the komendatury became by default a part of the new MVD system. For only eighteen months in 1950–52, the komendatury became a part of the MGB USSR (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti), or Ministry of State Security, but they went back under the wing of MVD in 1952 and existed as a part of the MVD structure until the end of the special settlement regime in 1955–56. Responsibility-wise, komendants were supposed to supervise settlers’ employment; count and register all settlers, and record all changes among them; prevent escapes and supervise searches for runaways; detect and prevent the spread of anti-Soviet sentiments; levy administrative fines for improper registration with authorities, violations of laws and regulations of the regime, petty hooliganism, and improper conduct; and finally, issue permits for travel and reunification of families. The komendants were the primary source of control of special settlers and were referred to in official documents as “NKVD officials,” “local officials,” and “local authorities.”3 On average, there was one komendant and one aide per 500 settlers, although this number varied greatly from village to town (with urban centers having more komendants) and from place to place depending on the availability of local NKVD cadres. By the end of 1946, for example, Kazakhstan had 464 komendants and 579 aides to komendants; Kyrgyzstan had sixty-three komendants and eighty-seven aides; Uzbekistan had 134 komendants and 123 aides, and so on.4 Yet it happened sometimes that the NKVD/MVD did not have enough people to staff the komendatury according to the regulations. MVD reports noted that the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic needed fifty-five more komendants and eightytwo more aides; Kyrgyz SSR needed eight komendants and eleven aides, and other places in the Soviet Union needed at least two to four komendants apiece.5 It needs to be pointed out that these komendatury were not ethnic-specific, and neither were the special settlements. Very often, various ethnic minorities deported to live in special settlements (e.g. Crimean Tartars, deportees from the Caucasus, or Germans) lived side by side in the same settlement with other ethnic deportees. These settlements and these komendatury were not created to be ethnicity-based and did not supervise only Germans but rather all deportees. However, division along ethnic lines often happened in practice for various reasons. First, Germans were by far the largest ethnic group that easily made up entire settlements, whereas smaller ethnic groups (e.g. Karachai) were “bundled up” with other ethnic minorities during deportation and lived together thereafter while in exile. In addition, each “wave” of deportations was usually resettled in several specific locations, while other “waves” went to different places. Since different ethnic groups were deported from different locations and at different times, it often happened that Germans were settled with Germans and Chechens with Chechens, and so on. Documents show that though there were often more than two ethnic groups in each settlement, one or two ethnic groups predominated in terms of sheer numbers and the other ethnic groups were represented by only occasional members of that ethnic group. Finally, there existed an unwritten preference for settling Germans with Germans because Germans were

Life in special settlements 83 considered to be very hard-working and local officials feared the spread of “rebellious moods” among Germans from other ethnic groups (such moods were often associated with Chechens and other people from the Caucasus mountains). Hence, although it would be a gross misinterpretation to see special settlements as “ethnic-specific,” they very often turned out to be in practice “ethnicdominant,” meaning dominated by one ethnic group. Shortly after the final establishment of the komendatura system on October 11, 1945, the position of German special settlers who were deported to special settlements as part of the repatriation campaign was finally codified. We may recall that these Germans were Soviet citizens who ended up abroad during the war and who were forcefully repatriated and sent back to the Soviet Union at the war’s end.6 Although these Germans were “repatriated” to special settlements immediately and directly after their return “home” to the USSR and were always perceived as a part of the special settlement regime, NKVD order No. 181 stipulated that legally, all German repatriates had to be registered as special settlers. The next order of June 2, 1948, No. 1841–730, applied to all settlers and stipulated “the deportation to distant places of people, [who] habitually evade labor responsibility in the agricultural sector and lead an anti-social parasitical way of life.”7 It immediately became another tool in the hands of local authorities to rid themselves of unwanted settlers who were no longer a valuable labor asset due to disability, old age, or family circumstances. Numerous other routine orders were issued in 1945–48 (e.g., Order No. 4367–1726 “On Resettlers [vyselentsy]”8 of November 24, 1948, and Order No. 418–161 “On Resettlement, Deportation and Special Settlements”9 of February 21, 1948). But these orders improved the position of German settlers little, if at all. Most of them required local officials to keep a closer scrutiny on how many and how often settlers registered with komendatury; improve the search for runaways; recount settlers on regular basis to coordinate real numbers of settlers and those reported by various officials, and so on. Hence these decrees and orders were issued with an understanding on Moscow’s part that its earlier resolution about the close control of special settlers was not necessarily enforced effectively. Germans agree universally that among the multitude of orders, regulations, and restrictions, the resolution of November 26, 1948, “On Criminal Prosecution for Escape from the Places of Required and Permanent Places of Residences for People, Deported to Distant Parts of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War,”10 was the harshest measure applied to them. It mandated a twenty-year sentence in Gulag camps as the punishment for escaping from one’s assigned place of residence, and it also allowed local officials to prosecute anyone who showed up late for monthly registration checks or who went to visit family located in nearby villages without special permits. Such “offenders” could also be sent to Gulag labor camps without much explanation or formality, based solely on the administrative decision of komendants. The year 1948 marked the final codification of the system of control over special settlers. According to the various laws and regulations issued in 1948–49 (for a complete list, refer to the Appendix),11 the authorities created “personal

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files” (lichnye dela) on each and every settler.12 Each personal file started with a questionnaire completed by settlers and verified and signed by local officials. Most of the information requested was biographical. Some of the questions indicated concerns about “state security” as it was understood by Soviet authorities at this time. For example, Germans (and other ethnic groups) who lived at one time or another in the Nazi-occupied territories were considered to be “high risk” in terms of espionage and state security, and they had to be identified as such. In addition to this standard questionnaire, each file contained a handwritten short biography of the settler. Every person had to write his or her own life story, and this history was later double-checked against the official questionnaire for any discrepancies. Next followed a written description of the settler. Authorities had to have some means to distinguish one settler from the other, and at this time photographs were not the top choice for the authorities. Not only was photography too expensive to be used widely and was not often of the best quality; the use of photography was also inconceivable because cameras and chemicals required for film processing were simply not available, since production of these items was curtailed during the war and immediately thereafter. Hence the authorities preferred to have a written record describing each settler instead of a photograph (although some files contained photos as well). Most of the personal files followed a standard form for such a description, but some contained handwritten descriptions of settlers. Even though occasional files lacked a descriptive portrait altogether, authorities often noted that the descriptive portraits were indispensable when it came to searching for runaways, “slackers,” and those who missed their required monthly checks with local komendatury. Once the questionnaires were completed, each file had to have a note attesting to the reason why each settler became subject to the special settlement regime. There were three categories of settlers in the case of ethnic Germans – deported, repatriated, and local. In addition, each file noted whether particular Germans had been labor mobilized during the war, where they worked, and whether they had permission to move back to their place of original resettlement once restrictions associated with the labor mobilization were lifted and whether they moved back voluntarily. This section of a settler’s file was completed with a standard form for each settler, dated November 26, 1948, which stated that each settler was to remain in his or her place of deportation forever and was denied the right under any circumstances and at any time to return to their original place of residence prior to deportation. Birth, death, and marriage certificates made up the next substantial section of the special settler’s personal file. When it came to birth certificates, not all of the files contained legal birth certificates, as some contained handwritten notes attesting to the birth of a child. Curiously, each and every case also contained what appears to have been a standardized form requesting permission to register the child as a special settler. Ironically, not only were Germans denied the right to free their children from the special settlement regime, but Germans also had to petition the authorities to place their children under the special settlement

Life in special settlements 85 regime’s harsh laws and restrictions. Files also contained notes registering the movement of the settlers. Settlers who received permission to reunite with their families and moved into the region where their families were registered had to attach a petition to relocate their personal case files to this new place in order to avoid legal prosecution or even imprisonment. Registration cards were also of importance to local authorities and settlers. These cards were designed to register the dates when settlers came to check in with the authorities to prove that they were still present in their official place of settlement. Germans were required to register every month, although the system of registration changed in the 1950s. If an individual’s registration card was missing even one date of required registration, the settler was considered to be a runaway and was prosecuted by komendants according to the harsh criminal law for escapees. Each settler’s file was also supplemented with many signed notes of various kinds that differed from one settler to the other. Usually, the file had three signed notes explaining that the settler was informed of the key resolutions defining the regime of special settlements. These notes were typically dated 1945, 1948, and 1954. The last note, usually dated 1956, acknowledged that the settlers knew they had been freed from the special settlement regime. Personal notes included letters of explanation drafted by settlers, usually explaining the reason why they were late for their monthly registration. A typical explanation stated that the settler was sick on the precise date of the registration and had come to register at the earliest convenience. All the administrative and criminal charges and procedures were also listed in this section. Such documents usually completed the personal file of a settler, which reflected every miniature detail of their previous and current life under the special settlement regime from the time of deportation to the end of this regime. Besides official regulations and komendatury, there existed an informal system of control of special settlers. In 1946, komendatury began enlisting the help of informers, loosely known as agentura (agents, or employees, of intelligence service). The MVD apparatus had a well-developed system of agents in place by 1948. Three main types of informers collaborated with komendants, namely informers, residents, and agents. Germans occasionally mentioned that there existed a fourth type of “controlling agents” who unofficially supervised the work of other types of informers. Yet these “controlling agents” probably worked under too much secrecy to be listed in official documents. The first group, informers, was always the most numerous group of workers in agentura. They were habitually recruited from settlers and only occasionally from the “free” people who lived in close contact with settlers. These informers wrote occasional denunciations when any important information came their way. The group of agents was much smaller and usually worked in much closer cooperation with komendatury than did the informers, although they too were recruited from the same contingent of special settlers, and occasionally from “free” population. Agents wrote regular reports and had scheduled meetings with NKVD/MVD officials. Residents were usually the smallest group, and were recruited exclusively

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from NKVD cadres and given authority similar to that of the komendants. Their reports were rarely questioned, and their approach to work was similar to the residents (“illegal agents,” or nelegaly) of the Soviet intelligence service abroad. Residents resided among the population they were assigned to supervise, had devised a false identity, including their background and their employment history, and functioned completely underground in great secrecy. The number of people involved in agentura was reported for seventy-five regions of the Soviet Union where special settlers lived. Table 4.1 shows the number of informers, agents, and residents in ten regions with the most people involved in agentura work. This data, like many other official materials on special settlements, was not ethnic-specific but rather listed general numbers of agentura workers in various settlements.13 Agentura work had two main goals – to detect and report runaways and to inform komendants about any anti-Soviet moods among special settlers. When it came to reports of anti-Soviet sentiments, this sort of information varied greatly from the overall reaction of special settlers to the new Soviet laws and regulations to some minuscule discussions of everyday problems. Predictably, this type of report indicating anti-Soviet sentiments was the most common. A typical case involved the prosecution of a German special settler for “loafing” and “poor work ethics.” During a meeting of kolkhoz members, it was unanimously decided that this German should be prosecuted “according to the existing law” and expelled from the collective farm. A few days later, however, an informer wrote a report that one German settler woman argued after the meeting that she “opposed the prosecution of [this person] for poor work because he could get better here without being sent away. But what could I say during the meeting if the komendant invited us for a talk before the meeting, threatened us and forced us to vote in favor of prosecuting [this man]?”14 Although it is unclear whether this woman suffered any administrative fines for these “anti-Soviet statements,” some Germans were severely punished on the basis of such reports from agents. Table 4.1 Numbers of Agentura recruits working for Komendatury of special settlements, as of January 1948 Location

Overall no.

Residents

Agents

Informers

Kazakh SSR Kyrgyz SSR Uzbek SSR Altai region Krasnoyarsk region Kemerovo region Molotov region Novosibirsk region Sverdlovsk region Tomsk region

16,237 3,124 5,203 2,634 4,119 4,429 3,727 3,100 2,627 2,347

371 59 379 88 193 205 82 151 100 58

949 149 310 81 475 139 74 165 141 63

14,673 2,641 4,356 2,453 3,420 4,221 3,557 2,809 2,357 2,235

Source: GARF, fond 9749, opis 1, delo 365, ll. 328–330.

Life in special settlements 87 Finally, some komendants utilized the system of “ten houses” (desiatidvorki plural, desiatidvorka singular) to improve their control over special settlers.15 German special settlers in some regions were registered in clusters of ten households (usually ten houses with varying numbers of families but occasionally ten families). Each desiatidvorka had its own elder (starshye) appointed by local officials who were responsible for every settler under their control. Starshye were required to report all changes in their ten houses, all “improper conduct” of “their” settlers, and all runaways. In cases where elders failed to notify the authorities about any of these changes, they were punished along with the guilty party. Authorities commonly believed that this system of desiatidvorki would deter runaways and the breaking of rules of the special settlements regime because starshye would fear being prosecuted for crimes committed by others and would report any misconduct to the komendants. However, it is not clear that this system functioned as efficiently as planned. Many Germans remember that starshye identified themselves with fellow settlers, not the authorities, and tried to cover up misdeeds in their houses. Moreover, numerous official reports were written about the ineffectiveness of this system, and the elders were often fined for “poor work and concealing offenders of the [special settlement] regime.”16 In brief, the system of control established in 1945–49 and completed by the creation of personal files for each settler formed the basis of what is known as “the regime of special settlements.” This regime continued to exist in this form and shape until 1953–54, which marked a turning point in the history of German special settlers in the Soviet Union. In 1953–54, the regime of special settlements was relaxed, and two years later ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union were freed from this regime by Stalin’s successors. Although various other regulations and laws were issued in 1949–53 and repetitious orders were sent to special settlement authorities to remind them to follow all the laws set down rigidly until 1955–56, these additions did not change the lives of German special settlers substantially. Yet the story of the laws governing special settlements is only the beginning of the story of the lives of special settlers in exile.

Separation and escapes In interviews, the overwhelming majority of German settlers noted that husbands and wives, children and parents were separated before, during, or after deportation. As some Germans later remembered, “the men usually were sent to work in the coal mines and the women were ordered to cut trees in the forests of Siberia. Quite often, women . . . were torn away from their children.”17 Although statistics do not show that German male deportees went exclusively to coalmines and German women deportees to lumbering work, the separation of families was the first problem that settlers had to face in their new life in exile. Upon their arrival in the special settlements, disunited family members who lost each other during the deportation began to appeal to the authorities for permits to reunite with their families. Hundreds of settlers were allowed to

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reunite with their families, especially in cases when young children begged to join their mothers. Although the nation-wide dynamics of reunification were never reported, examples from various districts show the same tendency in all regions of the Soviet Union. In the Omsk region, for example, out of 143,708 German settlers,18 4,889 were given permission to move to other areas to reunite with their families and 11,281 Germans arrived in Omsk special settlements to reunite with their families in 1945–49.19 It was noted on one occasion that Germans who arrived in the Omsk region came from the Moscow, Kuibyshev, Chkalovsk, Kustanai, Omsk, and Novosibirsk regions, and from the cities of Cheliabinsk, Ulianovsk, and Tula.20 Not all requests for reunification, however, were granted. In 1948, the Omsk authorities received 714 requests for reunification and denied permission to seventy-nine of them. An additional sixty-five requests were registered as a “search for relatives” and therefore officially required no immediate decision. But even when permission for reunification was eventually granted, it often took years to obtain such permission. Some of the requests made in 1945 were granted only in 1948–49.21 For example, one woman filed seven requests for unification over a four-year period, and all of her appeals remained unanswered.22 Documents from Kazakhstan acknowledge more directly that it took too long to obtain permission for reunification. Although German settlers were moving into and out of the republic in limited numbers in 1945–52, it was commonly reported in 1952 that “it took years upon years to review applications for reunification.”23 According to local officials, the problem was rooted in the fact that only the central office of MVD of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in Alma Ata could review such applications. Inevitably, this office was overwhelmed by the volume of such petitions and the amount of review work that each application required. It was finally decided on March 27, 1953 that in order to expedite the process, in Kazakhstan local MVD officials were permitted to issue reunification and movement certificates to settlers based on these officials’ own judgment.24 One subsequent report mentions, however, that the overall number of permitted reunifications might mislead one to conclude incorrectly that many, if not all, permissions were granted. This report says that in fact, many local authorities were reluctant to grant permission for reunification when men (i.e. the most coveted labor resource) wanted to move away from these officials’ areas of jurisdiction. Officials intentionally failed to register many requests of German men for reunification, and hence their petitions never made it into any official documents. These officials maintained that husbands and wives, parents and children had already been living apart for up to eight years and this proved that they could survive separately and independently on their own. In 1950, the Omsk region contained 898 German male settlers who were still waiting for a decision on their requests for reunification with their families.25 Thus, in various parts of the country which housed German special settlers, some authorities were reluctant to grant many permits for reunification, while

Life in special settlements 89 others took too long with these permissions. As a result, some desperate settlers with family members elsewhere found an immediate solution to their separation problem by running away from their settlements to join their loved ones. While reports often stated that “the separation of family members among special settlers encourages runaways”26 and documents discussed this problem at length, in reality only 0.4 percent of Germans ran away nation-wide in the early 1940s (3,114 Germans out of almost 785,000 Germans special settlers reported in this document). Three-quarters of these runaways were women and children.27 Runaways continued throughout the 1940s,28 and during this time roughly 3 percent of German inhabitants of special settlements ran away and were not apprehended by the authorities.29 But running away remained a risky enterprise and was never a popular solution to the problem of separation, particularly due to the widespread hunger in the Soviet Union immediately after the war, the need to register with local authorities in order to receive food ration cards, and the lack of any “home” to go to. After 1948, settlement authorities had another reason to hold back permits for reunification. That year considerable attention was paid to the problem of escapes, and the authorities instantly recognized that “hidden” (skrytye) escapes were much more commonplace among settlers than those recorded. These “hidden” escapes were made under the pretense of uniting with families. However, the authorities, who for a number of years paid no attention to this outflow of settlers, never received any confirmation that these individuals actually arrived at the settlements where their families resided. Once this information was requested, it became clear that by using the pretext of reuniting with families, in 1945–48, possibly as many as 10 percent of settlers30 ran away from special settlements and now could not be apprehended.31 For example, in the Kostroma Special Settlement, 952 out of a little more than 10,000 people, again mostly women and children, “disappeared” by this means.32 If some German special settlers managed to run away and reunite with their families, many more were left to wait their turn for reunification. The major problem with reuniting families was that the majority of separated families were never considered as such. For example, families with male members working for different industries in other parts of their region that were so distant from the settlement that they never saw each other, were considered “united” because all members of the family lived in the same province. For example, one of the official reports on food supplies in the above-mentioned Kostroma settlement stated that in 1945, as many as 6,416 family members were left in the village without provisions or ration cards, while the males in these families worked elsewhere in the region.33 Only in August 1947 was the first official resolution issued that allowed working men to take their families to their places of employment. While this resolution was important because it acknowledged the existence of separated families, this measure proved almost worthless to the settlers, since it allowed the unification of families working in certain industries only (for example, the limited number of Germans who worked in railroad construction). It also

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required employers to give their consent and to offer housing to family members. These two conditions proved almost unattainable.34 Moreover, many industries did not want to allow qualified labor to leave. Hence managers of various factories often issued administrative punishments allegedly for the “misconduct” of settlers that resulted in prohibitions to move around for four to five months at a time.35 Because of such measures, the issuing of this decree did not bring about any changes for most German settlers, and the families were only able to reunite in 1955–57 after the end of the special settlement regime.

Life in exile German settlers did not know for a while that their separation was a long-term fact of life. Yet they had to face right away the fact that in most cases, no accommodation was available for them, or the accommodation allotted them was run-down or unacceptable, and often required extensive repairs. Even though the settlement administration “made an effort to find housing for the settlers” and never intended “to leave exiled [settlers] to die of exposure on the steppes of Kazakhstan and in Siberia,”36 the housing available for deportees was dreadful. As was often the case with official Soviet reports, there was a great discrepancy between the generalizations and conclusions of these reports and the description of the actual conditions under which the settlers lived in the same documents. It was often reported that settlers were well housed and “live[d] in houses that neither require[d] replacement nor major repairs.”37 However, in these “satisfactory” houses, the same report noted that “all premises [were] in an unsanitary condition . . . windows [were] sealed with different pieces of cloth . . .. Masses of garbage and filth [stood] in the yards . . .. There [were] neither bath-houses nor disinfection chambers . . . as a result of this many settlers ha[d] lice.” Moreover, the report further described that: the walls and ceilings in the premises where the special settlers live[d] [were] covered with soot and blackened with smoke; the walls were never whitened. Instead of glass, 50 percent of windows [were] sealed with wooden boards and veneer. There [were] no supplemental buildings on the premises, like sheds for [storing] firewood and [housing] small livestock. Special settlers, who possessed small livestock (goats), housed them in their own homes in the winter.38 But even such meager housing was not always available. Many settlers were forced to dig their own dug-outs, and many spent winters in these pseudohouses, really nothing more than holes in the ground.39 In addition to the poor quality of settlers’ housing, many people had to share rooms in numbers that far outstripped the room’s capacity to house them, and “as a result of such accommodations, special settlers [suffered from] heavy overcrowding; each person had 1.3 to 2 square meters40 of living space.”41 Inevitably, such crowded accommodation led to the spread of disease among settlers, the most common of which

Life in special settlements 91 was scabies (chesotka), or contagious itch with bleeding crusts that is cased by parasitic mites. One woman later remembered that they “lived ten families in one barrack. There were no separate rooms, beds [stood] in rows, [and there was] one stove for the entire barrack. [We were] severely sick, especially with scabies, but even when sick, [one] needed to go to work.”42 When houses and dug-outs were not available, local officials authorized the rapid construction of barracks, which housed men, women, and children together by the hundreds. Thus, in Novosibirsk region, one of the local villages had three barracks for 295 families (768 individuals) at the time of their arrival in 1943. But even these barracks were not yet fully completed. It was reported that the barracks had electrical lighting but lacked any running water or plumbing. The walls were clean but the floor consisted of dirt compressed under the weight of many people walking on it daily. The roof was in a state of complete disrepair, there was no insulation in the walls, and the only stove in each barrack barely functioned.43 While housing in the settlements was very miserable or non-existent, the housing provided by various Soviet industries that employed special settlers after the war was even more deficient. A separate report on the living conditions of special settlers who worked for the timber industry after the war stated that special settlers lived in dug-outs, in which “dirt [was] falling off the walls and ceilings. The dugouts [were] located in swamps and thus there [was] fear of flooding.”44 Only two months later, in April 1947, Riasnov, Vice-Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, wrote that “the dugouts, in which the [special settler] contingent resided, were unsuitable for living” and the settlers had to be evacuated from these premises.45 Immediately after the evacuation, the fears of the settlers and the authorities materialized – the dug-outs were flooded with water. As we discussed in the previous chapter, local officials were required to distribute building materials or provide loans to special settlers. Whereas some settlers did receive such assistance, most often local authorities lacked the resources to offer them sufficient building materials. They nevertheless tried to find a way out of this situation. Many Germans remembered that officials allowed them to go to a local forest (if there was one) and use any timber the settlers could chop down to build or repair their houses. One woman remembered that her family was originally housed in a small dug-out made out of mud mixed with hay. All the windows and holes were stuffed with straw, which kept the wind out of the house during the summer but was obviously insufficient to shield them from the cold Siberian winter. A local official who displayed a friendly disposition towards this family in particular and German deportees in general allowed the family to occupy one of the empty (previously abandoned) houses. The house had two rooms and was in urgent need of major repairs. Lacking any building materials to offer this family, the official allowed this woman and her family to grab anything they saw abandoned to use to repair the house. He also allowed them to cut timber in the forest for major repairs, and to use a sleigh and oxen that belonged to their collective

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farm to haul all the building supplies. This family, made up entirely of women (as was often the case with Germans in special settlements), could not cut down large trees. But they still managed to cut down a few small birch trees to use in construction and they collected enormous amounts of moss to use in patching the holes. They also found some spare construction materials lying around unused, such as a small piece of glass that could make at least one window and a piece of leather to cover up another window. They grabbed these materials to finish up the repair work on their house. Even if their housing was neither fancy nor even comfortable by contemporary standards, they considered themselves lucky to have a friendly boss. None of the repair work, much less a warm house with two (!) rooms to spend the winter in, would have been possible without his authorization.46 Regardless of various efforts of local officials and German settlers, the housing situation remained miserable. According to a report of June 20, 1945, only 28 percent of the official plan for additional housing for the settlers had been fulfilled, and only 29 percent of run-down houses allotted to them were repaired.47 When more exact statistics were reported in individual places, the situation rarely looked much better. For example, in 1945, in the Novosibirsk region 2,833 families (35.2 percent) of the 8,054 German families settled here were said to possess adequate housing. Another 1,394 (17.3 percent) managed to build or find additional housing without the direct intervention of local officials (most often, they built their own houses). But 1,353 (16.8 percent) were housed with local families and were waiting to receive a place of their own, while 2,474 (30.7 percent) had no place to live. Local officials urgently needed to build another 2,884 houses to accommodate settlers without their own housing or with inadequate housing. Yet local authorities here had already reportedly distributed 11,687,345 rubles among settlers as construction loans, thanks to which over 50 percent of families had reasonable accommodation.48 The price of building a wooden house was estimated to be 2,060 rubles, while a brick house with plastered walls cost 3,807 rubles to build.49 The distribution of loans among the families amounted to 2,760 rubles per family if we include only the families with “adequate housing.” A subsequent report, issued only a couple of months later, authorized the distribution of another 14,859,000 rubles among the remainder of settlers who still lacked housing, although estimated construction costs had grown considerably and then stood at 5,900 rubles per wooden house and 4,500 rubles for each house built of brick, clay, and hay (samannyi).50 In the second half of 1947, it was reported that “living conditions improved” among the settlers in all locations.51 However, the statistics for individual regions do not support the claim that the living conditions among German settlers improved drastically by 1947. For example, in 1947, of 105,817 Germans in Siberia (exact location unspecified), only 21,430 (20 percent) had their own houses. 52 Only occasional reports from various parts of the country offered statistics that showed substantial improvement. Thus, one report from the Kostroma region, dated the same year, mentioned that all German settlers (1,181 families, or 4,656 individuals) in the region of its jurisprudence had decent housing,

Life in special settlements 93 although 87 of these families (or 369 individuals, roughly 8 percent) were housed in the homes of local collective farmers and were expected to move into their own housing on a more permanent basis.53 Reports issued at a later date were not much more optimistic. For example, by the end of 1949, only 3,569 (54 percent) out of 6,562 German settler families living in the eastern parts of Kazakhstan had sufficient housing. The situation improved but only insignificantly over the next few years; in 1951, 4,853 (68 percent) out of the 7,096 families were housed adequately.54 Although exact nation-wide statistics on the housing situation of German special settlers are not available, overall this percentage of adequate housing among German settlers appears to be typical for all special settlements in various regions of the Soviet Union. Although by 1949, all Germans were reported “to have a roof over their heads,” only about 50 percent lived in their own houses (either built for them upon their arrival in their place of deportation or else built by settlers themselves). The rest of the special settlement contingent were housed with local residents and were still awaiting permanent housing or lived in barracks and even in public facilities such as clubs, bath-houses, storage rooms, and barns.55 This housing situation was compatible to that of the other special settlers. Many Germans remembered that only in the 1950s did the majority of the settlers begin to live in relatively decent conditions and some people, who previously lacked any housing, were able to obtain loans and build their own houses.56 Many Germans, however, attribute this change in the positive direction to the overall improvement in living standards in the country that was slowly recuperating after the war, rather than to any efforts on the part of the Soviet government or Soviet officials to improve the conditions of Germans in particular. Yet what matters the most is that it took at least ten years for most German deportees to finally settle in and call any space under a roof their “home.” It should be noted, however, that if the overall quality of life among German special settlers had improved by the late 1940s, it was at least partially due to the fact that many Germans were able to receive garden plots for private use and were able to acquire (either through purchase or receiving as a gift) some livestock of their own to supplement their daily food. As we discussed in Chapter 3, in the Soviet Union at all times, but especially after the war, personal gardening plots were very common and often made the difference between hunger and sufficient provisions. In the context of the Soviet Union, “private” never implied private ownership of the land or any property but rather the allocation of state land “for temporary use” by an individual family. Although local authorities occasionally distributed food among settlers, it was often the lack or existence of private plots that made the vast difference in the settlers’ lives. In the summer of 1942, many provinces reported that only about 10 percent of German settlers had been able to receive gardening plots.57 For example, in the Novosibirsk region, out of 5,475 German settler families only 586 families had any land to cultivate.58 In other words, as many as 4,889 families (or roughly 90 percent) were still awaiting their turn to receive plots of land to cultivate. However, this situation improved slowly but surely over the next few years. For

94

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example, by 1947, 36,279 families (34.3 percent) out of 105,817 German families in Siberia (exact location unspecified) had garden plots, while 29,102 families (27.5 percent) possessed large livestock (e.g. cows).59 By 1949, Kazakhstan reported that almost all settlers (98 percent) here had garden plots and some livestock.60 Similar statistics were reported nation-wide. These numbers might be over-inflated because, according to various memoirs, some German settlers still remained without a plot to garden as late as 1949–50. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the land distribution was widespread by the early 1950s and that many, if not all, Germans benefited from their “labor of love” and the small harvests of potatoes and other vegetables from their plots of land.

Employment One of the restrictions placed on German special settlers was the loss of control over their employment. Due to various laws and lack of passports, Germans were assigned jobs regardless of their wishes and often also of their qualifications. Pre-deportation statistics show that ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were among the best educated people of the Soviet Union. Fleischhauer notes that at the end of 1920s, 42 percent of Germans residing in the Volga German Republic were employed in non-agricultural jobs. These Germans included industrial workers of various types (e.g. textile workers), liberal professionals, industrialists, contractors, and Germans serving in the army.61 By the end of 1930s, the Volga German Republic possessed seventeen institutions of professional and higher learning, including agricultural and pedagogical institutes.62 Even in agriculture and in rural settings, many Germans had positions and training above that of the average collective farm worker. Germans were said to possess valuable skills and qualifications in massive numbers. G. Luft notes that among Germans in the Volga region working in the agricultural sector (the overall number is unspecified), there were 12,744 tractor drivers and mechanics, 927 other drivers, 1,137 agronomists and veterinarians, and many other skilled workers. Overall, there were more than 20,000 Germans with some professional qualification employed in agricultural production, and this number was considered extraordinarily high by the standards of the time.63 When Germans arrived in their new places of residence, local officials noticed that there were many skilled Germans among the settlers, and many of them possessed higher (post-secondary) education. For example, in one Siberian settlement, among 1,300 Germans suitable for employment, 574 (44 percent) had some professional training. Of these, there were sixty-six teachers, fortyseven doctors, fourteen artists, twenty-three engineers, five lawyers, 120 economists, eighty-five industrial production managers, and others, including professors and scientists who were not accounted for.64 In another Novosibirsk region settlement, 260 Germans, or 20 percent (the overall number of Germans in this settlement may be calculated at approximately 1,300), possessed professional skills, including five agronomists, forty-four teachers, three doctors, seventeen nurses, thirty-four economists, three scientists, three lawyers, and

Life in special settlements 95 others. Another 790 Germans of this group of settlers (presumably 60 percent) were skilled workers or even government employees, who had formerly worked in regional committees (raikomy) of the Communist Party and even NKVD.65 Similar statistics existed elsewhere. The overwhelming majority of these educated, skilled, and professional Germans, however, were employed after deportation in the agricultural sector in jobs that required no skills or qualifications. A decree of October 30, 1941, issued by the Council of People’s Commissars (SNK) of the USSR, stipulated that all German special settlers from industrial areas were to be redistributed to agricultural regions in their new places of residence and were required universally to join local collective farms (kolkhozy) or state farms (sovkhozy).66 Ever since the collectivization campaigns, most Soviet farmers were part of a state or collective farm system. In practice, these two kinds of farms were very similar in that they were controlled by the government and were subject to specific regulations, state procurements, and state-controlled prices. Yet state and collective farms differed greatly in the form of payment each farmer received. State farmers received regulated monthly wages according to their qualifications and skills. Collective farm workers were paid according to their work measured in labor days (trudoden’). But they received their earnings only after all other fixed obligations of the kolkhoz were paid (e.g. production costs). In many instances, such a system of payment implied no wages at all or very little in terms of monetary rewards; in 1937, for example, 15,000 kolkhozy paid their workers nothing at all.67 Yet regardless of various differences in collective and state farm organization, most of the work in them was manual and agricultural in contrast to the more qualified jobs that Germans held prior to deportation. Table 4.3 shows that out of 237,468 employed Germans mentioned in this report, 168,215 (70.8 percent) were directly employed in the agricultural sector. The overwhelming majority of the remaining German settlers worked in the most harsh manual jobs, very often in timber cutting or lumberjacking. The kind of agricultural work that these settlers were expected to perform also made a difference in their experiences. In Central Asia, collective farm work predominantly included the cultivation of flax, cotton, and sugar beets, all time-consuming, labor-intensive, and back-breaking crops that were not at the time grown in the European parts of Black-Soil Russia from where these Germans came.68 During the special settlement regime and up until the present time, 90 percent of cotton picking is done by hand, and the work almost never stops during the harvesting season. In addition to requiring unusually strenuous labor, cotton picking often results in epidemics of intestinal and respiratory inflections and meningitis.69 Similarly, flax processing was extremely labor-intensive and involved many hours of predominantly manual labor. Many Germans who ended up in Central Asia found this type of unusual work especially burdensome.70 Many official documents reported that the Germans were unwilling to wait for any skilled employment and were eager to take any job that came their way. The German settler Andrei Nuss was reported as saying: “Give me a job, I cannot live without a job; if there are no jobs according to my qualifications and

96

Life in special settlements

skills, give me any job”71 The report stated that such sentiments were prompted by the guilt that these Germans felt, considering the war to be “their fault.” Despite such gross misinterpretations, most likely the statements about Germans’ desire to get any job were correct for the simple reason that any form of employment in special settlements provided a settler with a chance for survival, while unemployment almost certainly meant starvation, dystrophy, and possibly eventual death. It is very difficult to trace the exact employment patterns among German settlers due to the constant flow of workers from one industry to another and movement in and out of localities and because of the massive amount of relevant yet fragmentary documents. Yet we can estimate that by the end of 1948, of all the registered German settlers, who numbered 1,014,270 people including the dependants of able-bodied workers,72 72,170 Germans (5.1 percent) were employed in state farms (sovkhozy) and 752,812 (54 percent) worked in collective farms (kolkhozy). Another 212,194 (15 percent) Germans worked in the coal-mining industry; 180,405 (12.8 percent) had jobs in the timber industry (mostly as lumberjacks); 96,619 (6.9 percent) were engaged in construction work; 18,895 (1.3 percent) worked on railroad construction; 33,309 (2.4 percent) were employed in the metallurgical industry; 4,000 (0.3 percent) were involved in chemical industries; 7,862 (0.56 percent) in fishing; 15,913 (1.1 percent) in light industry, and finally 7,862 (0.56 percent) worked in the production of building materials.73 If some of the skilled agricultural workers later found employment according to their skills,74 professional employment was often not attainable for doctors, artists, scientists, teachers, professors, and others. Very few exceptions only proved this fact.75 The employment of Germans in education was outright forbidden. Teaching was considered an especially “sensitive” employment as it presumably allowed a lot of room for contra-revolutionary indoctrination and propaganda. These employment patterns, which lasted well beyond the end of the special settlement regime in 1955–56, resulted in a massive loss of education and skills on the part of Soviet Germans. According to various memoirs and interviews, many professionally trained Germans who acquired their training prior to 1941 and experienced deportation in 1941–45 were never again employed in any field even remotely relevant to their professional training. At times, control over the employment of German settlers took extreme forms.76 Such was the “Narym case” when German settlers in various parts of the Novosibirsk region were resettled in Narym in 1942.77 Narym was a small place with a long history. A traditional place for tsarist exiles, over time Narym housed Decembrists, rebels of the Polish uprisings of 1830–31 and 1863–64, narodniki, Social Democrats, and finally such future revolutionary figures and prominent Soviet leaders as Iosif Stalin and Valerian Kuibyshev. Located on the banks of Ob’ River between Tomsk and Novosibirsk, Narym had always been a major center of the river fishing industry and a place infamous for its harsh climate. The average daily temperatures in the winter months rarely rose above 4°F but were often in the negative, occasionally reaching
40°F. Administratively, Narym had always been a part of the Tomsk region. In the Soviet period,

Life in special settlements 97 Narym became Narym okrug (county), an administrative subdivision of Tomsk region. This administrative change greatly extended its borders. During World War II, however, Narym lacked local manpower to fish the rich waters of Ob’ River and other smaller rivers and lakes, while the country needed its fish to support the war efforts. It was decided that some Germans settlers who were not mobilized into the labor army should come and work in Narym in the fishing industry. Hence it was here that the deported Germans were sent to work. In order to avoid long-distance relocation, it was decided that only “local” German settlers from the Novosibirsk region should be diverted to Narym. The employment quotas were stated in the resolution of July 1, 1942 and are reflected in Table 4.2. The problem with this employment was that the Novosibirsk region covered more than 178,000 square kilometers (69,000 square miles, roughly equal in size to the US states of Oklahoma or North Dakota). Hence, this move involved further resettlement and a second relocation for the Germans who were forcefully sent to work in Narym. Many Germans had to travel as far as 300 or 400 miles to get to Narym region. They barely had had any time to settle down after their initial deportation in 1941–42, when they were uprooted once again to Narym because of the extreme control over the employment of special settlers (in contrast to earlier deportations of entire peoples). This form of employment was officially differentiated from the labor mobilization (trudarmee) and was in fact considered to be much more “privileged” than mobilization. Thus, German resettlers going to Narym were allowed some time to sell their “private” gardening plots of land and livestock (mostly cows), Table 4.2 Plan of employment in Narym fishing industry, by Raions of the Novosibirsk region Name of raion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Bolotninskii Izhmorskii Kargatinskii Kochenevskii Moshkovskii Oiashinskii Tatarskii Titovskii Toguchinskii Topkinskii Tiazhinskii Cherepanovskii

Overall

No of Germans residing in each raion

To be employed in Narym fishing industry

2,352 5,054 2,025 1,610 1,508 1,308 2,074 4,205 4,162 1,115 1,646 2,519

1,000 3,500 1,000 1,000 1,000 ,800 1,000 1,500 1,500 ,500 1,000 1,200

(42.5%) (69%) (49%) (62%) (66%) (61%) (48%) (35.7%) (36%) (45%) (60.7%) (48%)

29,578

15,000

(50.7%)

Source: GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, l. 41, as published in Migratsionnye protsessy, pp. 309–310. Issued on 1 July 1942.

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unlike those who were labor mobilized. Initially, local officials disputed the right of settlers to sell any property they could not take along with them. These officials argued that settlers’ cattle had to be turned over to Zagotskot (the ministry in charge of cattle procurement) in exchange for promissory notes that were supposed to compensate settlers in their new place of employment. These officials further argued that the small plots of land that some settlers “possessed” and used for growing food for personal consumption actually belonged to local collective farms in the first place and could not be sold. Those few German settlers who had managed to receive such plots of land or managed to acquire any cattle despaired when they heard that once again they had to exchange their possessions for promissory notes. They still remembered too vividly that the promissory notes issued to Germans in exchange for their livestock and houses at the time of their initial deportation had never been fully paid. Hence, Germans going to Narym appealed to “higher authorities.” The person in charge of employment for Narym region, Comrade Lushin, resolved these problems in favor of the German special settlers going to Narym. First, the sale of their personal possessions, including gardening plots and livestock, was allowed. Although all land belonged to the state and could not be officially sold, there existed a system of unofficial exchange of the right to cultivate land for some monetary reward, which in principle was similar to the sale of land, yet was never recorded or registered as such.78 Second, Germans who were to be employed in Narym were allowed to take all their possessions with them without any restrictions on their weight. The exception was only made for large cattle which had to be sold before relocation. Although it was commonly understood that the settlers had accumulated very little since their initial deportation, at least on paper they did not have to part with any of their possessions.79 More importantly, the German settlers newly employed in the Narym fishing industry were expected and even required to take their families along with them. To facilitate the relocation, only families with a small number of children (two or less) and at least two working adults (usually a child over fourteen years of age and a mother) were subjected to relocation to Narym. To fulfill the norms for employment quotas, occasional exceptions were made for families with one working adult, but overall, pregnant women and mothers of many young children were excluded and these restrictions functioned efficiently. Also excluded were the settlers with a proven record of experience in “deficit professions,” which were in short supply on local collective farms, including, for example, mechanics, blacksmiths, tractor and combine harvester operators, carpenters, wood and metal turners (tokar’), and their families.80 German special settlers were delivered to their new places of employment by railroad cars and ships. Although there were some delays in the relocation process and settlers rarely took off on the day they were scheduled to leave, by the end of November 1942, 13,818 Germans had arrived in Narym raion just as the harsh winter was starting in earnest.81 Once again as in the case of earlier deportations, the majority of the settlers were women and children. There were at least 3,430 children among these relocated families.82 Infants and toddlers,

Life in special settlements 99 who usually made up half of all children, were habitually placed in “daycare orphanages” (detsad-internat).83 This state system of boarding facilities was designed for children with living parents who were unable to care for their children (often due to alcoholism) and was considered the most unfortunate place for a child to live in. Regardless of the optimistic reports about the preparations made to receive the German resettlers that Narym fishing industry officials sent to the regional administrations in Tomsk and Novosibirsk, very little had been done to acclimatize the Germans or to prepare to employ and house them to survive the harsh Narym winter. Crucially, local industries were not ready to employ so many newcomers in jobs related to fishing. In many cases there was a real shortage of boats and netting for fishing that prevented the Narym fishing industry from fulfilling its production quotas, despite its newly found surplus of workers. As a result, only a fraction of Germans were involved in fishing immediately after the relocation in 1942 and even several years thereafter.84 Many Germans were sent to cut timber and were engaged in manual timber processing (e.g. clearing trunks of branches and chopping wood into pieces that could be easily transported).85 Many more German resettlers were sent to work in the least productive local collective farms infamous for their “low production quotas.” These kolkhozy, however, used German labor for jobs other than agricultural work. Most popular were jobs related to wood chemistry such as the production of rosin that was later used in the production of paper and soap and the production of specific goods like bakhily (covers for shoes),86 skis, and so on.87 As was often the case with special settlers, living conditions remained very harsh in Narym. Although local officials were supposed to prepare adequate housing for resettlers in advance of their arrival in Narym, the housing offered to settlers was miserable. Moreover, in many cases the provision of food was insufficient. To improve production quotas, local officials gave out extra bread and other foods to those workers who fulfilled or over-fulfilled their production norms. Yet this did not help much. Many Germans and local residents became sick from eating inedible products such as hey, moss, and carrion for lack of food.88 Others were not compensated with money for their labor for months on end, and were forced to use certain types of buttons taken from their clothing as tokens of payment, or rather future repayment.89 Despite hardships and the lack of fishing jobs, local authorities acting under incentives from Moscow issued orders in November 1942 to register German settlers in Narym permanently.90 In the summer of 1944, however, local authorities made 295 families (or 765 people) go to Novosibirsk and work in different factories there.91 Narym officials found it impossible to employ all the Germans that they had requested. For these unfortunate people, the lack of local jobs and resources meant another round of suffering and resettlement due to official misguided regulations and complete official control over their labor.92 Similar situations with employment-based relocations continued up until the end of the special settlement regime. Although these cases occurred only occasionally and sporadically, they nevertheless caused much grief to the Germans

100

Life in special settlements

affected by them and showed an unprecedented and extreme degree of official control over the special settlers’ employment. One of the last cases of employment-based relocation took place as late as 1952. The Council of Ministers of the USSR in Moscow decided that there was a surplus of German workers in the “Molotovneft’” oil industry in Krasnokamsk in the Perm region and in the “Buguruslanneft’” oil industry in Orenburg. Hence it was decided to send “some” of the Germans residing there (a number to be determined by local officials) to work in the oil industries of “Tatneft’” in Kazan in the Tatar ASSR and “Bashneft’” in the Bashkir ASSR.93 For Germans, this order entailed another arduous relocation that moved them 300 to 600 kilometers away from their new homes and required them to begin all over again.94 Overall, patterns of employment among special settlers affected their professional qualifications and training for years to come. Ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union who once were known as the most educated people with advanced professional training prior to World War II lost their professional qualifications as a direct result of the control exercised by local officials over their labor in the special settlements. Although this point will be scrutinized in detail in Chapters 5 and 6, we should note that these patterns of employment disrupted familial ties and traditional ways of life, and often prevented Germans from successfully acclimatizing to their new lives and also undermined the professional and educational potential of ethnic German deportees in the Soviet Union for years to come.

Social welfare sector Needless to say, if local officials could barely fulfill orders to compensate German settlers for the promissory notes given to them at deportation, they could do even less when it came to the social welfare services. For years to come, daycare, schools, and nursing homes and pensions for the elderly were the last thing on the minds of hard-pressed officials. Such services were available only scarcely and inadequately even to free rural residents in the postwar years. Yet such services are crucial to the normal functioning and even survival of any community, and the lack of these social services in special settlements had great consequences for German special settlers. Schooling had always been one of the priorities for the ethnic German population in the Soviet Union, and daycares were widely available to Germans prior to deportation. Early Soviet educational policies assured that the overwhelming majority of children received at least rudimentary education prior to World War II, and many German children had completed high school or special evening classes before the war’s onset. As mentioned earlier, prior to deportation, Germans were among the best educated and most skilled ethnic groups in the entire Soviet Union, often second only to Jews. Numerous reports and personal recollections verified that basic education and daycare was widely available to Germans across Soviet territory before 1941. For example, for the 606,532 people residing in the Volga German Republic (including Russians and other

Life in special settlements 101 Table 4.3 Number of German special settlers in various sectors of employment, by industrya No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Name of Narkom (industry)

Nos employed

No.

Name of Narkom (industry)

Collective farms Coal mining State farms Timber cutting Non-ferrous metallurgy Local industry (non-specific) Ferrous metallurgy Fishing industry Railroad construction Oil mining Paper production Food production NKVD (informers) Light industry Electric power stations Retail Building Industry Chemical industry Ammunition industry Health and Medicine related industries Production of building materials Education Inland water transportation Textile industry Infrastructure-related (communal) industries Electric power supply industries Tank production Meat and milk industry Armament industry Agency for collecting unorganized productionb Aviation industry Heavy industry Mine and mortar industry Foreign Commerce Rubber industries Defense industries

147,829 1,358 20,386 9,470 3,385

37

Industry for production of mid-size machinery Water supply industries Automobile production Social welfare Fuel Narkom of Finances Machinery production Communications Shipbuilding Lathe production Civilian construction State Security Agency Navy Department of Justice Lather production Central Administration of Industry Central Admin. of Purchasing and Supply Central Administration of Timber Production Central Admin. of Northern Sea Shipping Routes Central Administration of Hydrolysis Industry Central Administration of Railroad Building Gas Industry Central Administration for Labor Reserves Committee for Unorganized Productionc Committee for Arts Union of Cooperation for Invalidsd Central Union of Consumer Societies Soviet state institutions (administrative and educational) Private entrepreneurs Auto transportation Total

12,396 ,567 7,575 2,976 ,16 — 2,696 2,879 ,529 ,121 1,991 ,389 ,255 ,600 1,125

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

,680

55

,916 1,328

56

,672 ,281 ,931 — 3,542 ,466 ,961 ,449 ,391 ,138 , 82 ,226 ,681

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Nos employed ,569 ,135 , 61 , 4 , 97 , 47 — , 79 ,324 ,109 , 9 — — , 5 — ,170 — , 53 — — , 65 — — — , 21 — — 6,820 — — 237,468

Source: compiled based on GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 257, ll. 94–97. Note a The document, on which this table is based, is undated but must have been compiled sometime during 1946. The numbers are not all-inclusive but very indicative. Subsequent GARF documents reveal that most Germans employed in “prestigious” high-tech industries (military, foreign commerce, education) were in the majority of cases employed in janitorial and similar positions. b This agency (Narkomzag) was created to collect non-traditional surplus from the population which included but were not limited to mushrooms, hunt-related products (skins and meat), berries, and so on. People who brought in goods received monetary rewards but compensation was based on meager state-regulated prices. c It is not clear what was the difference in terms of responsibilities between the Narkomzag and this Committee. d This union created artely which employed exclusively invalids and produced handicrafts.

102 Life in special settlements nationals in addition to Germans),95 there were 446 schools which provided education at all levels up through high school to 117,160 school-aged children, including almost all German children in the region.96 Moreover, there were also 180 daycare centers for children aged six weeks to six years old.97 According to official statistics, all children of school age were provided for, and all parents who expressed a desire to put their children in daycare were able to do so. We need to remember, of course, that the availability of daycare facilities in the Soviet Union in general varied greatly from towns to villages and from town to town. Daycare was widely available in urban settings. Yet in the villages, childcare often took different forms. Some daycare centers were located so far from many villagers that daily trips were simply impossible. These daycares offered seasonal (harvest-time) extended stay care for children that allowed parents to leave their children in daycare centers Monday through Friday and to only take them home for the weekends. As a matter of fact, many rural nonsettler women at the time worked on collective farms only seasonally. Although they did over 80 percent of work on their private garden plots, these plots were generally located near their homes, thus allowing rural women to take care of their children and attend to their housekeeping duties.98 Most importantly, women traditionally relied on kinship networks to facilitate the care of their children. Elderly women often watched children of their relatives and neighbors, thus providing a substitute for state facilities. In many rural locations, and especially in Central Asia, it was still commonplace in the 1940s to have numerous children.99 In large families, older children started to watch over their younger sibling at a tender age, freeing their mothers for other tasks. The rural Soviet shortage of daycare facilities100 was successfully addressed by a combination of kinship networks, child help, and in Central Asia (and to varying degrees elsewhere) by still a large number of unemployed women. Surprisingly, childcare arrangements also differed according to family income, or class, a difference which in theory never existed in the Soviet Union. Yet in practice, many better-off women, especially those in large cities, hired peasant girls as nannies to take care of their children and to help with household chores.101 In other words, some form of childcare support, whether state, familial, or private, was available nearly universally for women who had to work and needed help taking care of their children. Moreover, recent studies show that during the war years childcare was widely accessible to Soviet citizens in zones that were not occupied, and the network of daycare centers expanded rapidly between 1941 and 1945. In Siberia, for example, in 1942–45 all children of appropriate age in urban centers were able to attend daycare centers, whereas in rural areas seasonal daycare centers were also available.102 Similarly, local authorities in the Krasnoyarsk region registered 12,106 children without parents as of 1944. These authorities placed 10,928 (90.3 percent) of them in orphanages, and 503 (4.15 percent) more children were adopted. Another 675 (5.55 percent) children were still awaiting their turn to be sent to orphanages or adopted.103 Although none of these facilities functioned optimally during the war and none possessed adequate financing to offer good

Life in special settlements 103 accommodation and food supplies to the children, nevertheless these facilities offered at least some basic care and supervision for the majority of young children in Siberia during the war. However, the situation was very different for Germans in special settlements. The social welfare system, as well as the system of kinship networks essential to life in rural settings, barely existed or was unavailable to ethnic Germans in exile for five to fifteen years. We can barely speak of the existence of childcare centers. Moreover, until 20 June 1944, there were no official regulations requiring the schooling of children of the German special settlers or giving them opportunities for post-secondary education. Many younger deportees remembered that they were sent to local schools in an ad hoc manner which prevented children from acquiring even basic literacy or they were educated at home by their relatives. During the war years, local NKVD branches reported that most German children were not in the position to attend schools. Local officials wrote that “in several regions, children do not get any schooling at all, while in others only 20 to 30 percent attend [schools]. No work is being done locally to solve the problem of educating children of German special settlers. There are not even statistics available on [the numbers of] German children who should go to schools.”104 In another example, in 1943, in one of the factories employing German deportees, 135 German children lived with their parents, of whom seventy-four were of school age. None of them attended schools, and the authorities lacked the time and energy to devote to this problem.105 In Omsk oblast’ in 1943 only thirty-one of the 565 German settler children in Bol’sherechensk district attended school, and only eight or ten (out of an unaccounted number of German children) attended schools in the Iurginsk district.106 Even German settler children who wanted to attend school and whose parents had the energy and resources to think about education encountered often unsurpassable barriers. Some Germans dropped out of school because teachers did not want to bother with German children who spoke Russian poorly. These teachers refused to correct their homework or involve them in class activities.107 Moreover, the situation was further complicated by the fact that German special settlers were not allowed to move outside of the area of their immediate settlement, and children of special settlers were restricted in their movements just as their parents were. The mobility of settlers was often limited to one small village and not even an entire district. In practice, this meant that children who finished elementary schooling available in their local villages and collective farms could not go to neighboring towns and cities to attend middle and high school, let alone college or university. Numerous documents attest to this problem.108 The overall living conditions (such as the lack of winter clothing needed to attend schools) affected the situation of German settler children in many ways. As a result of their unfortunate living conditions and lack of childcare arrangements, during the first half of 1942 alone Kazakhstan officials took charge of 16,513 neglected settler children who lacked adult supervision, of whom 11,787 were besprizorniki,109 211 were foundlings, and others were simply left without adult supervision.110 The situation of children with relatives to take care of them

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was not significantly better. Table 4.4 conveys the general situation among the children of special settlers in 1945. In 1944, however, a decree of the Council of Minister of the USSR No. 13287 required all children of German settlers of the appropriate age to be educated in local elementary schools in the Russian language in the immediate area of their settlement. The document further acknowledged that complete school education (sredniaia shkola) and post-secondary education were not always available in the settlements. Children wishing to receive such education were allowed to travel to the nearest schools but only to those located within the administrative region of their settlements. In the various Soviet republics (e.g. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan), the region was defined by the borders of the applicable republic. At no time were the German settler children allowed to leave their respective administrative region or republic during or after the completion of their education.111 In reality, even basic schooling was not always available to German settler children until the end of the special settlement regime. Besides such indirect proof as the lower rate of literacy among settlers as compared to almost 100 percent literacy rate in the Soviet Union,112 official documents reported many problems with the availability of schools. Out of the approximately 800,000 children registered in all special settlements in 1952,113 several thousand orphan children did not live in orphanages and did not have any access to even elementary education, while 91,934 (11.4 percent) of “parented children” were reported to be left out of the school system for the lack of schools in their areas and for the lack of winter clothing to wear to school. Two years before, in September 1950, 8,484 German children in Kazakhstan, or 10 percent of the overall number, did not attend any school.114 Although the numbers presented in various documents do not necessarily correspond with one another, the same report estimated the percentage of German children with no elementary education to be 20 percent,115 and as many as 11 percent of Germans who were raised in special settlements remained illiterate for life.116 The situation with post-secondary education was not much better. Although a 1944 decree on education among special settlers did not prohibit post-secondary education among German special settlers, post-secondary education was effectively denied to German children until another decree of 1952, which finally regulated the education and admittance procedures for German children on the Table 4.4 Children of German special settlers in Kazakhstan, 1945 Children of school age of those in school Children of pre-school age of those in daycare Besprizorniki of those sent to orphanages Source: TsGARK, fond 837,opis 27, delo 224, l. 102.

93,941 29,837 (31.8%) 103,337 10,676 (10.3%) 6,138 4,861 (79%)

Life in special settlements 105 post-secondary level. Each region issued a similar decree in 1952 with regionspecific regulations. For example, the decree in Kazakhstan forbade the admittance of Germans to the Kazakh State University (a.k.a. Kirov University); the Alma-Ata Institutes of Jurisprudence, Pedagogy, and Sports; the Kazakh Conservatory; and finally even the Kazakh Metallurgy Institute. German settlers residing in Kazakhstan, however, were allowed to enter Kazakh Agricultural Institute, Alma-Ata and Semipalatinsk Veterinary Institutes, some teachers’ colleges (excluding the one in Alma-Ata), and finally the Karaganda Medical Institute.117 Yet the overall number of German students admitted to all these institutions of higher learning could not exceed a quota of 105 a year.118 Compared to thousands of students of other nationalities in each of these schools and the tens of thousands of German children in Kazakhstan, this number was truly miniscule. As a result of such policies, the German population in the Soviet Union became one the least educated minority groups after the war, and this lack of education had dire consequences for German postwar ethnic identity. The lack of a proper social welfare system, however, expanded beyond the basic rights of special settlers to childcare and education. It also included the lack of a social security (pension) system for the elderly and basic medical care. Overall, social welfare was virtually non-existent for the entire Soviet rural population in the immediate postwar years, and thus it was unattainable for German settlers until after the end of the special settlement regime. The first law that codified the payments of pensions to the elderly was issued only in 1956 under Nikita Khrushchev and was limited to the urban population. At that time, it was decided to establish the universal payment of pensions based on one’s work experience (thirty years for men and twenty years for women) and retirement age (sixty for men and fifty-five for women).119 Although German settlers were freed of any special restrictions in 1956, in effect this freedom did little for their well-being, as the majority of German ex-settlers were rural residents and collective farmers. Up until 1965, collective farmers were not entitled to any pensions, and hence Germans lacked access to pensions as well. Moreover, although rural women were by the law of 1935 entitled to two months of maternity leave with 50 percent pay,120 local farm officials commonly denied maternity leave to their female workers, especially during harvesting season, until a stricter and more compensatory law of 1965 was issued. Even the basic right to leave of absence due to sickness and sickness benefits became available to all collective farmers regardless of ethnicity only in 1970.121 Up until the Brezhnev era, the postwar Soviet Union had no resources for a universal welfare system,122 and the situation with medical facilities and the availability of medical care was not much better. In the countryside and even in urban centers, medical facilities were in a complete state of disrepair after the war or were altogether unavailable. Many doctors and nurses had to see sick and crippled patients in any premises available in the area. Typically, the smaller the village, the poorer and more overstrained were the medical facilities. In small kolkhozy and small settlements, special settlers usually designated one of the dug-outs as a “hospital” and staffed it with settlers with some medical training.

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For example, in one such building, there were two rooms, one for “hospitalized” patients and another for outpatient consultations and visits. Only one doctor and one nurse worked there. Although the rooms had primitive stoves in them for heating, both rooms were cold because there was nothing to heat them with. Patients who were hospitalized were not entitled to food rations. Hence any food available to them came either from a local stolovaia (public eating facility for workers) which shared its left-overs with patients or from the “good hearts of kind people.” This improvised hospital lacked bed sheets, pillow covers and even blankets. Hence patients slept directly on mattresses and were often covered up with one or two mattresses to keep them warm.123 The situation in urban centers was a little better, though not substantially. Although some of the ill settlers in villages with life-threatening illnesses were theoretically allowed to go to the regional centers and get medical help there, special settlers were not able to secure passes from officials to leave their settlement areas; nor were they offered any assistance in getting there. The few ambulances available in urban centers never made trips to local village hospitals to pick up settlers, and the severely sick patients had no means to get to the hospital on their own unless some relative or friend could arrange to borrow a collective farm horse and wagon.124 In many orphanages, no clinics existed until well into the 1950s. Many children with infectious diseases (including tuberculosis and rubella) shared rooms, beds, and even dishes with healthy children.125 Such examples are numerous. Inevitably, since health facilities available to special settlers lacked equipment, medication, and often even staff, they failed to provide them with an adequate medical care. Of course, it may be argued that the situation with medical and childcare and other social services was unfortunate for all rural Soviet residents in the immediate postwar years. For example, in the 1930s and for many years thereafter, the lack of proper healthcare facilities with sufficient staff left rural healthcare in the hands of village healers and wise women, who for centuries offered healing services to the rural poor.126 But when it came to the social welfare sector, the crucial distinction between the rural free residents and special settlers was not in kind but rather in degree. This degree of difference was often stunning, and the lack of a community and kinship network also widened this gap. While the housing among rural residents was generally poor, the housing among settlers was even more so; if sufficient medical facilities were hardly accessible in godforsaken villages, they were even less accessible to special settlers; if daycare was not universally available in the villages, Germans had few or no elderly relatives to substitute for this lack of state support. This was applicable to many areas of life for special settlers. When the time finally came time for some social security and welfare benefits, these also reached (former) settlers later than other (free) residents, as the meager resources of the countryside were first allocated to the local rural population. This was especially true in terms of childcare and schooling. Whereas the majority of local rural children and young adults could continue, start, or resume their education immediately after the war, legal restrictions, lack of adequate resources in rural areas, and at times prejudice

Life in special settlements 107 against “fascists” made it overbearingly difficult for Germans to acquire an even rudimentary education.

“Personality factors” Even though the same laws and regulations were applicable to every German settler, the personality of a local party or farm official and the existence or absence of popular hatred toward Germans on the part of their immediate neighbors was a substantial variable in the experiences of ethnic Germans in exile. Germans remember that the attitudes of local residents and local officials to German deportees varied from extreme kindness to extreme cruelty. The difference was based solely on the personal attitudes of these people. The case of Germans was complicated by the fact that during the war years, the Soviet government carefully fanned hatred of Nazi Germans to facilitate the war effort, and some people, although not all, learned to hate all Germans as aggressors and killers without making any distinction between Germans of the Soviet Union and the Reichsdeutsche Nazis. The situation was further complicated by common knowledge that during the war, Nazi Germans treated the Soviet people in the occupied territories with brutality and hatred. Even though numerous accounts written by Germans in exile attest to acts of sincere kindness by locals toward deportees, popular hatred among the nonGerman Soviet population of the “damned fascists” during and after the war was nevertheless also reported. Many Germans remembered that they were afraid to speak their native language outside their immediate family, since they realized that the German language was perceived as the language of fascism and cruelty. Some Germans reported that they were beaten up on the streets by locals when they spoke German,127 and all Germans remembered that they preferred not to identify their nationality whenever possible. Some Germans mentioned that they were at times stunned by some officials’ rudeness and the strict enforcement of regulations that were relatively lax for other nationalities or were enforced laxly by other officials. For example, Lobanov, director of the Metallurgical Company in Cheliabinsk, wrote: It is well known that a German [in the Soviet Union] belongs to a nationality that is connected by blood to German fascism . . .. The Party is correct not to trust this nationality. As the experience of working with Germans shows, they express their nationalistic sentiments as a superior race, their connection with German fascism is undeniable, which still, up to this moment, draws [cherpaet] its espionage and sabotage cadres from this contingent . . .. This contingent is the main [contingent] upon which Hitler’s Germany relied.128 It was men like Lobanov who made Germans feel alienated and different from anyone else. In another example, the Party Secretary of Cheliabinsk province was

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outraged by the fact that “Germans sneak into [lezut] literally all spheres of popcultural life,” meaning that Germans take part in cultural events. He described a concert that seemed particularly ridiculous to him. After the reading of the poem “Zoia Kosmodemianskaia,” which included the words “Kill Germans, kill always and everywhere just because he is a German,” the next part of the program featured a German settler singing a patriotic, World War II Russian song. The party secretary ordered the concert organizer to “immediately change [his] attitude towards German participation in parties and concerts” and exclude “those fascists” from all the recreational activities of “our youth” and “our people” and from all the displays of “our Russian national culture.”129 Furthermore, Germans remembered that whereas attitudes toward German deportees of 1941–45 varied greatly, the treatment of Germans who were repatriated from Germany at the war’s end was universally harsh. If the earlier deportees were often perceived as victims of the Soviet policies or victims of their bad fortune to be born German at the time of the German aggression against the Soviet Union, postwar German repatriates were popularly considered “enemies of the people,” traitors, and collaborationists. Hence the situation of repatriated Germans was much more difficult in the first years in exile, and again just how they were treated depended greatly on the personal attitude of local party and farm leaders. Some party officials believed that repatriated Germans were fascists and true “enemies of the people.” These officials used their position to semi-legally forbid the registration of children by these repatriates.130 Moreover, they also often withheld money and grain allowances issued to facilitate the resettlement of incoming repatriates. It was established, for example, that in one kolkhoz in the Kaluga region, local officials distributed to repatriates only 1,750 rubles out of 20,000 rubles issued by the government for distribution to repatriates, while in other regions only 6,000 rubles out of 280,000 rubles were distributed.131 Official documents also attested repeatedly that German repatriates who formerly resided in the Baltic States were treated with particular caution and suspicion. NKVD officials believed that this group of Germans were more anti-Soviet than any other ethnic group and that they actively organized underground cells to engage in potential anti-Soviet actions. It was commonly reported that Germans from the Baltic States hoped for the US-British aggression against the Soviet Union and were preparing to support foreign efforts to overthrow the Soviet regime. Although occasionally other groups of Germans and peoples of different ethnic backgrounds were also viewed in this manner, reports about possible treason of German repatriates by far outnumbered such reports on other deported Germans or other ethnic groups.132 In a word, this and many other examples demonstrate that personal attitudes and individual ethnic hatred often played a large role in the deportation and exile experiences of ethnic Germans. For German special settlers, the personal views and values of individual officials and their spouses, relatives, and friends could make a difference between saving the life of a child or losing a child, between feeling like a “damned fascist” or a suffering person in pain.

5

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile and the end to hardships

During two months [ethnic Germans from the Caucasus] were pointlessly dragged back and forth on the Caspian Sea, and more people, especially children, were dying of starvation. They were just thrown overboard. My four-year-old son was thrown there as well. My other son, seven years of age, saw that. He grabbed my skirt and begged me with tears [in his eyes]: ‘Mommy, don’t let them throw me in the water. I beg you, leave me alive, and I will always be with you and take care of you when I grow up.’ . . . I always cry when I remember that [he] also died of starvation and was thrown overboard, which he feared so much.1

If the academic study of ethnic German deportation is already underway, next to nothing has been written on the particular experiences of German women in deportation and exile. Eric Schmaltz noted that “on the whole, the topic of Russian-German women’s experiences under Communism beckons enterprising historians interested in cultural and gender studies.”2 Separated from their fathers, husbands, and sons, German women survived a tragedy of unprecedented proportions in the Soviet Union of the 1940s and 1950s. Their experiences had many points in common with the experiences of other Soviet women who also suffered from abnormally strenuous wartime and postwar labor conditions and malnutrition. German women also shared much in common with women of other nationalities who underwent deportation immediately before, during, and after the war. But the experiences of German women were very different from the experiences of men, German or otherwise, and often very different from the experiences of women of other nationalities. Moreover, German women’s perception of these differences was even greater than their reality. Hence it is crucial to see how the experience of deportations and exile differed for women and men, and what role deportee women played during their life in exile. Some of the aspects of this peculiarity have been already discussed. As was noted above, women and men were generally separated from one another during deportation and placed on different trains on their way to exile. This practice created the phenomenon of “female echelons” in which the number of women greatly outstripped the number of men. Throughout the deportees’

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journey, even if men were present, mostly women were allowed to collect food and bury their dead. During exile, ethnic German women had to face abnormal gender imbalances which were greater than the case of other peoples in the Soviet Union. Finally, these women were forced to leave their children behind, abandon them, or at best place them in orphanages when they were forcibly driven away to join labor armies. All of this was discussed in previous chapters; however, there is more to the story of women who ended up in special settlements. These women suffered physically, physiologically, and psychologically unlike men. In the process of tracing their roles, various factors suggest that German women deportees believed that the experience of deportation and exile sought to “masculinize” or at least exploit women for the sake of economic production. Yet regardless of these hardships, many of which were peculiar to women, ethnic German women deportees nevertheless became de facto preservers of ethnicity in exile by passing on language, traditions, and religion to the next generation, even if, inevitably, their options and the available means of transferring their ethnicity were limited and oftentimes given up for the sake of survival. Besides official limitations and other hardships recorded in official documents, many women suffered from less visible but oftentimes more psychologically painful changes to their physical bodies. Nowadays many historians condemn the discourse of the body as a common denominator of “women’s experience” and argue that this concept tends to over-emphasize the male/female dichotomy and fails to explain how gender construction was involved in the discourse of power.3 However, the story of “a woman” would not be complete without a story of the “body,” especially since the failure to address the physiological changes among deported women is truly stunning. Although some of these ideas were new to the peasant communities of Germans and were different from many present-day standards, German women almost universally in their testimonies mentioned that in what they called “traditional” society, the image of a woman and her internalized self-perception was influenced greatly by her looks, by how much she complied with the idea of “feminine” and “beautiful.” Moreover, physiologically, the basic ideas of being a woman implied the functioning of the body in ways dissimilar to the functioning of the male body, which is usually measured, on everyday bases, by such outward signs as breasts and menstruation. Yet what were the psychological consequences and consequences in terms of gender roles that might result from the lack of such signs? Ethnic German women faced a serious challenge to their notions of femininity and womanhood when they experienced amenorrhea, as was often the case after deportation.4 The inability of a female body to function according to its monthly cycles under the strenuous labor and living conditions and general malnutrition and starvation was not in any way a new phenomenon. Up until the present day, such changes have been recorded in many places around the world resulting from a great variety of life circumstances. Moreover, although women

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 111 in exile may not have realized it at the time (and most likely they did not due to the lack of contact with the outside world), many women in the Soviet Union, not just deportees, ceased to menstruate during the harsh years of World War II, and for many young women the menarche was “naturally” postponed (although we may never have exact statistics on just how many women were affected by this syndrome). Yet ethnic German women in exile thought that they were the only ones who for the first time faced such an abnormal phenomenon. One of the women later remembered that a “kindly German nurse ‘consoled’ us with the following words, when we expressed sorrow about this condition: ‘Where are you supposed to find extra blood to give up?’”5 The overall sense of sorrow over this condition was expressed by all women who found the courage to talk openly about such intimate matters.6 The sorrow that these women expressed is not surprising for many reasons. Many psychological and medical studies reveal that women perceive their menstrual period as a “mark of womanhood.” One such study argues, for example, that “the primary positive feeling many women have about menstruation is that it defines them as a woman . . .. Sometimes the defining characteristic is closely linked with being able to have babies . . .. But other times the defining characteristic is equally important apart from the potential to reproduce . . .. Over and over again, women found different ways of saying, ‘. . . it’s part of myself, part of what makes me a woman . . . it’s so integral . . . it’s supposed to happen.’ ”7 Another study further asserted, “Not all women breed, but nearly all women bleed, or have bled.” For women and even society at large, only a menstruating woman is seen as “normal.”8 These studies further show that regardless of whether menstruation causes joy, pride, pain, or embarrassment among young women, menarche signifies the moment of becoming “a woman” and allows for the construction of friendship ties to other women. Moreover, menstruation and the resulting ability to reproduce serve as main points of identification for women allowing for and constructing a greater community of “we,” women, and “they,” men. But this basic and biological right to self-identification and expression of femininity and womanhood was effectively denied to a great number of women in exile. In a way, the deportees felt that the “manly” labor of timber felling that these women had to perform and the “manly” life of complete self-reliance that they were forced to live had made their bodies, by the lack of menstruation, also “manlier.” The basic outward attribute of being a woman had ceased to exist due to the harsh conditions of deportation and exile, and this “masculinizing” mark psychologically alienated deported women from the greater community of “Soviet women.” The outward attributes of “femininity” were further challenged by German women’s understanding that they were aging prematurely and losing their beauty and attractiveness as a result of deportation and hard labor. Besides complaining about their “wrinkly faces” and “ugly hands,” these women believed that the experiences to which they were subjected by the Soviet government and the resulting premature aging altered them in a way as to make them no longer

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attractive and potential “marriageable” material. Several women perceived their own destiny and the destiny of their mothers, sisters, daughters, and female friends with the following sentiment: Work, misery, hunger, and loss of rights had made many a once-attractive woman old and wrinkled. This disenchanted many a husband who had over the years kept himself aloof from strange women, but now, having returned to his family, no longer wanted to accept his emaciated, worn-out, miserybranded wife as his spouse, left his wife and family in the lurch and took a Russian woman ‘to wife’!9 Some men even remembered later that women who looked “ugly” and well over fifty years of age were actually under thirty-five.10 Recent studies have shown that, objectively, many rural non-settler women in the Soviet Union also aged prematurely by the standards of urbanized and still urbanizing Soviet society.11 But what matters is that the ethnic German women in exile believed that they were punished and suffered much more than any “free” woman. With normalization of life and the coming of relatively more abundant years, many young women began to menstruate again and were able to conceive, carry, and give birth to numerous children.12 Many women, in fact, measured the return of their life to normality by the reappearance of menstruation. Nevertheless, disgust with one’s body and the sense of womanhood betrayed for the sake of economic production became a predominant theme of life for the settler women. These physiological changes posed new and unexpected challenges to a notion shared by ethnic German women in exile of what it meant to be a woman. To add to this challenge, German women later remembered that ethnic German men intermarried in massive numbers with ethnic Russians and other nationalities while only an insignificant number of ethnic German women did likewise.13 German women deportees cited premature aging as the most common explanation of this phenomenon (the existence of which is also supported by the available documents). But the lack of intermarriages with deportee women may be partially explained by the regulations of the deportations. According to the MVD-issued order of February 19, 1949, “About Organization of Personal Control of Deportees and Special Settlers According to the New System,” all settlers were registered in family (posemeinye) books which reflected their marital status and information on the number and residence of their children. These family books were meant to provide better control over the settlers and showed a curious division among male and female settlers. None of the spouses and family members of settlers who were non-German local residents and who were not subject to the “special conditions” of deportees were registered in these books. But it was clearly stated that the female settlers who intermarried with non-settlement men were to remain registered as deportees, while settler men who intermarried with indigenous and non-settlement women often semi- or even unofficially “disappeared” from the registration books.14

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 113 The virtual absence of intermarriages between local men and German deportee women was especially pronounced in Central Asia and was less evident in ethnically Russian parts of Asia, such as various locations in Siberia. Not only did the official system work to deportees’ disadvantage, but so did the cultural and linguistic barriers that separated Central Asian men and German women. These barriers were simply too great to allow for intermarriages.15 Surely the Central Asia that German deportees of World War II found was not the Central Asia that welcomed Bolsheviks two decades before. In the early years of its existence, the Soviet regime attacked Islam for its alleged hypocrisy and rigid dogmas, and the Soviet government abolished religious educational institutions and the Islamic legal system based on sharia (Islamic canon law) and adat (customary law). The Bolsheviks attempted to create Soviet people (both male and female) in Central Asia by replacing Arabic script with more “modern” Latin script for Central Asian languages (which was later replaced with Cyrillic); creating new territorial delineation (republics) for Central Asian peoples; and establishing new cultural amenities such as museums, theaters, and art galleries that were available and accessible to all.16 Moreover, the Soviet government introduced compulsory education in Central Asia, first at primary, then at secondary level for both genders. The education was completely secularized and promoted Soviet values and norms, including that of gender equality. New medical and social welfare networks tailored especially to women’s needs as mothers were established.17 The government also attempted to involve women in industrial and agricultural jobs. At the same time, legal reforms aimed to protect women’s rights by making under-aged marriages illegal and giving women a share of property after divorce. Along those lines, Zhenotdel, a Soviet bureau for work with women, attempted to improve women’s position by abrogating the practice of arranged marriages, kalym (bride price), and polygamy allowed by Muslim traditions. Zhenotdel workers also promoted their vision that there was a need to change a traditional Central Asian dress of parandja/parandzha (a total body robe draped over the head) and chachvan (a waist-length horsehair veil) to more Western dress. In 1926 Moscow decided to intensify the emancipation campaign that was quickly labeled by an Uzbek word hujum (an attack). Although each republic had its own version of the hujum aimed at the eradication of various “subjugating” gender practices, its key goal was deveiling and its key target areas were the cities of Uzbekistan, where the practice of wearing a veil was most visible and deeply entrenched.18 The results of various campaigns were at times stunning. By the mid-1930s, it became rare to see a fully veiled woman in urban centers, and many urban women came to regard the veil as “backward” and “primitive.” Moreover, the literacy rate rose from only 0.7 percent among Central Asian women in 1926 to 56 percent by 1939 (and would eventually rise to 96.9 percent in Kazakhstan; 98.0 percent in Kyrgyzstan, 96.2 in Tajikistan, 95.4 in Turkmenistan, and 98.1 in Uzbekistan, in 1959). Women were represented in significant numbers in various professions and skilled occupations, and often entered the job market as paid employees.19

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But this rosy picture was not what many deportees had witnessed when they arrived in Central Asia. Not all Central Asian women eagerly and willingly accepted the deveiling campaign, and some women opposed it vigorously. The local population, mostly pro-Islamist and raised on different norms and values, argued that the loss of the veil for women meant the loss of Islamic virtue for a female and Islamic identity for the community. Many women believed that the veil protected rather than restricted them, while others feared real and often expressed violence by men if they unveiled. As a result, many rural women continued to wear a veil or substituted it with a scarf that looked deceiving to Russian authorities. Moreover, many Central Asian men and women were rural and either could not or did not want to benefit from new advantages in education or cultural entertainment. Central Asian women remained fully subordinate in the domestic sphere and at best learned to carry the “double burden” of domestic work and public employment. In rural communities where many deportees were resettled, Central Asian women remained “invisible” and fully subjugated to their male family members. They were often abused and beaten by their husbands, were still often illiterate in the early 1940s, and subject to many traditional practices such as arranged marriages and bride price. So despite the dramatic changes that took place in Central Asia between the 1920s and 1940s, the cultural gap between Germans and Central Asians remained, at least to Germans, unbridgeable. Like Polish deportees, German women rarely talked about Central Asian men or women, and also like Polish deportees, when Germans talked about their new hosts, their short statements clearly betrayed their attitudes. While German deportees often remembered extreme kindness on the part of the local population, many deportees were nevertheless shocked by the society and culture they encountered in Central Asia, especially women. When German women mentioned ordinary Asian men in their accounts, these men were almost exclusively regarded as dirty, uncivilized, and uncultured. For example, it was shocking to German women that local men had lice and cared very little about it. When one German woman got lice from sleeping in a local hut and later, after initial panic, tried to get rid of them, local men simply laughed at her and could not understand why she wanted to kill “innocent creatures.”20 German women were not familiar with local eating habits, dress codes, home-making, and traditional festivities, and often found local foods inedible and traditions repulsive. More than once, German deportees noted with surprise that Central Asians ate in an “uncivilized manner,” meaning sitting on a carpet with their legs crossed. Some German women also feared that these men, especially if they were to become husbands, would be a bad influence on German children. Many deportees from European parts of the Soviet Union believed that “those children who played with [Kazakhs] grew wild and disobedient and lost their native tongue.”21 While many deportees noted that Central Asians were kind, friendly, and good hosts, it was still inconceivable to these women to marry such “uncultured men.” Local men also rarely saw any attraction in marrying German (and many other

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 115 ethnic) women deportees. The legal and economic position of special settlers was not enviable: advantages were few (if any), restrictions were many; and beauty did not abound among overworked women who also rarely fitted the Asian perception of what an attractive woman looked like. Cultural divide was important to Central Asian men as well. If these women did not understand and value the taste of shubat (fermented camel milk) and kumys (sour horse milk), why marry them? So it was not surprising that few intermarriages took place among local men and deportee women in Central Asia in the initial years of their deportation. Of course, history is never static. As time progressed, more and more Central Asians and Germans alike became Soviet people (sovetskii chelovek) who shared common background, language, and cultural dispositions and assumptions. As this change became pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s, intermarriages in Central Asia stopped being a rare commodity, though they did not became commonplace either. But this story belongs to a different generation living during another era, or another chapter, of Soviet history. Regardless of these hardships, women by default became the “preservers of ethnicity” by various means such as practicing religion, teaching their children to speak the native language, and passing on to their children customs and traditions that these women inherited from their ancestors. Needless to say, ethnic Germans and other deportees in the Soviet Union were never allowed to practice religion openly, except for a short period at the end and immediately following the war. In the first years of deportation, ethnic Germans had no strength and energy to think about religious practices systematically.22 Although many continued to pray and talk to God, it was challenging to even think of attending church. Their main goal was survival, and that goal was only partially achieved. When life began to normalize (in relative terms), the thought of organized religious practices became once again one of the concerns of life for ethnic Germans. Facing a de facto lack of men, German women were the first to think of organizing religious meetings. Many Germans later remembered that in the beginning, “our German people live[d] in Siberia, Central Asia, in the Far North without church and church regulations, until the women first awoke to the fact that man does not live by bread alone but needs something more.”23 Episodically, references in scholarly works attest to this fact by stating that the center of religious revival and religious practice during and immediately after the war were women. It took years and sometimes decades after the war for men to take over religious practices and become once again the center of religious life among ethnic Germans.24 The first gatherings for worship and prayer among deportees were very disorganized and were held in private houses or any location that attracted the least attention from the authorities. Many people remembered that: these groups did not have religious buildings; all religious meetings are held in private houses – exclusively in houses of some believers. Not a single

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Women’s dimension of Soviet exile group has a real pastor, although the members follow all religious rites [obriady] . . .. Although it was against the religious law, all religious rites were performed by lay people who knew more or less about religion.

This document stated repeatedly that those who performed religious rites were traditionally elderly women.25 Who attended these meetings? Germans remembered that mostly women and the elderly attended these congregations, and official documents confirm this. Thus, for example, one of the official reports mentions a gathering attended by “16 elderly people, nine crippled women and 11 women with infants.”26 Other documents show that of those who attended religious services, 96 percent were peasants (krestiane) and 75 percent were elderly, although by the standards of the time one became “elderly” at forty years of age. At least 54 percent of the participants were women, although it was more typical for such meetings for 69 percent or 78 percent of those presented to be women.27 Most commonly, people came to religion “houses” which functioned in place of churches for baptism and burials. The average ratio of these services was 1,000 baptisms to 700 burials. But for every thousand baptisms, there were typically only eight weddings, although this ratio differed slightly from region to region. Youth under the age of thirty rarely made up more than 10 percent of the participants, and even this percentage consisted primarily of young women and almost never men.28 Of course, women always preferred to have men conduct religious services. But given the demographic imbalance among settlers, this goal was not always attainable. Moreover, all personal testimonies that refer to religious matters attest to the fact that even in religious congregations with male pastors, the driving force behind the religious revival was their spouses or the elderly women of the community. Moreover, in general, women were more willing to risk prosecution for religious activities than men, partially because women were able to avoid being prosecuted more often than their male counterparts. Document collections on the “religious formations among special settlers – Germans and former kulaks” reveal that the majority of active participants and leaders of religious movements were, in fact, women.29 The example of East Kazakhstan is very revealing in terms of women’s role in religious practices. NKVD directive No. 20/23443, issued on April 23, 1945, ordered increased control over the religious formations among special settlers of German origin. As such Soviet decrees often said, the goal of this directive was to reveal any anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionary and treasonous activities among the settlers organized under the guise of religious meetings. This order reached the local NKVD office in East Kazakhstan on August 20, 1945. It instructed local officials to search for such “counter-revolutionary religious activities” and halt them through the use of highly trained agents and informers, who were willing to “save their countries from enemies.”30 Soon enough, numerous notes written by local officials were dispatched to Moscow reporting that religious meetings did in fact take place. In various villages of Vydrikha and Verkh-Uba regions, “small groups of prayers, mainly

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 117 elderly German women,” come together in groups of four to five in one of their huts to read the Bible and other religious books, especially during holidays. Moreover, the report said that the religious leaders of this area and these villages were all women – Ol’ga Shambel’, Eva Meider, and Amalia Kohk. Presumably, all of them were between forty and fifty-five years of age – the document described them as “elderly” but these women were still employed in various factories. In this particular instance, secret NKVD informers noticed nothing counter-revolutionary in the activities of these female religious leaders, and these women were not arrested.31 In a neighboring village, Maria Rudol’fovna Kun organized a regular religious congregation of German Lutherans in special settlements. Due to the lack of male counterparts, she also assumed the responsibilities of pastor. Besides being acquainted with religious services in her early childhood, her training to conduct religious ceremonies was the result of a long-lasting friendship with Pastor Reish (his first name was not mentioned) until his arrest in 1939 on the charges of treason and counter-revolutionary activities. On average, twenty to twenty-five people attended the meetings led by Maria, and those who attended were again predominantly female and elderly. NKVD informers reported that Maria went beyond performing religious rites; she allegedly talked at length about the difficult situation of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, about their unfair position and the unfair confiscation of their property and other possessions. It was also reported that during a gathering in the house of Emilia Vaikom, another female religious leader (also called Maria) talked about the fact that “Uncle Adolph” [Hitler] might have treated them better and that there was a need to think about assisting Germany. Such discussions, reported by the NKVD in 1944 while the war was still going on, apparently ceased to take place in early 1945 and thereafter after the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies. Although the documents are silent about Maria’s destiny, it is unlikely that her expressed or fabricated pro-German and pro-Hitler sentiments went unpunished.32 Close by, another German religious community existed in the village of Samarka, which originated in 1944. As might be expected, it too consisted of “elderly believers,” including Germans who were special settlers. Whereas earlier documents stated explicitly that believers were Lutherans, no affiliation of religious meetings in Samarka was mentioned.33 Perhaps the largest Lutheran network was maintained by Vasilii Iakovlevich Shenkel’, with the close assistance of three women – Eva Gert, Khristiniia Triber, and Natalia Shvartskopff. Although Natalia Shvartskopff was arrested by the NKVD in 1945 for “antiSoviet” work, Shenkel’ himself was not reported to possess any anti-Soviet sentiments.34 Finally, three more women were reported to host prayer meetings – Sheffer, Shpeer, and Kundel’ – in three different villages.35 If among Lutherans Germans women often took the leading position in religious services, religious leaders reported among Baptists were often men. The person who stood out the most among Baptist leaders was Genrikh Genrikhovich Goss. Born in 1906 in Grunfeld, Azerbaijan,36 Genrikh never had a

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chance to advance beyond high school.37 This fact, however, did not prevent him from becoming both a religious leader and a crusader for the rights of Germans in the Soviet Union. Shortly after being deported to Kazakhstan in 1941, Genrikh organized a Baptist group in the village of Bystrukha. Alongside with religious services, Goss urged his fellow Baptists to discuss the need for Germans in the Soviet Union to emigrate to their motherland, the need to restore their rights to private property, and to abolish the collective farm system. He also saw the need to discuss the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. Unwilling to wait for things to take their own course, Goss wrote numerous letters to Soviet officials in 1945–46 asking for permission to write his fellow Germans in the USA and to allow German special settlers to emigrate.38 For him, as for many other settlers, religious meetings united ethnic Germans and reminded them that they possessed common historical roots and a common destiny.39 But various studies of religion in the Soviet Union confirm that although men were often preferred to women as religious leaders among ethnic Germans (as well as other groups), this goal was not always unattainable. Thus, Christopher Zugger remembered that it was an elderly Catholic woman of ethnic German origin who maintained religious adherence and a small place of worship in her village. As a matter of fact, this woman, named Maria, maintained a “house chapel” in her garden shed from 1954 to 1969. Although she was prosecuted repeatedly by the authorities, harassed, and subjected to fines, she was “left alone,” allowed to live in her village, and finally managed to emigrate to Canada in 1980.40 All these facts do not necessarily indicate the feminization of religion in the sense in which this term was used by historians of Western Europe studying changes in religiosity in the early twentieth century. It implies, however, that women, besides other things, felt it was safer for them to engage in “risky” enterprises and they could rely on the discourse of their “emotionality, femininity, and silliness” to successfully avoid prosecutions for matters that would surely have resulted in imprisonment for men. This argument is partially supported by the fact that prior to 1947, when women were the predominant leaders of various religious congregations among the deportees, these religious women were more or less left alone. In 1947, many men, including pastors, returned from the labor armies to their families in exile and began to resume their positions as religious leaders in German communities. But the majority of these male religious leaders were soon arrested and charged with anti-Soviet propaganda. Men were more exposed and prone to persecution by the Soviet state than were women. Numerous arrests of male pastors gave women a sense that “the state and society does not care how we raise our children.” These women concluded that only through religious home schooling and the celebration of Christmas and other religious holidays was it possible for them to pass on any sense of religious life and ethnic identity to their children.41 Regardless of the fact that some religious practice was possible due to women’s efforts, the overall lack of religious freedom and disappointment with

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 119 religious practices led to the “blurring” of confessional distinctions between various religious denominations among Germans. Whereas the difficulty of practicing religion was an obvious and self-explanatory fact leading to a potential decline in adherence to visual attributes of religion, the break with more traditional German religious denominations – Lutheran, Catholic and Mennonite – was also the result of bitter disappointment with life. Many respondents in interviews mentioned that during the hard years in special settlements, and especially during the labor mobilization, settlers asked a simple question: “How could God let this happen to us?” Many followers of traditional religions turned to the Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and other Evangelical sects. Germans remembered that these “less traditional” sects promised more to them, arguing that they were the “right” religions since the “old” religions proved to be “wrong” because God punished all their adherents with deportation and exile. As a result, for example, some of the Lutherans and Catholics from the Omsk region converted to Pentecostalism (piatidesiatnichestvo), while many Mennonites in Siberia turned to Baptism.42 Several interviewees also remembered that some religious groups decided to superficially merge with Baptists as it was believed that Baptists were less prosecuted for religious practices immediately after the war than were other religious communities.43 In other words, an analysis of over 100 memoirs, interviews, and life stories of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union as well as NKVD reports suggests that in many ways, any particular religious denomination ceased to be the center of life for these Germans by the early 1950s and often thereafter. What unified these Germans was not necessarily any particular religious denomination but an attempt to preserve their “Germanness” by the means of practicing any religion in the name of common survival. This fact became crucial in creating a sense of a greater Russian-German identity; overall religious adherence became a symbol of resistance to the assimilationist policies of the Soviet Union and the focal point of identity for many, especially elderly, Germans. Although a detailed discussion of post-exile religious practices is needed and will be offered in Chapter 6, we can look at factors that affected these processes. Numerous interviewees remembered that during underground religious services, one could see people of various denominations in one meeting, something that had rarely happened before among Germans in Russia. For example, one German remembered that his grandfather was a Lutheran and preached occasionally as did his grandmother, who was a Mennonite. Curiously, both grandparents preached at the same congregations to the same audiences, and the discrepancy of religious denominations did not seem to bother anyone. Similarly, it has already been mentioned that many Germans converted to religions that were less persecuted and less “visible.” Lutherans were usually the first to be arrested, and the Lutheran woman pastor Elizaveta Davyd recollected that out of sixteen members of her group, only two were spared some sort of quasi-legal or official prosecutions.44 The religious practices of Germans had to adapt to another difficulty. The majority of the younger generation, born in exile, were not fluent enough in

120 Women’s dimension of Soviet exile German to attend Lutheran services and were not trained to follow Catholic services. Feeling alienated, they chose to embrace atheism or other denominations that were not so strict about the language of service. What remained important, however, was the fact that religion remained a factor of self-identification for Germans. While not practicing religion, many “Russian Germans” cite the religiosity of their parents and their superficial adherence to a religion as proof that they were not Russians or Soviets but Russian Germans. While mothers were not always successful in instilling deep religiosity into the younger generations, they nevertheless managed to preserve “religion” as a part of the ethnic identity of their children. These findings do not contradict research done for other communities of displaced peoples all over the world.45 While “notwithstanding difficulties, the migration can produce a maturation of the migrant’s personality, in all aspects, beginning from the religious one,”46 several factors can influence this process into reversing its direction. Thus, if a new society is culturally heterogeneous; if it rejects the particular religion of the migrants; if particular customs and traditions of migrants are suppressed or misinterpreted and laughed about; and if there is a difference of mentality between a settler community and outsiders (all of which were present in the case of ethnic German deportees), then the process of religious self-assertion changes direction. All migrants across time and space faced these factors, for “once they leave their first environment, their religious convictions fade away with their original culture,”47 although it takes more than one generation for migrants to become fully assimilated into the surrounding environment. Similarly, research has shown that communal and familial networks are crucial to religious preservation and religious self-assertion.48 Settlers, however, were stripped of these networks and hence lacked the backbone of such preservation in its unaltered form. This lack of networks was not even necessarily attributed to the distance which separated various family members. Kinship networks can potentially survive long-distance separation and various difficulties. However, there needs to be a continued interaction among different generations and continuous mutual services to one another.49 These two requirements were not present to any significant degree in the setting of special settlements. The majority of the oldest generation of ethnic Germans (the so-called generation of grandparents) died prematurely and children often lacked contact with their parents who worked elsewhere (for example, due to labor mobilization). Mutual help among kinship was also difficult due to a mere lack of resources. Although remnants of religious practices persisted among ethnic German settlers during their years in exile, the preservation of religion and ethnicity was directly linked to the survival of such networks. Finally, it is not surprising that women performed the functions of “preservers of ethnicity.” Many studies find that relying on their normative gender roles at a time of hardships during migration and displacement “migrant women’s commitments and obligations towards households and families . . . are generally stronger than those of their male counterparts,”50 even if there is no

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 121 Table 5.1 Statistics of answers to the question of who set an example and/or enforced religious training and/or other religious practices and traditions Number Mother Female relative Father or male relative No one Not mentioned Overall

Percent

61 29 7 14 26

45.5 21.2 5.1 10.2 19

137

100

Source: collection of interviews by the author.

demographic imbalance. As women often participate more in domestic affairs and the upbringing of their children than do men, they play a more crucial role in passing on the ethnic culture to the next generation, beginning with the basic instruction in religious teachings and rituals. Regardless of the role that women played in religious services, many men continued to believe that “it is written: the women in the congregation will remain silent.”51 Men sought to take as much control over church organization as possible. However, very few men felt enthusiastic enough about formal religious congregations to risk persecution so the control and maintenance of everyday religious practices remained de facto in women’s hands for years to come. Women, most often unintentionally and without recognizing it, also became de facto “carriers of ethnicity” when it came down to teaching children the language, traditions, and customs of their ancestors. Most commonly, women taught their children to speak German through folk-tales and songs, especially lullabies. They acquainted their offspring with traditions of holiday celebrations and showed them native customs of cooking and practicing folk medicine.52 Table 5.2 Religious practices among ethnic Germans in the 1940s and early 1950s

Men Women

Participateda % (ppl)

Believed but did Otherb not participate (%) (%)

Overall (%)

2.2 (3) 28 (38)

31 (42) 43 (59)

100 100

66.8 29

Source: Collection of interviews by the author. Notes a This includes participation in any sort of organized religious meeting, not necessarily a churchhoused meeting. b Several categories of people fell into the group of “other”: (1) people who failed to mention religion in their published interviews and life stories; (2) people who could remember or who were indifferent to religious practices; (3) people who said they were atheists and did not want to practice or adhere to any religion; (4) people who said they were generally very religious but at the time were either too disillusioned to pray or too weak to think about religion.

122 Women’s dimension of Soviet exile Children in special settlements received their first introduction to the German language and culture when they were still in the cradle. Women often used to sing lullabies to their newborns, and these lullabies were often the ones that these women in their turn had heard from their mothers. Although some Germans remembered their mothers singing to them, these lullabies mattered more to older children who were more aware of the meaning of words and heard these songs being sung to their younger siblings. When children grew up enough to start talking, they learned their first nursery rhymes. Many Germans remember that they were taught short rhymes with a mixture of Russian and German words. Many older women, however, remembered that they were afraid to teach their children rhymes only in German. They realized that it was better for their children to speak Russian well, and thought that children might get into a potentially explosive and dangerous situation with the authorities or neighbors if they accidentally spoke German. Nevertheless, many women still wanted their children to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of their native language, and they continued to recite short rhymes with an intermixture of words from both languages. Years later, almost everyone of the younger generation who grew up in the special settlements remembered these rhymes by heart, especially since they were very short and very easy to memorize. One of them reads: Stol – Tisch, ryba –Fisch, Nozhik – Messer, luchshe – besser, Chto takoe – was ist das? Masloboika – Butterfass!53 Unfortunately, those words were often the only knowledge of the German language some ethnic German children in the Soviet Union possessed. Probably more important were songs54 which children heard their parents, relatives, and neighbors sing when they were still young. One of the women told a story of her mother: When no one could hear, she used to sing songs in German and teach us how to sing them. Not that she ever did it in the way one learns songs in school, with pressure and a well-expressed need to memorize a song or a poem in order to receive a satisfactory mark. She just felt good about these songs, and sensing this attitude more than knowing it, we wanted to join her and learned, little by little, the words to her songs.55 Among these songs romantic ballads were very common,56 and so were religious songs. Sociological and anthropological studies of the past decades recorded many of these songs and concluded that “through the songs, the people are able to maintain a firm sense of their identity and an amazingly strong continuity with the oral traditions of their ancestors.”57 We can add to this that universally, interviewees mentioned over and over again that they remembered their mothers and grandmothers singing; that men enjoyed sitting at the table at night listening

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 123 to women sing in a lower voice so as not to attract attention, and that some women were so moved and inspired by these songs that they even kept on singing during the harsh work in the woods on bitterly cold winter days. In later years, women also recited newly composed poems depicting their hardships during deportation and exile.58 Some elderly women added that during the Soviet regime they could not talk about their hardships and about their history, so they found an answer by singing this history. Many younger Germans knew these poems by heart and could recite at least some sections even when they could not remember the entire poem. Regardless of its length, the following poem must be cited to show the exact meaning and message of such poems of hardship in exile.59 Neunzehnhunderteinundveirzig Kam die Kund in jedes Haus, Das wir Deutsche müssen wandren Aus der Republik hinaus.

Then in the year 1941 The notice appeared in every place, That we Germans had to leave Our republic in great haste.

Ich selber wollte es nicht glauben, I myself would not believe it, Dass so was serden könnte wahr, That such a thing could really be, Dass wir so schnell verlassen müssten, That we had to leave our village, Den Ort, der uns so treusam war. The place that was home to me. Seit dieser Stunde sind wir Armen Getrennt von Heimat, Freund, und Freud. Und denken oft bei Abendstunden An die vergang’ne schöne Zeit.

Since that hour we poor people Have been parted from homeland, kin, and joy. Often in the evening hours We think back to the golden times.

Und unsre Männer, Söhne, Väter, Mussten auch aus diesem Ort. Viele liessen schon ihr Leben Bei der Staadt Swerdlowske dort.

Our husbands, sons, and fathers, All were taken away from us. And many gave up their lives Near the city of Sverdlovsk.

Manches Kind wird ängstlich fragen, “Wo bleibt denn der Vater mein?” Und die Mutter muss ihm sagen: “Er wird schon la:ngst verhungert sein.”

Many a child may anxiously ask, “Where is my father dear?” And the mother must respond: “He died of hunger long ago.”

Furthermore, many songs were adapted to fit the new life circumstances of ethnic Germans. Thus, one woman wrote down the words of a song that her mother used to sing quietly during exile. Subsequent research into the folk traditions of ethnic Germans demonstrates that this particular song, in a much lengthier version, originated during or immediately after World War I and referred in its original meaning to the corruption of the old tsarist regime:

124 Women’s dimension of Soviet exile O Russland, armes Russland, Wie traurig steht’s mit dir! Dein Volk, das wurd verkaufet Für eine Flasche Bier.

Oh, Russia, poor Russia,60 How sad things are with you! Your people can be bought For one bottle of home brew.

Die tausend Offizieren Erwählen ihre Pflicht, Wohl hinter dem Tisch bei Branntewein Verlieren sie’s Gewicht.

A thousand officers Talk about their important duty, Secretly drinking bottles of brandy Ignoring what they must do.

What is more important for our purpose is the reported fact that all German deportees gladly exchanged their customs and traditional knowledge with each other and learned the songs of Germans from other regions. As a general rule, they cared little about the differences that existed among various Germanic groups and even social classes (as all class distinctions became blurred in exile) and were happy to cling to anything that could remotely remind them of home. The younger generation, however, say that they no longer knew the origin of each song and suspected that some of these songs were not even German in origin. However, many of them share a common knowledge of these songs and the culture that lies at the basis of their ethnic identity. The celebration of holidays was another important landmark in the life of ethnic Germans in exile. Christmas was one of the most important holidays which was persistently celebrated by ethnic Germans.61 Many women, especially after they returned home from the labor army, insisted on celebrating Christmas in addition to celebrating New Year, the official Soviet winter holiday. Christmas celebrations always possessed at least some religious meaning and often included prayers whispered at night or by day. Although a Christmas tree was almost always unavailable,62 children still received small treats and presents from their parents and relatives, often in the form of extra food or a new piece of clothing. Some Germans remembered that when things began to settle down, Christmas celebrations started to include the custom of pickle hiding.63 A pickle was hidden somewhere, and the child who found this pickle first was entitled to an extra gift. This tradition goes back to Germany and was brought by German settlers to Russia. During their life in exile, many Germans found it sufficient to open a jar of pickles preserved from the last season and share it with family members. But remnants of the “pickle tradition” may be found even today among ethnic Germans in Russia. Although some attempts were made by the Soviet authorities to curb the celebration of Christmas, these attempts were rarely successful. Some officials ceased to protest when offered a half-liter jar of samogon (home-made vodka); others did not want to bother with something that closely resembled the Soviet New Year’s celebration and, blinded by the common tradition of present-giving, did not understand any real difference between the two holidays. Still others were just too lazy or too sympathetic to combat an illusory home-based practice

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 125 with little evidence of wrongdoing, especially since Christmas trees and jumbosized presents were almost always not available. The scarcity of joy and the difficulty of life made these simple celebrations really special to children. Settler children awaited eagerly not only small treats and presents but also all the attention showered on them at Christmas. They also loved the story-telling, with stories full of pain and suffering, but also full of joy, love, forgiveness, and simple happiness. During moments like these, at bedtime, children learned positive things about being German, things that were different from the hunger, cold, isolation, and misery they had experienced so far. Furthermore, there were other traditions and customs that were associated with German culture. Thus, facing food shortages and many diseases caused by the lack of essential vitamins and minerals, Germans who were sent to climatic zones similar to the one they had left behind attempted to rely on their traditional folk medicine and to teach their children to do the same.64 During spring and summertime, some settler women picked “Kamille” (wild chamomile) on their way to work and used it later as the basis for a drink that eased stomach pains, muscular pains, colic, and even headaches. So-called “stinging nettle” was used in many dishes as the source of a variety of vitamins, especially vitamin C. Some knowledge of “provision from the woods” was acquired during the difficult years following deportation. For example, many dishes using tree bark and grasses were introduced to children as an alternative source of food supplies. But other practices, including the use of wild chamomile, wormwood, great burdock, and wood licorice, had been used by Germans for centuries. Although some traditions of using nature’s gifts for medical purposes was also borrowed during a long life side by side with Slavs (e.g. the many ways to use mushrooms), other remedies were perceived to be purely German. Thus, ethnic Germans relied on the use of “Blutskepf” (sanguisorba officinalis, or burnet) in their folk medicine and brewed it into tea to treat diarrhea. Many respondents believed that in the Soviet Union, only ethnic Germans knew how to do this correctly and that they had used burnet for several centuries. The fact that most women passed on to their children a knowledge of folk medicine is easily explainable for several reasons besides the simple gender imbalance among the German deportees. Prior to the deportations, many rural German women traditionally gathered herbs and knew how to work with them to heal family members. Hence, German women knew more of folk medicine than did German men and were used to sharing their knowledge with other women and passing it on to the next generation. Moreover, cooking was also part of a woman’s role.65 When it was time to make soups, for example, women taught their children by example to pick and save some nettles to add to soup in the same way as these women taught their children to have potatoes and cabbage to boil in this soup. They also often served licorice tea after a meal, without emphasizing very much the meaning of this.66 Cooking was an “organic process” of communication between the generations as settlers sought to live normal everyday lives as much as was possible at the time. Hence many Germans of the younger generation were acquainted at least superficially with

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the use of various herbs and referred to the usage of herbs as an “ancestral tradition.” Several even remembered verses recited by their parents and grandparents when the former were very young: Die Blumen auf dem Felde Sie winkten freindlich mir: “Komm her und pflick die Rose Und mach Arzneie dir.” Die vitamine sind für jeden Mann Und auch für jeden Mann. Ich brauch ja nicht mehr denken Wo ich sie pflicken kann!

The flowers in the field Beckon so friendly to me: “Come here and pick the blossoms And make yourself some medicine.” Nature’s vitamins are not only for me But also for everyone. I no longer need to ponder Where I can find all of them!67

Besides the use of herbs, many respondents were familiar with a custom known as “Brauche”68 (sometimes referred to as “powwowing” in English).69 In simple words, this is a practice of non-traditional healing which relies heavily on the use of magical spells, charms, amulets, various physical manipulations, and the use of sacred numbers of three, seven, and nine. Some practitioners of Brauche also used techniques similar to those used by modern-day chiropractors in order to ease pain and set dislocated joints. The overwhelming majority of Germans believed that only people with a godly gift could perform the rites of Brauche successfully. Almost any German woman knew of someone who was able to carry out this ritual, and some women attempted to perform various Brauche rites themselves in the absence of “qualified practitioners.” Several interviewers remembered that their mothers went to people known as good Brauchers among the settlers, although they did this in great secrecy. For no fee or for a small donation, Brauchers were believed to have spared a child an imminent death and to have healed sick people. The fact that one went to a Braucher did not render a person irreligious; in fact, some people reported that Brauchers used Trinitarian formulas and hence the rites they performed were not anti-religious. The practice of going to Brauchers continued throughout the existence of the special settlement regime. Moreover, some Germans kept copies of protective prayers or memorized them by heart. Among the most popular were Himmelsbrief (Letter from Heaven) and Wunderbrief (Miraculous Letter). Very few copies of these have survived into the present day for several reasons. Some copies of prayers were left behind at the time of deportation; others were destroyed for fear of antireligious persecution; and still others were hidden in secret places by elders and their secrets were buried with them. A few, however, managed to preserve copies,70 and many later remembered that they were familiar with the practice of saying protective prayers. Some people knew shorter versions of these prayers, and many remembered that their grandparents and parents had possessed copies prior to 1941. However, at the time of the interviews in the 1990s and 2000s, the majority of younger ethnic Germans were no longer able to recite spells at length and no

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 127 longer remembered the exact meaning of each and every herb. Some traditions (e.g. drinking tea made of hand-picked “Kamille”, wild chamomile) persisted and have survived into the present day, but others became a memory of the past for younger people. For many people of the younger generation, non-traditional “medical” practice became an important part of their memories of the stories told by their grandparents about the distant past, rather than vital segments of their daily lives. But the memory of these customs, knowledge of their existence, the fact that their ancestors, and sometimes their parents, took part in these rites, and the remnants of them that survived in everyday practices gave the younger Germans a sense of being a part of a broader “German” culture and tradition with common historical roots. These traditions have not always survived in their true form and sense, but they do provide guide marks by which these Germans identify their membership in a broader ethnic community. Regardless of various attempts made by women, harsh living conditions, regulations and persecution by the authorities and the Soviet regime, the separation of families and realities of labor mobilization, lack of schools, textbooks, and any facilities for learning the language – all these factors resulted in changes to ethnic German identity which we can appreciate by looking at their selfperception in the years following the end of the special settlement regime. However, the role of women in the preservation of the form of “Germanness” that persisted among the younger generations should not be underestimated.

Days of freedom In April 1953, a month after Stalin’s death, the Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers G.M. Malenkov71 received a note from a member of the Central Party Committee M.A. Suslov72 and a group of other Soviet officials suggesting that “it might not be expedient [tselesoobrazno] to keep all those legal restrictions imposed on special settlers – Germans, Karachai, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, and Crimean Tartars” because more than ten years had passed since their resettlement. Suslov further noted that over the past years, many settlers had adapted to their new places of life, found “honorable employment,” and led decent and hard-working lives. It made no sense, he added, that settlers who traveled to visit their relatives in adjacent provinces were prosecuted according to criminal laws as escapees from the special settlement regime. These restrictions and abuses, concluded the note, only promoted anti-Soviet views among special settlers.73 This note was the beginning of a long process of liquidating the regime of special settlements. The first real resolution that restored the rights of special settlers was signed into the law in May 1953. It gave the settlers the right to receive passports without restrictions.74 Earlier, special settlers were either not allowed to have passports or possessed passports with stamps restricting their place of residency and their travel. In the postwar period, however, a passport was and remained until the collapse of the Soviet Union (and beyond) the single most important document that gave its owner the right to freedom of

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employment and freedom of movement. The new law acknowledged that the abnormal situation with passports among special settlers created more problems than it solved. People still traveled illicitly to see their relatives. Although settlers were not the only group with passport limitations (others included former criminals and political convicts), they were by far the most numerous. In 1948–52, as many as 5,591,000 people violated the passport system, and 4,365,000 of them were fined a total sum of 217,786,000 rubles for this. The lion’s share of these fines was paid by special settlers.75 Hence, although the new passport law appeared to be very simple, it was a crucial step toward the restoration of rights to ethnic Germans and other deportees. Only a few months later, on 24 February 1954, other new rights were given to the settlers. Most substantial was the decision to stop registering children under the age of eighteen as special settlers. By default, it meant that the new generation of ethnic Germans would never become special settlers and the curse of deportees would be lifted. It was also proposed that members of the Communist Party be freed from this regime, and it was decided that veterans of World War II, especially those awarded medals and honors, were to go free. For other settlers, the system of control was made a little easier. Instead of having to register with local officials every month, settlers were allowed to register with the authorities once every three months. They were also finally allowed to move around within the borders of their administrative region without any restrictions.76 For settlers, this meant a far greater access to professional employment and higher education than had been the case in the past decade. From there, things began to move speedily in a positive direction, mostly thanks to the overall liberalizing policies of the post-Stalin leadership. The next decree prohibited the arrest of settlers for administrative violations (excluding escapes), replacing arrests with fines.77 More freedom of movement was granted on July 5, 1954, when complete freedom of movement around the country was granted for settlers’ children who were accepted to study at various universities, and the required registration of special settlers with local officials, which only a few months before was changed from once a month to once in three months, was now changed to once a year.78 Some Germans later remembered that the most important decree of 1954–55 (prior to complete liquidation of special settlements) was the one that abrogated the 1948 law which stipulated criminal charges and punishments for the escapees from the settlements.79 However, this view is partially erroneous. While the 1948 law was in fact revoked in 1954, settlers who went without permission to other regions and were considered escapees were still being prosecuted under criminal law. The only difference was that now they were prosecuted under article 82 of the Criminal Code of the Soviet Union instead of the earlier “special resolution of 1948.” Such a change meant more mild punishments as most terms in prison and labor camps declined from twenty to three years. But the new law of 1954 was never meant to substitute arrests and imprisonment for escapes with administrative punishments such as warnings and fines.80

Women’s dimension of Soviet exile 129 The first complete liquidation of special settler status was granted to Germans who were permanent residents of places to which the majority of German were deported, including Siberia, the Urals, and Central Asia, prior to 1941–42 deportations. According to various official documents, 75,226 Germans who were in fact local residents were registered as special settlers in 1954, in addition to 34,665 Germans who were mobilized during the labor mobilization and ended up as settlers, although they were never officially deported. It was decided on August 11, 1954 that these particular Germans were never accused of antiSoviet actions and were never deported, and therefore there was no reason for them to remain under the umbrella of the restrictive special settlement regime.81 The year 1955, however, was the most decisive year for the settlers. It began with the decision to enroll children of special settlers into the mandatory military draft from which they were hitherto exempt, hence confirming the earlier decision to remove children from the special regime.82 Also finally signed into law were earlier proposals to free Communist Party members and their families from the special settlement regime.83 But these decrees were overshadowed by the official resolution of December 13, 1955. On that date, restrictions on all ethnic Germans were lifted and they were removed from the control of the special settlement administration. Although ethnic Germans were not entitled to any compensation for the hardships they had endured and were not allowed to return to their places of residence prior to deportation, they finally became full Soviet citizens under the law like everyone else around them.84 For decades, the end of the special settlement regime for Germans of the Soviet Union was perceived solely as a mark of the changing domestic atmosphere. In recent years, however, historians began to see this event as a result of the international situation rather than a domestic change. T. Ilarionova argues that the diplomacy of such countries as Yugoslavia, FRG, Japan, and the US played a crucial role in this change in status for Soviet Germans, although the main role was played by West Germany. If it wasn’t for its actions, Ilarionova says, the destiny of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union would have been questionable.85 Following the amnesty of March 1953, these countries intensified their pressure on the Soviet government for the liberation of their nationals who were held in Soviet prisons as POWs. Ever since September 1952, Japan and West Germany decided (behind the curtain of secrecy) to synchronize their actions toward reaching the same goal, namely freeing their POWs and facilitating the lives of their nationals in the Soviet Union. Hence the beginning of active negotiations on this issue between Japan and the Soviet government became a strong card in the hands of West Germany which argued for the same treatment of its nationals. Simultaneously, the Soviet Union was facing a challenge to its status coming from Yugoslavia. Independent-minded Tito decided to allow emigration of all ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia to their historic motherland and liberated all Volksdeutsche on its territory. No amounts of threats from Kremlin in general and Molotov in particular could prevent him from acting on his decision. Germany, however, was facing pressure of its own. German Counselor

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Konrad Adenauer was well aware that the aid coming from the US and the Marshall Plan had very little to do with any pure form of humanitarian relief and much to do with the US’s own goals. One of the most common points of political discussions between the two countries was the situation of German nationals in the US and the Soviet Union. Hence Adenauer had to make it clear that during his official visit to the USSR, which was scheduled to begin on September 8, 1955, the position of the ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union would have to be at the forefront of diplomatic negotiations between his country and the Soviet government. Interested in establishing diplomatic relations with the FRG, and surrounded by international pressure especially from Japan and Yugoslavia, Khrushchev realized that he had to address the problem of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union before any political goals in the international arena could be achieved. Hence the first step was the lifting of the special settlement regime from the ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Although this argument has been embraced by some historians, and especially in Russian language historiography, it seems doubtful that the international pressure exerted by any country on the Soviet Union was the primary reason for the end of the special settlement regime. Even the basic chronology seems contradictory. The Soviet government eased the regime in 1953–54 before the decisive visit by Adenauer in 1955, and the Soviets did so as a part of domestic policies, originating immediately after Stalin’s death, of trying to deal with Stalin’s legacy of purges and repressions. Most of Europe’s Germans, as well as other Axis ethnic groups abroad, suffered from World War II in one way or the other, and the Soviet government felt that Germans in the Soviet Union did not suffer in any exceptional way. But by the time of Stalin’s death, it was finally time to “put it all behind” them and to end the nonsensical regime. Moreover, the mid-1950s also witnessed the end of the special settlement regime for all other ethnic groups, including those for which no international pressure mounted. In 1955–56 the time for change had ripened, and the Twentieth Party Congress attested to this attitude more than any other fact or event of this era. Nevertheless, the combination of domestic and international concerns might offer historians a more complex and complete understanding of the reasons behind the end of the regime than either one of these explanations taken separately. Ahead for ethnic Germans were long years of rehabilitation and battles for their ethnic self-assertiveness. But if official restrictions were lifted for the Germans in the mid-1950s, the long-term effects of these policies and practices were not so easy to extinguish. What remains to be seen, however, are what these long-term outcomes of deportation and exile were.

6

Long-term consequences of deportation and exile The formation of ethnic identity among Germans in the Soviet Union

In his article “Ethnicity,” published in 1985, J. Milton Yinger states that religion is “one of the crucial defining characteristics in ethnic identity.”1 Yinger argues that besides religion, the other two measures of ethnicity are the proportion of intermarriages, since only intramarriages create proper conditions for the practice of ethnic culture, and the ability of any ethnic group to practice “identity” as measured by political freedoms and by national policies enforced by the state. Yinger’s measurements of ethnic identity and its survival or assimilation in many ways preceded the definition of ethnicity advanced by Beatrice Manz for late Soviet and post-Soviet societies which has been utilized in this study. Let us be reminded that Manz advanced four criteria that determined ethnic identity in the late Soviet period: the preservation of, or changes in, ethnic minority’s common understanding of religion, common historical experiences, culture, and finally the language spoken by the ethnic minority group.2 Hence this chapter will analyze these factors and show how changes in these factors among the post-deportation community of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union affected their ethnic identity. Yet it is crucial first to address several arguments proposed by scholars of ethnicity on how to “measure” it. Ever since Max Weber identified an ethnic group as a group that shares a “subjective belief in their common descent,”3 the discussion of common descent has been incorporated into almost all studies of ethnic identity and its perception among ethnic minority groups. As we will see, all ethnic Germans in the USSR began to share a sense of “common descent” only in the post-deportation period, regardless of whether this descent was real or only perceived. Their self-identification as “Soviet Germans” came to rest on such a belief for the first time. Hence, even if not expressed explicitly, such a belief in common descent runs implicitly throughout this study, especially in the following discussion of ethnic identity among Soviet Germans. Another similar test of ethnicity is common historical experience, or a sense of lived commonality, which is used in our original definition of ethnicity in the Introduction. Some scholars think that a sense of lived commonality rests on past and present-day ethnic politics of the state toward a particular ethnic group.4 In many different ways, this entire work deals with such state policies and the artificial creation of “shared historical experience” in the form of the experiences

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of deportations and the special settlement regime. Hence it is pointless to recount these policies and experiences in this chapter. The creation of ethnic labels by the Soviet state, political authorities, and the majority of the population, which some scholars cite as another defining factor of ethnicity,5 was the result of such policies and the exile experience of the Germans in the USSR who were deported and deprived of their rights solely on the basis of the artificially created homogenous ethnic label of “Soviet Germans,” which was applied at a time when Germans in the USSR did not perceive themselves as such. The comparative size of an ethnic group is also often cited as crucial for the ethnic identity of any ethnic group.6 As we have seen, the size of the ethnic community worked both to Germans’ advantage and disadvantage. On one hand, the loss of representatives of the earlier particularistic ethnic cultures, especially the loss of prewar ethnic elites, and the destruction of familial and neighborhood networks due to deaths and separation affected Germans negatively. In deportation and the special settlements, it became virtually impossible for “different” Germans to pass on their particularistic cultural values to the next generations. On the other hand, the relatively large size of the German community of special settlers (compared, for example, to Kalmyks) and the similarities in their status, attitudes, beliefs and Soviet-imposed pattern of behavior, as well as their geographic proximity following the deportations, allowed the formation of close social and psychological ties among various Germanic groups and the development and preservation of a “larger” German identity. Furthermore, the importance of demographic processes for the ethnic identity of any group should be noted. Some sociologists maintain that changes in the demographic composition of any ethnic group are the leading cause of identity reconfiguration among ethnic minorities subjected to forced migration.7 Yet demographic changes were an indivisible part of the ethnic German experiences as we have discussed them, including the high death rates during and immediately after the deportations, the artificial separation of families, and the resulting abnormal gender imbalances. Moreover, further demographic changes will emerge in the forthcoming discussion of the declining language skills, religious practices, and so on, among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Hence, demographic changes, while never discussed explicitly, were always present and attested to throughout the period of ethnic German history covered by this book. In brief, this chapter deals with post-deportation changes among ethnic Germans that directly affected their ethnic identity, their cultural traditions and practices, and their ethnicity overall. These are, let us recall, changes of native language skills and educational levels, adherence to religions commonly associated with Germanic cultures, and some basic expressions of cultural values such as cultural memory, attitudes toward intermarriages, and the maintenance of folklore and literary traditions particular to Germans. The self-perception of Germans as revealed by my research among former German deportees and by various sociological studies is also essential. Indeed, ethnic Germans’ own perception of their ethnic identity might be more revealing than any analysis of “external” factors, especially since, as some scholars acknowledge, there is a

Long-term consequences 133 tendency among scholars and dominant ethnic groups “to exaggerate the persistence of cultural elements among the deprived.”8

Language and schooling As we have noted in earlier chapters, schools were not always accessible to German special settlers, even for the most rudimentary primary education. This situation, which was most intense during the war and during the existence of the special settlement regime, often persisted for five to fifteen years. As a result, many Germans who grew up in exile possessed very low educational levels. Table 6.1 gives a sense of German educational levels in the Soviet Union in 1967 (for more detailed statistical data, refer to the Appendix).9 Although education was not always available in all parts of the country during World War II, by the late 1950s Soviet literacy rates were extraordinarily high. Thus, USSR as a whole possessed 98.5 percent literacy rate in 1959, though these numbers were lower for the Central Asian republics than they were for the European parts of the Soviet Union. Thus, in 1959, Kazakhstan possessed a literacy rate of 96.9 percent; Kyrgyzstan, 98.0 percent; Tajikistan, 96.2 percent; Turkmenistan, 95.4 percent; and Uzbekistan, 98.1 percent.10 Although indigenous populations were always considered to be less educated than Russians who resided in the Central Asian republics, the rates of illiteracy among Central Asian indigenous population never reached the stunning 11.6 percent that prevailed among ethnic Germans in the late 1950s and 1960s.11 The basic education of Germans continued to lag behind the rest of the Soviet population well into the 1960s. For example, in Kyrgyzstan alone, in 1960–61, 17,202 students attended vocational schools (tekhnikum, or a high school with some basic training in specialized fields such as mechanics), of which 7,809 were Russian, 9,252 of various ethnic origins, and only 141 (0.8 percent) of these students were former German special settlers.12 Moreover, although various studies conducted in the Soviet Union on education among the Soviet population reported the numbers of students in higher education for as many as Table 6.1 Education of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union in 1967 Years of schooling

Percentage

Illiterate 1–3 4–6 7–8 9 10–11 Incomplete higher Higher education

11.6 25.1 42.6 16.5 0.9 2.2 0.4 –

Source: L.V. Malinovskii, “Hoffnung, Wahrheit und Verdacht,” Neues Leben, vols 27–29, July 2–16, 1969.

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seventeen nationalities, Germans were represented in higher education in such low numbers that they were never reported even in official statistics of university students.13 Many Soviet people (anywhere from 68 to 82 percent of the Soviet population depending on the age group and region of residence, according to various opinion polls of the Soviet people conducted in the 1960s) believed that nationality was the key factor in gaining access to higher education. Another 7 to 12 percent of respondents in the same polls cited nationality in combination with other factors (e.g. prior schooling and intelligence) as crucial for getting higher education.14 Besides official and unofficial regulations concerning education of Germans in the Soviet Union (discussed in earlier chapters) and poor schooling which effectively prevented Germans from entering universities, ethnic Germans’ own perception of nationality as related to education mattered as well. Like other people of the Soviet Union, they often believed that nationality was the main key to gaining access to education and that they were by default excluded from university due to their ethnicity. Findings of more recent research on literacy and education rates among ethnic Germans in the USSR are not much more optimistic. For example, a survey conducted in the 1990s among over 21,000 German émigrés to West Germany from the Soviet Union in 1979–83 concluded that 21 percent had four years or fewer of schooling, and only 37 percent had completed general secondary education (high school).15Although various answers to the questions posed by this study “indicated a relatively great degree of heterogeneity and a certain integration of the respondents into Soviet society,”16 the educational levels of these Germans were not up to the standards of Soviet society as a whole with mandatory education and literacy rates of nearly 100 percent. Other surveys took a much more simplistic approach. In the 1990s, when ethnic Germans in Siberia were asked a simple question: “What German writers or poets do you know or have heard of?,” 68.5 percent of these respondents could not recall a single name, only 2.5 percent knew four or more German writers,17 while 29 percent of Germans had heard of one to three German writers or poets. A similar study conducted in Kazakhstan in the 1990s among German high school students showed that the majority of these young Germans could not cite a single German author, and those who could often mentioned the names of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. As a result, the author of this survey concluded that “by the early 1990s, the processes of assimilation of German high school students were completed,”18 as they knew overwhelmingly little or nothing about German culture. In brief, by the time of the demise of the Soviet Union, Germans were among the least educated ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. They had one of the smallest number of people with secondary education per thousand compared to most other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union and the highest proportion of people with only elementary education (three years of school in the USSR) or without any rudimentary education at all. Thus, when in 1989 Soviet Jews had 682 people with post-secondary education per 1,000 and other Soviet

Long-term consequences 135 nationalities had an average of 238 people per 1,000 with post-secondary education, Soviet Germans had only eighty-three people with compatible education per 1,000.19 Of course, after 1991, due to the changing political environment and the demise of the Soviet Union, the problems that ethnic Germans faced in terms of education were solved. Yet the basic fact that Germans had been denied education equal to other Soviet citizens for many years had consequences for years to come. Even when education was available to Germans in exile, the language of instruction was universally Russian, hence posing a new problem of language proficiency for ethnic Germans. Although there were some attempts to introduce the German language into schools in select regions of the Soviet Union, these attempts were unsuccessful. Thus, on April 9, 1957, the USSR Ministry of Education signed a decree on “The Introduction of the Study of German as the Mother Tongue for Children and Adults of the German Nationality.” This decree allowed German parents to establish schools with German as a primary language of instruction (within the framework of the existing state schools and state curricula). Although, as a result of this decree, the German language was allowed to be offered as a “foreign language” option in some schools in the 1960s (other options included English and French for up to three hours of instruction a week),20 for various reasons schools with intensive training in German or with the German as a primary language of instruction were created only after the demise of the Soviet Union. The lack of education in the national language (German) inevitably affected language skills of the younger generation of Germans who were born immediately before deportation or thereafter and raised while in exile. Numerous memoirs and scholarly works attest to the fact that prior to deportation, many Germans spoke Russian poorly. While the knowledge of Russian was not a life necessity for Germans prior to 1941, it became so after deportation. Hence, some deported German adults sought to train their children to speak Russian before they spoke German, as survival and adaptation skills often hinged upon the language one spoke.21 Combined with other factors (e.g. lack of national German schools), this method proved unfortunately successful in terms of preserving ethnic culture and identity. Although many Germans of the older generation continued to speak German at home, the language loss among the younger generation was immense. In general terms, scholarly works, official reports, and memoirs reveal that as a result of the forced migration and life in special settlements,22 only 43 percent of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union in the 1960s knew any spoken German.23 (For more detailed statistics on German language proficiency, see the Appendix.) But even these numbers are disputable. Many interviewees remembered that in the census of 1989, they identified German as their native language or listed even rudimentary knowledge of German only out of a sense of ethnic solidarity and of silent, non-violent opposition to the Soviet regime. Hence the number of Germans who spoke German fluently must have been much lower than was reflected in the census and various questionnaires.

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Table 6.2 Knowledge of German language among ethnic German youth in the Soviet Union, based on their self-identification in the 1990s Fluency Fluent in literary German Understand the High German or some German dialect and use occasional phrases Write and read with a dictionary Understand some German but cannot speak it Know only individual words Know not a word of German Overall

Percentage of respondents 1.5 15.4 8 31.3 28.1 17.7 100

Source: Calculated based on E.P. Barbashina and E.V. Zakharova, “Problemy etnicheskoi identichnosti molodezhi rossiiskikh nemtsev segodnia (po rezul’tatam etnosotsiologicheskih issledovanii),” in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii, 1998, pp. 185–198.

Yet we can still use the latest sociological research to demonstrate some basic dynamics of language skills among ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union. For example, a questionnaire distributed in the 1990s among ethnic German youth of the Kemerovo, Tomsk, and Tiumen’ regions in Siberia revealed that only 0.1 percent of them used German as the language of communication at home, while 89.9 percent used Russian and 10 percent used both languages. When these young Germans were further asked to identify cultural influences on their ethnic identity, only 9.8 percent said that they were influenced predominantly by German culture, while 50.6 percent were influenced exclusively by Russian culture, and the rest (39.6 percent) by both cultures. The percentage of German speakers here was higher than in other regions of the former Soviet Union but it never exceeded 25 percent for the young ethnic Germans who used the German language at home.24 Various studies further concluded that in terms of language skills and educational levels, “there are no distinctions between Germans [in various parts of the former Soviet Union] and the Germans of Kemerovo, Tomsk, and Tiumen’ regions” in Siberia described above.25 The reasons for the decline in practical knowledge of German language may be partially explained by the lack of schooling in German in the postwar period (unlike the pre-war period). Yet we need to address the question of why, on one hand, so many Germans questioned in interviews and surveys remembered that their parents spoke German at home and to each other, but on the other hand, the mass of younger Germans lost their language skills. It would appear reasonable to assume that children learn a language, at least spoken, from their parents. As linguists now attest, two important reasons that lead to the loss of native language skills in favor of the predominant language among younger generations, despite the efforts made by their parents, are the so-called dialect-convergence phenomenon (i.e. merging and blending of various dialects) and the simplification and subsequent dying off of the native language. Thus, numerous linguistic studies have shown that migrations among various

Long-term consequences 137 groups trigger a new wave of variety contact and dialect convergence. This was especially true of the post-deportation German communities where several Germanic dialects began to gradually merge as adults, whose ancestors came from various areas in Europe and who spoke various dialects, came into contact with one another. As the contacts among various Germanic peoples increased in exile, these older Germans had to simplify their dialects so they could understand each other, and they even occasionally used Russian as a common means of communication. Hence they established the precedence for the process of convergence of various dialects that were spoken by various Germanic groups prior to the deportations. Among the older generation, first slowly, then increasingly rapidly, the processes of convergence were evident in such features as the merger of Molotcha and Chortica dialects among German Mennonites, which had been separated for centuries even before Mennonites immigrated to Russia.26 Similarly, in the Ural Mountains, after the deportations, “Lutheran” and “Catholic” dialects began to converge.27 Shortly thereafter, various dialects hitherto spoken among Germans in the Russian Empire and the USSR began to gravitate toward simplified High German standards but with the complete loss of the definite article used in High German and the reduction of case morphology among German speakers (for example, dative and accusative were merged into one oblique case).28 This process of dialect convergence and the gradual simplification of High German for the sake of convenience was the first step toward the gradual loss of German language skills among ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union. If the older generation saw the gradual convergence of their Germanic dialects, the younger generation found it increasingly easier to use Russian instead of German to communicate with each other and with the non-Germans among whom they now lived. Scholars now perceive it as normal that the knowledge of the so-called island languages (speakers of which are surrounded by speakers of other languages) during the times of crisis such as a forceful outside perpetration of influence by another language (e.g. state policy to learn and speak Russian at school) is perceived as a learning burden by the younger generation. In other words, German children did not want to and did not see the need to learn the German language if they spoke Russian with their peers and in school. In all similar circumstances and in all communities, parents, desiring to teach their children to speak their native language at any cost, often give in to their children’s lack of interest in learning their native language and begin to simplify the grammar and vocabulary in speaking to their offspring. The children, faced with little corrective pressure from parents, have much lower normative skills in their language than did their ancestors.29 A younger generation, in its own turn faced with “learning burden” resistance from their children, cannot sufficiently transfer the language skills as they themselves understand the obsolete nature of their use of language in a new society and their lack of knowledge of the language normative basis. When the language structures become obsolescent in the second generation, the process of borrowing new grammar and words and mismatching linguistic norms leads to the process of reconstruction and deconstruction of the language.

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In the case of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, the first post-deportation generation learned a simplified version of German from their parents. But they also learned well in school and later in their lives that they needed to speak Russian, not German, to live in the Soviet Union, and that they had little practical use for the German language. This realization, combined with their inadequate knowledge of German grammar and language structure, made it increasingly difficult for them to teach their children (the second postdeportation generation) to speak German. These children in turn did not want to learn the German language and, as their parents before them, saw no need for an obsolete language spoken only by a small community of elderly German neighbors. The little knowledge of German that they learned from their parents was grammatically very crude and simplified, and was intermixed with many Russian words and phrases. As a result of such processes, by the third generation, as many linguists have found, German dialects and German in general became a dying language among Germans in Russia.30 But what were the consequences of the loss of German language skills for the ethnic identity of Germans in the Soviet Union? Traditionally, language has been perceived by scholars of identity as one of the key factors of ethnic and national identity.31 For example, one of the aspects of nationalism that Gellner emphasized in his book Nations and Nationalism was the importance of language. He argued that languages create a sense of nationhood in the people who speak them and this sense, in turn, creates the demand for a state of their own. Language, to him, is an inseparable and central part of the sense of the national identity that any group of people shares.32 Since the publication of Gellner’s work, his argument about the centrality of language in shaping national identity has been repeatedly disputed. It is no longer considered entirely correct to say that in the case of all the post-Soviet nationalities, language skills and national identity went hand in hand. The Crimean Tartars, for example, lacked any national language skills at the time of the Soviet Union’s demise. But this did not prevent them from sharing a sense of nationality and nationhood separate and independent of any other ethnic group. Yet the correlation between the loss of language skills and ethnic and national identity proved very real for the image of self and ethnic and national identity among the ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union. Although the loss of language skills did not always parallel the loss of ethnic or national identity and was not always directly proportionate to the latter, it nevertheless made the practice of cultural and ethnic assertion much more difficult for those many Soviet or Russian Germans who spoke no German.

“Cultural markers” The preservation of cultural traditions and values, however, depended on more than the preservation of the language skills and levels of education within an ethnic group. Other factors, such as lack or presence of intermarriages, created an atmosphere that affected the ability of Soviet Germans to resist assimilation.

Long-term consequences 139 As Yinger noted in his study of identity, only intramarriages can create an environment that can potentially allow for the preservation of ethnicity and more than a superficial knowledge of the basic attributes of any given culture. Yet the constant crossing of cultural barriers in ethnic intermarriages eventually blurs these cultural boundaries and allows for a greater degree of assimilation into surrounding society than intramarriages. Similar processes and tendencies as related to the preservation of ethnic identity and intermarriages have been recorded and studied among the immigration population in the United States and various ethnic groups in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world. Universally, intermarriage has been cited as the main factor, or at least as one of the main factors, in the process of assimilation and the adaptation to surrounding society.33 In short, a high percentage of intermarriages can greatly undermine the ability of any ethnic group to preserve its ethnic identity, especially when combined with other factors, such as state-imposed repression of any cultural selfexpression. Let us remember that prior to deportation, various studies showed that “mixed marriages still were the exception [among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union] and that assimilation did not occur . . .. Settlers and indigenous people lived side by side but not with each other – and that’s the way both sides generally wanted it.”34 This tendency, however, changed dramatically after deportation. In the 1960s, Rasma Karklins conducted a survey among ethnic German émigrés (still a very small number of people at the time) on their attitude toward intermarriage. A majority of respondents stated that intermarriage was undesirable but the overall response varied according to the nationality of non-German partners and the last residence of the respondent. For example, 42 percent of former German deportees who previously resided in the RSFSR saw no difference in marrying Russians or Germans, while only 21 percent of those previously residing in Kazakhstan did likewise. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of respondents (94 percent) rejected even the prospect of marriage to Kazakhs, while only 60 percent rejected marriage to non-Russians in the RSFSR. Karklins also found that ethnic German women from the Soviet Union rejected intermarriage more often than men, and that religious people rejected intermarriage more often than people with weak confessional identities. Moreover, older people were less inclined to accept intermarriage than younger people. While only 64 percent of respondents aged nineteen to thirty-one rejected intermarriage, 84 percent of ages forty-three and older did likewise.35 Recent surveys conducted in the Soviet Union and Soviet successor states since the 1970s indicate, however, that the number of intermarriages among ethnic Germans in Soviet and post-Soviet territories has been constantly increasing ever since their life in exile. The more people of the younger generation reached “marriageable” age, the more they were willing to share their lives with people of other ethnic backgrounds. Table 6.3 demonstrates this constant increase in intermarriages. Personal accounts and interviews with Germans who remained in former Soviet territories to the present day display a similar picture compared to the

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Table 6.3 Intermarriages among ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union, 1957–91 Year

%

Year

%

1957 1960 1961 1970 1971 1972 1973 1975 1977 1980

40.2 45.1 44.8 58.1 60.9 60.1 61.4 62.7 58.1 61.1

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1991

67.1 62.8 64.0 65.7 65.4 66.2 66.5 65.5 67.0 68.3

Source: Calculated based on T. Smirnova, “Nemtsy,” in Narody Zapadnoi i Srednei Sibiri: kul’tura i etnicheskie protsessy, Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2002, p. 111. Statistics for some years are absent or incomplete.

overall statistics. Among ethnic Germans who ended up in Central Asia, particularly in Kazakhstan, there were and still are fewer intermarriages than among Germans who ended up in Russian parts of the Soviet Union. Moreover, Germans’ mixed marriages in Central Asia were and still remain predominantly with Russians, not Kazakh or other indigenous peoples. For example, a German woman, Berta Bachmann, who married an ethnic German while in a special settlement, noted later that German women in special settlements preferred to marry Germans or at least not Kazakhs.36 Some Germans mentioned in their interviews that the cultural gap between “uncivilized” and “Asian” Kazakhs and “civilized” and “European” Germans has always been too great to overcome in marriage. As had been previously discussed,37 despite some changes that took place in Central Asia in the first decades of the Soviet regime, it still remained heavily Muslim, and quite predictably, ethnic German women did not want to add a burden of the Muslim traditions to their already harsh lives of ethnic Germans in Soviet exile. On the other hand, many Germans who were deported to Siberia and later discussed their experiences acknowledged that the overall attitude of Russians and other nationalities to Germans was favorable. “My mother lived here, and my sister later married a Russian man,” said Edward Dill, “there was no scornful attitude [to ethnic Germans]. We worked like everyone else, and later were excited about victory [in World War II] like everyone else.”38 Overall, various surveys and censuses show that over 80 percent of mixed marriages that Germans enter are with Russian partners.39 Finally, various studies estimate that the number of intermarriages at the present moment (in the 1990s and early twenty-first century) has reached 80 percent among ethnic Germans remaining in the territory of the former USSR. It is not surprising that children of these mixed marriages among Germans and other nationals often assimilate into surrounding society and “become” Russian. Very few children of such marriages who are now fully grown identify

Long-term consequences 141 themselves as “Russian Germans,” though some still do. Although anthropologists, sociologists, demographers, and economists agree that the intermarriages can serve both as an indicator of and a main factor in assimilation and acculturation, some studies have shown that the children of the first and/or second generation, who are born into ethnically mixed marriages, often create a “mixed” identity of their own which to a degree blends both cultures. For example, children born into mixed Mexican and American families choose to identify themselves as “Mexican-American,” refusing or being unable to fully blend, or assimilate, into any one of these two groups.40 Hence the processes of the selfidentification of children of mixed marriages as “Russian Germans” or simply “Russians” fall within the outcome that one might expect among children born into mixed marriages almost anywhere in the world. It is predominantly common that children of such mixed marriages, especially after their own subsequent intermarriage, are eventually assimilated fully into surrounding society. Such assimilation reaches nearly 100 percent by the third and subsequent generations. Many other cultural “attributes” attest to similar changes of identity among ethnic Germans of the former Soviet Union. We talked previously about the partial preservation of German cultural memory in the form of folklore, herbal medical practices, old traditions, and so on in Chapter 5. Yet two other factors merit an independent discussion, namely the Germans’ struggle for a German language press and the survival of religious convictions and religious practice in “Russian German” circles. The German language press had been declining in circulation ever since the October Revolution of 1917 and was closed down entirely by the Soviet government in 1941 with the onset of the German deportation. After the special settlement regime was abolished in 1955, the first German language newspaper since deportation was published in the Altai region of Siberia. The main goal of this new newspaper, called Arbeit (Trud, or Labor), was to “disseminate the Soviet way of life.”41 Several deported Germans immediately expressed interest in working for the newspaper, although the salaries paid were truly miniscule. But out of 105 full- and part-time editors and journalists on the newspaper staff, only six possessed any post-secondary education and only one was trained in journalism. The remainder had only a high school or even incomplete high school education.42 Moreover, the main editor and director of this “German” newspaper was a Russian, Viktor Pestov, appointed by the state to supervise the publishing of the newspaper.43 Arbeit faced many problems not only with the lack of professionally trained personnel. It did not receive any state support in recruiting subscribers as was usually the case with all Soviet-era publications. During the Soviet-era, the lack of such state support sounded inevitable failure for any publication since the state controlled all means of advertising and the dissemination of subscriptions. In 1956, the residents of the Altai region subscribed to 305,000 copies of local Russian-language newspapers and 557,122 central newspapers and journals.44

142 Long-term consequences But in the same year the German newspaper Arbeit could not sell its 5,000 copies per issue, and many copies continued to remain unsold.45 There were several reasons for this. Some Germans say that they were unaware of the existence of this German-language newspaper, which is not surprising because Arbeit was not included on the state subscription lists of periodicals. Moreover, other Germans said that they did not feel comfortable subscribing to Arbeit as they did not want to display or emphasize their ethnic origins for fear of further persecution (as the special settlement regime had just ended). It is also possible that the younger generation of Germans found it difficult to read this German newspaper because so many of them no longer knew any written German even if they spoke the language. The contents of Arbeit were very predictable considering the place and time of its publication. The largest section of the newspaper was dedicated to the official reports of national (all-Union) Communist Party meetings, the speeches of various party leaders, and results of various socialist competitions. Then there followed several much smaller sections containing articles on regional political news and practical advice on growing crops, livestock, and so on. The smallest section of all in the newspaper was dedicated to “German” news and only contained stories on Soviet German workers who exceeded their production norms and anecdotes attacking the “ruthless government of West Germany.” Any discussion of “ethnic sentiments” (expressions of pro-German feelings or references to ethnic German culture) in the newspaper was strictly prohibited.46 The Soviet government closed Arbeit in 1957, only two years after its initial appearance, due to its overall “improper and selective representation of Soviet life.”47 Yet the newspaper established the precedence for a German-language press in the postwar USSR, and other ethnic German newspapers soon followed in its footsteps. In 1957, Moscow allowed the publication of a centralized (Moscow-produced) German-language newspaper Neues Leben (Novaia zhizn’ or New Life). This newspaper became the main German-language press organ for the duration of the Soviet regime. Two additional German-language newspapers, Rote Fahne (Krasnoe Znamia, or Red Flag) and Arbeitsbanner (Trudovoe Znamia, or Toilers’ Banner) were allowed to circulate shortly thereafter, also in 1957, in the Altai region. In 1959, the latter two newspapers merged into one, Rote Fahne, which survived until the end of the Soviet regime. Finally, in 1966, a German language Kazakhstan-based newspaper Freundschaft (Druzhba, or Friendship) was also established. The combined circulation of these three German-language newspapers varied greatly throughout the years of the Soviet Union. For example, Rote Fahne’s circulation was 5,500 copies in the 1960s and only 1,600 at the end of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the combined circulation of these newspapers in some years reached nearly 30,000 copies.48 The survival of a German-language press in the USSR was a continuous struggle, and the contents of this press could not and did not exceed stateimposed views of Soviet life. Moreover, following the tradition set by Arbeit in 1955, editors of all of these German newspapers were non-Germans appointed by the state. Yet the fact that the ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union had three

Long-term consequences 143 newspapers after 1959 was an achievement in itself. Until the 1980s, no ethnic minority in the Soviet Union without a territorial base had as much. For example, Soviet Koreans possessed only two periodicals while other minorities, such as Greeks and Crimean Tartars, each had only one press organ. The fight for a German language press in the USSR had two important consequences for ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union. First, it allowed for a greater preservation of German ethnic identity than would have been possible without any right to cultural self-expression. Although the effect of the German press on the Soviet German population was relatively limited, it was nevertheless substantial enough to help preserve German ethnicity. Yet on the other hand, it also allowed the construction of a greater community of “us,” namely Russian Germans who read this German language press, and “them,” meaning the rest of the Soviet population. This “we/they” dichotomy further promoted the consolidation of a post-deportation German self-identity as “Soviet Germans.” Religion was no less important for the preservation of ethnic identity among the Germans of the Soviet Union. Some religious changes that took place in exile (e.g. the blurring of confessional distinctions) have been discussed at length in the previous chapters. However, we still need to address the question of how many Germans continued to profess religious beliefs after the end of the special settlement regime. The main difficulty in studying religion in the Soviet Union is that prior to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, official figures on the number of religious believers were either unavailable or grossly misrepresented in one or another direction for ideological reasons. Nowadays, almost all post-Soviet studies estimate that roughly one-third of the peoples of the Soviet Union professed belief in a variety of religions. Yet various surveys conducted among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union before the demise of the Soviet Union contained imprecise and inconclusive statistics. Surveys conducted in the 1960s and 1970s often presented different numbers of religious believers among Germans. These studies identified four predominant religious groups among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union – Lutherans, Catholics, Mennonites, and Baptists. Yet one survey conducted in the late 1960s concluded that only 6.7 percent of Germans was believers,49 while another survey estimated in 1970 the number of Germans who were religious believers to be 16 percent.50 The latest of the three surveys, conducted in 1972, maintained that there were 20 and 28 percent of Soviet Germans who were religious believers, the exact number depending on the region of residence.51 In the 1990s, following the demise of the Soviet Union, the study of religion became much easier, although the study of religion among some nationalities still remains one of the most understudied subjects in post-Soviet societies. Thus, in the Russian Federation in the early 1990s, 50.3 percent of Russia’s citizens identified themselves as Russian Orthodox, 4.6 percent as Muslim, and 2.1 percent as members of other denominations. In addition, 43 percent of Russia’s population said that they were not believers and did not want to identify with

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any religion. Of the 50.3 percent respondents who deemed themselves to be religious believers and followers of Orthodoxy, 11 percent said that they thought they were believers and that they might be Orthodox but they were still not sure if they belonged to any confession.52 However, attempts to systematize the study of religion and religious adherence among “Russian Germans” has been complicated by a variety of factors, the most important of which is the above-mentioned blurring of confessional identities and practices among Germans that occurred in deportation and exile. As previously mentioned, Germans appreciate religion more than confession and often did not and do not distinguish among various confessional practices and churches. Recent sociological studies confirm this fact. Thus, A. Betkher states in his work that at the present moment, there are no homogeneous religious communities of Russian Germans in the territory of the former Soviet Union. He goes on to say that “due to the small number [of religious followers], believers of all confessions meet together for a service.”53 Many religious rituals have assumed greater ethnic than liturgical values for ethnic Germans. This fact explains the easy transgression of Russian Germans back and forth among various confessions, especially from Lutherans to Mennonites to Baptists and back.54 Also important is the theoretical “closeness” of these Protestant religions. Moreover, the contemporary administrative structures of various nonOrthodox churches are still far from perfect and prevent researchers from offering exact statistics about the number of believers among ethnic Germans. For example, the latest and most comprehensive scholarly survey of religion in Russia says that the Lutheran Church claims to have roughly 200,000 followers, “although it is unknown how many of them officially recognize the authority of the Lutheran Church.” Roughly 65 percent of these “Lutherans” (if they are really even that) are “Russian Germans.” Yet the numbers of other ethnic groups professing Lutheranism is cited as “indeterminate,” and thus the number of Russian German Lutherans may be entirely incorrect.55 Statistics for the Catholic Church are even less definitive. Thus, Catholic hierarchy estimates the number of adherents in Russia at 500,000, of whom “some” are Germans, Balts (pribalty), Ukrainians, and “some” belong to other ethnic groups residing in “some” regions of Russia.56 Even though acquiring overall statistics on religious profession among Russian Germans is still very problematic, the demographic representation of ethnic German members of various religious communities may offer some insight into general tendencies of religious traditions and practices among ethnic Germans in the post-Soviet space. Although these demographic studies are far from complete, a limited number of surveys have shown that in every religious group of ethnic Germans, people over the age of fifty comprise at least 60 percent and in some regions even more. At least 69 to 75 percent of these religious adherents are women, and only a minuscule number of them are young people. For example, one religious group which met in the Krasnoyarsk region had the composition represented in Table 6.4, demonstrating that overall, people over the age of fifty made up 60.3 percent of the congregation.57

Long-term consequences 145 Table 6.4 A demographic sample of a religious meeting in the Krasnoyarsk region Percentage of members

Age

3.26 10.05 12.56 13.81 21.6 9.54 27.68 1.5

Under 20 21–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 61–70 71–80 over 80

Source: F. L. Sivatskii, “Protestantskie organizatsii v Sibiri: proiskhozhdenie i sotsial’no-demograficheskaia kharakteristika,” in Protestantizm v Sibiri: istoriia i sovremennost’. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii “Protestantizm v Sibiri”, 26–28 maia 1998 goda, Omsk: Poligraf, 1998, pp. 126–130, here pp. 127–129.

If age and gender distribution remained unchanged over the past decade and a half, other tendencies turned out to be more dynamic. Whereas in the 1980s at least one-third of the religious believers among ethnic Germans had no education whatsoever and 1 percent at the most had secondary education, the percentile of church members with secondary education increased by several percent in the 1990s (although exact numbers are still unavailable). Similarly, in the 1980s the number of members of any religious communities among Soviet Germans who worked (i.e. were employed in any agricultural or industrial job) reached barely 6 percent and most believers were unemployed women and pensioners. But nowadays, up to 40 percent of religious congregations in some German communities consist of working adults.58 Although demographic studies of religious congregations are still sporadic and far from comprehensive, they indicate that “all [German religious] communities have very few members, the believers are mostly elderly women, and all attempts to involve younger Germans are usually fruitless.”59 In brief, although all of the above statistics on religions among ethnic Germans in the former Soviet territories are inconclusive, they demonstrate two important points. First, they demonstrate an easy transgression of confessional lines that many ethnic Germans have practiced ever since the end of the special settlement regime, which promotes the further consolidation of ethnic Germans into one greater community rather than segregated communities of various religious believers. Second, these studies show that even though religion per se remained a strong factor of ethnic identity as perceived by ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, the processes of secularization superimposed by the Soviet state on ethnic minorities and especially during the deportations and exile have been largely successful. Whereas Germanic communities in the Soviet territories were ardently religious prior to the deportations and exile, nowadays the majority of younger generation ethnic Germans in former Soviet territory possess very little knowledge about various religious denominations and liturgy and are basically

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either atheists or belong to any religion only superficially. It is mostly elderly women who continue the tradition of religious adherence among Russian Germans.

Self-identity This study of ethnic identity among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union could not be complete without some attempts to see how ethnic Germans themselves perceive their ethnicity and how they identify themselves. Of course, there are some inherent problems in using self-identification for the study of ethnic identity, as there are problems with other criteria that attempt to “measure” ethnicity. Thus, as many scholars have noted, participation in ethnic picnics and local ethnic volunteer associations neither require any knowledge of the ethnic language nor acknowledge any adherence to ethnic cultural traditions.60 Participation in ethnic events might make ethnic group members believe that they belong to a particular ethnic group. Yet this self-perception of ethnic identity might reflect nothing in terms of knowledge of ethnic culture and language or the practice of ethnic customs, values, and rituals. Moreover, ethnic identification has traditionally been closely linked to the perceived self-esteem and the advantages that each society attaches to particular groups. In many communities around the world, ethnic minorities choose to identify themselves based not on their internalized self-perception but on their understanding of which identity opened greater societal avenues to success.61 In our case, some ethnic Germans might find it more advantageous in the post-Soviet space to list themselves as Germans rather than as Russian or vice versa, regardless of their true feelings. Another difficulty in relying on the self-perception of ethnic identity is the difficulty inherent in any evaluation of the degree of assimilation and the necessity to employ numerous criteria of assimilation in any analysis of selfidentification. In recent years, psychologists have identified at least four types of assimilation processes that may be discerned among ethnic minority groups in any society in the past and present. They stress biculturalism, or an ability to function both in the dominant and one’s own cultures with equal ease; traditionalism, or the rejection of the main cultural attributes of the new, “alien” culture and a persistent desire to hold on to one’s ethnic origins; pure acculturation, or the complete abandonment of one’s ethnic culture in favor of the new culture; and finally marginalism, a situation in which an individual never feels at ease in either culture, whether new and dominant or old and original.62 These subdivisions of assimilation lead us to the question of how assimilated ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union were, especially those who chose to identify themselves with German culture. Were these Germans bicultural even when they said in questionnaires that they were Soviet Germans? Or were they simply marginalized, never feeling at ease in Soviet society? How do we know the difference between the two? And does it even matter to know the difference? Although the majority of scholars of assimilation (including primarily psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists) attest to the importance of self-identity among

Long-term consequences 147 ethnic minorities,63 these scholars see language as the determining factor in each type of assimilation and try to measure fluency in the native and the new language to discern the degree of assimilation. Hence we have tried to do likewise. Thus, due to the inherent difficulties of using self-perception as a “measure” of identity, the desire of ethnic Germans in Soviet and especially post-Soviet societies to identify themselves as Germans in various questionnaires may not be clear, precise and undeniable evidence and a reflection of their ethnic identity. Nevertheless, the persistence of certain patterns in self-identification reflects curious changes of ethnic identity among Soviet Germans that are worth recounting. But before doing this, it is important to establish that assimilation, as J. Milton Yinger points out, is “a variable, not an attribute. Assimilation is a multidimensional process, the various aspects of which, although highly interactive, can vary independently at different rates and in different sequence.”64 The following analysis demonstrates this degree of variation. The graph in Figure 6.1 summarizes the findings of the research on self-perception of ethnic identity among Soviet (Russian) Germans. This graph was created after analyzing numerous documents, sociological studies of ethnicities in Russia, published interviews and memoirs by ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union and in the post-Soviet countries, as well as by collecting responses to questionnaires completed by ethnic Germans in former Soviet successor states and abroad (primarily in Canada and Germany). Although memoirs, questionnaires, and interviews contained substantial information on a range of topics, the theoretical analysis on which this graph rests was aimed at deciphering

V

RG

RG

(R)G

RG

R

RG

O

--R

R

F

G (Reich)

or O(
)RRF  RG Decoding: G – German RG – Russian (Soviet) German R – Russian G(Reich) – Reichsdeutsche in Germany V – Variety (including mainly the former place of residence prior to the deportation, rarely any history beyond that or only with a direct question about their ancestors) F – Foreigners (non-German) in Russia and Central Asia --R – Non-Russian local residents O – Soviet officials (although “our Germans” are also common) and officials of post-Soviet countries.

Figure 6.1 Identity model for ethnic Germans of the former Soviet Union.

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perceptions of ethnic identity among ethnic Germans. Since the main part of this research was conducted in the post-Soviet period, it is more appropriate to talk about “Russian Germans” rather than “Soviet Germans.” As a matter of fact, most Germans from the former Soviet Union used the term “Russian” rather than “Soviet” in their answers, although some individual Germans are persistent in their use of the old term “Soviet.” The most striking feature of this finding is that Russian Germans displayed a clear sense of “relational identity” in these questionnaires. Thus, their replies varied depending on the circumstances. When ethnic Germans were questioned about their ethnic origins or ethnicity by foreigners, Russians, local residents who were not Russians, and various officials, they readily stated that they are ethnically “Russian Germans.” Only when questioned by fellow Russian Germans did these respondents become much more specific in their replies and offered a variety of answers, most commonly citing their post-deportation place of residence (e.g. Kazakhstan Germans, Siberian Germans) or, on rare occasions, their former place of residence prior to the deportation (e.g. “we came from Volga Germans”). Crucially, these respondents displayed no clear-cut boundaries between each category of identities and self-perceptions. The same person could identify himself or herself as a “Siberian German” in a conversation with another German and as a “Russian German” in response to questions posed by foreigners. This lack of definite boundaries forms the main feature of what may be called “relational identity,” or an identity based on the circumstances under which a respondent is being questioned. Their answers changed in relation to the person(s) or institution(s) which inquired about their identity. It may further be argued that the responses of ethnic Germans display a “chain of stereotypical representations”65 and show a constantly shifting relationship with other members of the surrounding community based on German perception of these relations.66 In other words, it may be argued that Germans, at least partially or subconsciously, said what they believed was expected of them. For example, they all clearly recognize that researchers from abroad are more interested in their Germanic roots than in their Soviet past. Hence these Germans might want to emphasize their “Germanness” when questioned by foreigners. Alternatively, when filling out an application for immigration, these Germans stated their ethnic origins as “Soviet Germans” regardless of their internal self-perception, since a different answer would have disqualified them from immigrating. Presumably, only memoirs and interviews conducted with no predisposed audience can be free of such “stereotypical representations.” Yet even in this seeming multiplicity of perceived identities, the overall pattern of self-identity is rather static. Or, to be more precise, it shifts within the borderlines of one perceived identity, and it is clearly recognized as that of “Russian Germans.” Although the majority of respondents demonstrated a complex ethnic identity based on the degree of specificity of any given question, the overwhelming majority of Germans also defined their ethnicity as “Russian German.” Descendants of Austrian, Swiss, and other colonists and emigrants to tsarist Russia began to call themselves by this common name after deportation

Long-term consequences 149 and exile. The very existence of the term “Russian Germans” (or “Soviet Germans”) and its persistent use in scholarly and memoir literature suggests a sense of unity shared by all Soviet Germans. A great divergence of identities was, however, registered among ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union who immigrated to Germany and who occasionally chose to identify themselves as “Russians.” The responses of these immigrants to Germany confirm that assimilation is a complex and multifaceted process. Although there is no evidence to demonstrate that these Germans were more assimilated, or “Russian,” than their counterparts who remained behind in the post-Soviet territories, the changes of their identity have more to do with their immigration than with their earlier experiences. Very typically, the surrounding German society that welcomed these “Soviet Germans” to their historic motherland, understood ethnicity, nationality, and country of origin as synonyms, identifying Germans from the former Soviet territories mainly as “Russians.” The lack of German-language skills among emigrants also promoted and facilitated this misperception. Eventually, some ethnic Germans from former Soviet territories internalized this image. This process is especially evident among young immigrants (and especially teenagers) who resist taking German language and culture courses in Germany and continue to communicate with relatives and friends in Russian. Moreover, many Germans from Russia reject “indigenous” German culture, especially political culture.67 Hence these Germans often come to identify themselves more readily as “Russians” than as “Germans.” This fact also promoted the creation of “ethnic communities” in immigration and the pseudo-sense of ethnic belongingness, often expressed in personal communication with each other, the exchange of Russian-language services (e.g. babysitting services or production of Russian-language TV programs for local channels), the opening of ethnic (Russian-specific) food stores, and so on. At the moment, the largest community of Russian Germans exists in Stuttgart, Germany. Similar Russian German zemliachestva (communities based on original place of residence) may be found in Brazil, Argentina, USA, Canada, and other countries. Previously called communities of “Soviet Germans,” their members make a clear distinction between Germans from Germany proper (“outsiders”) and Germans from the former Soviet territories. These processes of ethnic identity change in immigration, of course, are not unique. For example, many Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union to the US complained in their conversations with the author that they became more “Russian” in immigration than they were back in the Soviet Union. Faced with their lack of language skills and knowledge of their own Jewish heritage, they chose to follow life patterns formed in Soviet society. Due to the fact that their native language is Russian and they had immigrated from the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of the society that surrounds these immigrants perceives them as “Russians.” Some Russian Jews have re-embraced their new-found Jewish culture and identity, but some have also accepted at least partially their identity as that of “Russians.”

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Several sociologists and ethnologists have also conducted surveys about ancestral origins of those ethnic Germans who reside in Siberia and who chose to identify themselves as Soviet or later Russian Germans.68 For example, the aim of one survey was to analyze the historical memory of these ethnic Germans in Russia. Over 1,500 Germans were asked to identify where their ancestors came from and what particular group of Germans they belonged to. Men and women were represented in equal numbers among these respondents, and the majority of these Germans surveyed were between twenty-five and forty-nine years of age. Since the survey was conducted in the late 1990s over a period of several years, the age of the respondents indicates that although most of them grew up in places of deportation, the overwhelming majority had no recollections of deportation and the special settlement regime which was abolished in 1955. Their answers about ancestral origins are represented in Table 6.5. These statistics contain several noteworthy findings. First, as we remember from Chapter 1 that dealt with various Germanic communities residing in the Soviet territory before deportation, the majority of Germans prior to deportation identified themselves by the place in Germany or elsewhere where their ancestors had come from (e.g. Bavaria). In Table 6.5, however, only 3.6 percent of respondents were able or chose to identify their ancestors with any geographic locality outside of the Soviet Union, even though they were offered a variety of places to choose from. Predictably, almost 90 percent of respondents who chose one of the groups falling into the category of “others” were over sixty years of age. The remainder of “Soviet Germans” who were questioned displayed some degree of “historical lapse of memory,” meaning that they had forgotten their ancestral origins. It is also possible that many younger Germans never learned about their family beyond their immediate parents and grandparents so they had nothing to forget. This lack of knowledge is also evident in the fact that 45 percent of these Germans, faced even with a question that required a high degree of differentiation between various Germanic groups, believed that their Table 6.5 Ancestral origins of Siberian Germans, as identified by Germans themselves Ancestral origins

Percentage

“Siberian” Germans Volga Germans “I do not know” Mennonites Volhynia Germans Ukrainians Others (Swabs Bavarians, etc.)a

45.4 21.6 14.6 5.4 5.3 4.1 3.6

Source: Calculated based on statistics from T. Smirnova, “Nemtsy,” in Narody Zapadnoi i Srednei Sibiri: kul’tura i etnicheskie protsessy, Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2002, pp. 94–95. Note a “Other” included various categories proposed in the questionnaire such as Schwabians, Bavarians, from Holland.

Long-term consequences 151 ancestors were Siberian Germans, i.e. these respondents had no knowledge of history before deportation to Siberia. The fact that the younger generation lacked any knowledge about their ancestral origins beyond that of immediate place of residence of their parents was later confirmed by further research into the birthplaces of these respondents’ grandparents and great-grandparents. It turned out that almost none of the Germans (exact numbers are not cited) who completed these surveys had grandparents who lived in Siberia prior to 1941. Rather, as could be predicted from the deportation dynamics, most Germans residing in Siberia in the late 1990s were children and grandchildren of deportees from the European parts of the Soviet Union. In other words, a majority of Germans were either unable to identify their family origins at all (14.6 percent), or did so incorrectly (45.4 percent), or confused their perceived religious identity with that of their ethnic identity (5.4 percent). Yet all of these respondents were selected for this survey because they identified themselves as Russian Germans. Hence, these statistics once again confirm the process of consolidation of various Germanic groups into the one broadly defined group of Russian Germans, the process that took place over the course of several decades after the deportations. As the ethnographers who conducted this survey put it, “Russian Germans formed a clear identity as . . . ‘Soviet Germans,’ now changed to ‘Russian Germans’.”69 Historians and ethnic Germans from Russia themselves often refer to this group of Germans by such terms as “Soviet Germans” or “Russian Germans,” and the above discussion demonstrates that the creation of this group was a postdeportation phenomenon. This in turn implies that the Soviet regime and its practices had far-reaching consequences for national minorities beyond those discussed in the study of former Soviet republics and their indigenous populations. The Soviet regime was formative in consolidating identity of various Germanic groups, at least in that it gave Germans a sense of lived commonality, which they adopted and utilized to describe their ethnic identity and which they unintentionally superimposed on the works by historians of the past decades. The question of whether deportation had a similar effect on ethnic identity of other “punished peoples” merits a study of its own. It should be noted, however, that similar arguments have been recently proposed for the case of Chechen deportation and that of Crimean Tartars.70 Although there are some variations in the particular details of the identity reconstruction or reconsolidation that these ethnic groups experienced, the deportation nevertheless had a similarly strong impact on the creation of nationalistic sentiment and the identity construction among these peoples. The case of Crimean Tartars will suffice to demonstrate this point. Thus, in The Crimean Tartars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation, Brian Glyn Williams demonstrates that although the construction of Crimean Tartar ethnic and national identity was a long-term process that spanned from the time of the Crimean Khanate in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries to the Russian imperial rule to the present, the construction of

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politicized, modern, territorial, and secular national identity (as opposed to a pre-modern and Islamic identity) was completed and solidified only after the deportation in 1944 and while in Soviet exile. Some earlier factors, including the impact of Western ideas, the influence of the Muslim modernizer Ismail Gaspirali (Gaspinskii),71 and the early, pre-deportation Soviet policies, prompted this construction. This construction in turn allowed Crimean Tartars to maintain a close attachment and a sentimental view of Crimea as their “homeland” and to survive the hardships of exile. In many respects, the Crimean Tartar experience of surgun (exile) in the Soviet Union became instrumental to forging a nation with strong territorial attachments to Crimea and a coherent, solidified, and independent sense of ethnic and national identity. Hence, the Soviet Germans were neither alone nor unique in their experiences in the Soviet Union. But what were, in short, the factors that allowed for the preservation of ethnicity among Germans of the Soviet Union and its changes over time? In his well-known study, M. Gordon lists seven factors which result in complete assimilation – absence of prejudice, absence of discrimination, absence of value and power conflict, integration, cultural identification, and finally amalgamation.72 Based on these criteria, we can say that prejudice and discrimination, as well as a varying degree of estrangement from the larger society, have allowed Germans to preserve their ethnic identities despite the harsh persecution they suffered as an ethnic group. Yet the very same factors, combined with such structural, cultural, psychological, and biological aspects of assimilation as integration, cultural identification, and amalgamation, brought about the homogenization of their ethnic identity. The unique combination of Soviet national policies, wartime circumstances, and the politics of deportation and special regimes, created the right degree of discrimination to allow for the simultaneous preservation, restructuring, survival, and revival of the ethnic community of Soviet Germans, or later Russian Germans, as they came to call themselves after the fall of the Soviet Union. Finally, as we will see, later social conflicts over German demands for autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s revived the attention paid to ethnic Germans among the broader Soviet population.73 What is left to us is to see that these conflicts revived a sense of alienation among the German population of the Soviet Union and strengthened their sense of lived commonality, their new-found ethnic identity of “Soviet Germans,” and their common desire to emigrate.

7

At the end of the road . . .

In the 1970s and 1980s, life began to normalize for Soviet Germans, at least financially. Many were able to purchase their own homes in rural areas or cooperative apartments in the cities. By the late 1970s, the overwhelming majority of Germans either owned motorcycles or cars, or were waiting for their turn to purchase such items (during the Soviet regime there were waiting lines registered by employers for the purchase of any major appliances and cars). Soviet Germans had enough money to acquire expensive goods and enough security to invest in these goods without fear of confiscation or persecution. At the very least, the financial circumstances of former settlers were no worse than those of other citizens of the Soviet Union.1 The hardships of Germans, however, did not end with the end of the special settlement regime and with the coming of financial stability to their lives. Soviet government always had many reasons to arrest and imprison its citizens who really or presumably broke the Soviet law on various charges. For example, Germans were subjected to many anti-religious regulations that existed in the Soviet Union. Although officially all religious sects were subject to certain regulations and administrative fines and even criminal punishments for breaking laws on religious observance, Germans remember that they were treated “with special zeal” by the authorities, when compared to other religious communities. Thus, in 1972, administrative fines were levied on German Baptists and Mennonites sixty-four times in the Omsk region. Members of these communities were charged with failure to register religious organizations, improper use of homes for religious meetings, and conducting religious instruction for children (who, according to Soviet beliefs, were supposed to grow up to be communists and anti-religious members of the Soviet society). The total of these fines amounted to 2,670 rubles.2 Similar fines were levied almost every year, and the same groups of Baptists and Mennonites in the Omsk region paid 1,650 rubles in fines as late as 1986.3 Occasionally, Germans were even prosecuted according to criminal laws for religious activities and were imprisoned. In 1973, I. Ia. Vins, a leader of the Omsk Baptist German group, was sentenced to three years in prison for “distributing illegal [i.e. religious] literature.” In 1974, the same charge was levied against three German Mennonites, I.F. Tevs, Ia.Ia. Enns, and P.G. Adrian, who were sentenced to five, four, and three years in prison

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respectively. In 1976, I.G. Levin was found guilty of possessing his own underground press called Khristianin (“Christian,” published in Russian) which published religious literature and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1981, I.A. Vall and Ia.F. Dirksen were sentenced to five years each for “establishing an unregistered school for teaching religion to children.”4 Examples of this nature can be found in every region of the Soviet Union. Only in 1988, as many Germans recall, did Germans begin to feel that most restrictions on their life were over with. They were finally free to practice their culture, their religion, speak their language, and were able to apply to local officials and the German Embassy in Moscow for permission to emigrate to Germany without fear of persecution for such actions. The continuous repressions of post-special settlement times, however, were much more limited in their scope and nature than had been the case in the 1940s and 1950s. Moreover, official documents never suggest that any of these measures and prosecutions were ethnic-oriented. The Soviet government no longer implied that Germans were subject to any special restrictions because of their ethnicity or nationality. If persecutions continued, they were equally applicable by law to all Soviet citizens, and they never again involved massive numbers of people on a scale of the Great Purges and deportations. Crucially, these repressive measures were not substantial enough to prevent Germans from fighting for autonomy, even if the dream of the German administrative region in the Soviet Union was not fulfilled and the struggle for it continued for many years. The first organized attempt on the part of Soviet Germans to appeal for the re-establishment of an autonomous region goes back to 1964–65. On 29 August 1964, the Soviet government adopted a resolution to annul the order of 28 August 1941 on the deportation of Germans and rehabilitate ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union from all possible consequences of being potentially and in retrospect accused of collaboration with Nazi Germany5 (even though all Germans in the USSR were never directly accused of collaborationism during the wartime deportations). Although this resolution meant little in terms of everyday life for Germans, it prompted Germans to send a delegation to Moscow to appeal for the restoration of a German autonomous republic. The First Delegation of Germans arrived in Moscow in January 1965 with a letter of support signed by 660 Soviet Germans from different regions. Moscow officials dismissed this delegation outright under the pretense that the number of signatures was not sufficient to warrant a meeting with any Kremlin official. The Second Delegation, made up of fortythree people, arrived in Moscow six months later on June 2, and remained there until July 27, 1965. The delegation brought with them a letter with 4,498 signatures that requested the restoration of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans.6 On July 7, 1965, Anastas Mikoian, the current Head of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, met with nineteen members of this delegation and discussed autonomy-related questions with them for an hour and forty minutes. He told the delegation of Germans that the restoration of the autonomy was “unachievable under the circumstances.” The delegation demanded a

At the end of the road . . . 155 new Volga German Republic, and Mikoian made it explicit that he could not support a mass migration of Soviet Germans from Central Asia and Siberia to European parts of the Soviet Union, which the creation of such an autonomous republic would entail. Yet Mikoian promised to support Soviet Germans’ efforts to preserve their culture and language, a promise with little immediate implications.7 A Third Delegation of Germans, which was met by Soviet officials in the Kremlin in 1967, produced even fewer results and brought about no changes. All the efforts to restore an autonomous region for Germans in the 1960s were fruitless, although the very existence of these attempts indicates the changing circumstances of life for ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Soviet Germans did not resume their attempts to restore the German autonomy for several years. In 1972, a collective letter from Germans from all regions of the USSR with 3,500 signatures was sent to Moscow, requesting the establishment of an autonomous republic. A Special Commission was created to investigate the problem of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, especially the position of Germans in Kazakhstan. After reviewing an avalanche of letters pleading for autonomy and numerous applications for emigration to Germany submitted by Soviet Germans to local and central Soviet authorities, the Commission proposed in 1976 to create an autonomous republic of Soviet Germans in the northern parts of Kazakhstan, with its capital in the city of Ermentau.8 KGB General Filipp Bobkov, who was actively involved in the decisionmaking process concerning the position of ethnic Germans at the time, remembers that the Commission at first considered restoring the Volga German Republic. The Saratov region, which was supposed to house the restored autonomous republic, had plenty of free space, and local authorities expressed a clear desire to welcome “more working hands” to their territories. Yet this decision was quickly overturned after the First Secretary of Kazakhstan, D. Kunaev (of whom we will talk at length later; see p. 157), made a very reasonable argument. He suggested that it made no sense to take labor resources away from tselina, or Virgin Lands, to places that were already cultivated, well settled and well established. Moreover, he further argued that a new generation of Germans had grown up in Kazakhstan by 1979, and these Germans were accustomed to their present place of residence. Although nothing was said about the position of ethnic Germans in other parts of the Soviet Union, the commission found Kunaev’s arguments very convincing, especially since Kazakhstan was the place with a high concentration of German (former) special settlers.9 After many arguments pro and contra, the problem of the German autonomy seemed to be finally solved. On May 31, 1979, Politburo TsK KPSS made a decision and signed an order “On Organization of a German Autonomous Region”10 in the northern parts of Kazakhstan with its center in the city of Ermentau. As many participants in these events recall, two important factors went into the timing of this decree and into the reasoning behind it. First, the year 1979 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Virgin Land program. By 1958, the Virgin Lands initiative had opened up 41.8 million hectares of new arable land which was previously not utilized for agriculture. Most of this land

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was in the northern parts of Kazakhstan. The first crop of 1958 proved a significant success, contributing greatly to the overall Soviet increase of agricultural production by 35 percent in this year.11 The idea of establishing an autonomous German republic in this region of Kazakhstan was partially due to plans to celebrate this holiday.12 Some Germans argued that the decree on German autonomy indirectly acknowledged the role of German labor in the progress made in the cultivation of the Virgin Lands. Their role was indeed significant, even if German participation in this campaign was proportionate to their high numbers in the region and was not the result of any ethnic policies of the Soviet government.13 Second, the region that was chosen for German autonomy was one of the poorest developed regions in Kazakhstan regardless of the progress made in its cultivation over the past several decades. Ermentau, the proposed center of the new German autonomous region, was located 140 kilometers away from the nearest city of Tselinorgad (present-day Akmola and the new capital of independent Kazakhstan), and it was nothing more than a small provincial town, or rather an extended selo (village). In many ways, this region was a “wasteland of the wasteland.” This fact was so apparent that even officials realized that there was a need to address the problem of underdevelopment. Thus, party official V. Vladimirov, who worked with the First Secretary of Kazakhstan Kunaev, remembered the latter promising to offer financial assistance and run electric power lines to this region, develop major train routes, and build better train stations.14 In the late 1970s, the region barely had two train stations with only occasional, rather than daily, services and no urban centers, although it contained as many as thirty-five small villages. To make matters more appealing, the town of Ermentau was also decorated with Soviet and Kazakistani flags and posters with portraits of the proposed officials for this region, including Andei Braun, who was supposed to become the First Secretary of the Regional Committee, or obkom, of this new administrative territory.15 All along, Braun was the main driving force pushing for the creation of a German autonomous region.16 However, the resolution on the creation of the German autonomous region here encountered substantial opposition. Thus, on June 16, 1979, a large number of local residents organized a popular demonstration against the creation of the autonomous region staged in the central Lenin Square of Tselinograd.17 During this demonstration and afterwards, local KGB and party officials did their best to keep this demonstration a secret and prohibited the spread of any information about these events, especially in the media and press. As a result, these events almost “disappeared” from history, and only marginal traces of this demonstration remain in the memory of people who witnessed these events. As witnesses recall, when the anti-German autonomy demonstration in Tselinograd started, there were very few non-Kazakh faces, although the city of Tselinograd and surrounding regions contained a large Russian and German population. The age of the demonstrators differed greatly. Some witnesses remember that mostly young people demonstrated, while others recalled seeing mostly elderly Kazakhs. KGB General Bobkov mentioned in his memoirs that

At the end of the road . . . 157 the demonstration started when students of Tselinograd Pedagogical Institute took to the streets (with the complete approval of local party officials), and they were later spontaneously joined by many others, including bystanders.18 Hence it is reasonable to assume that all generations participated in this demonstration, from the younger generation to their grandparents. Kazakh or not in ethnic origin, young and old, demonstrators carried banners inscribed with the words “Kazakhstan is undividable” (Kazakhstan nedelim) and “Say ‘No’ to German Autonomy” (net nemetskoi avtonomii).19 Some people recall seeing banners saying “Send all Germans to Siberia,” “Restore the special settlement regime” (vosstanovit’ spetskomendaturu), “We will not give the land of our fathers to fascists,” “Let’s confiscate the Germans’ property,” and so on. Because of the secrecy of this demonstration, no documents were located that attest to the presence of such aggressive slogans on the banners carried by the crowd. Yet the majority of present-day Kazakistani population recall hearing about these banners and maintain that they are sure that the first two banners about the indivisibility of Kazakhstan made their appearance on the streets of Tselinograd. Over the course of the next three days, the demonstration spread to other parts of the city of Tselinograd and even into some neighboring villages. Only the unusual actions of the local party boss, the First Secretary of Tselinograd region N.E. Morozov, prevented a turn to violence. On June 16, instead of calling on the police to suppress the demonstration, he stood in front of the crowd and spoke of agricultural matters unrelated to the demonstration, pretending that people in front of him were interested in such agricultural questions. Eventually, the demonstrators lowered their banners and went home, bored by Morozov’s talk.20 Three days later, when protests continued, Morozov once again went out to speak to the crowd. This time, he made one brief statement – that there would be no German autonomy in Kazakhstan. Probably as a result of popular opposition, the plan for a German autonomous region in the northern part of Kazakhstan never materialized. But different people cite different reasons why this autonomy never came about. Some witnesses maintain that the personality of the First Secretary of Kazakhstan and the role he played are the key reason for a German autonomy failure to be established. Dinmukhamed (Dimash) Akhmetovich Kunaev (1912–93) was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of Communist Party in the Republic of Kazakhstan for over twenty-five years. He was first appointed to this position in 1960, and held it from 1960 until 1962 and then after a short break again from 1964 until 1986 when he retired.21 Kunaev was well known for his efforts to keep territorial integrity of Kazakhstan as he “inherited” it. Nowadays, residents of this country are split over the question whether this approach was Kunaev’s major achievement or his major failure. Thus, in the early years of the Virgin Lands campaign in the late 1950s shortly after Nikita Khrushchev came to power, Moscow decided to establish a new administrative region, Tselinnyi krai, in the northern part of Kazakhstan, the place of the so-called “wastelands.” Kunaev immediately saw that such an administrative subdivision would make it

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very easy for Nikita Khrushchev to incorporate this region into Russia proper and take it away from the administrative and financial jurisprudence of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Kunaev therefore actively refused such a proposal and secured permission to have a similar subdivision of all of the Kazakhstan’s territory into many regions (krai). He calculated it correctly that once Tselinnyi krai lost its special status and became “one among many,” it would be next to impossible to take it away from Kazakhstan.22 Already at this point Kunaev clearly indicated that he was willing to put up a fight in order to keep the northern region of Kazakhstan under his administrative control.23 In offering arguments contra autonomy in front of his fellow party officials in Kazakhstan and Moscow and by semi-officially authorizing the anti-autonomy demonstration in Tselinograd, Kunaev possibly also considered the political threat posed by Andrei Braun, a candidate for the head position in the German autonomous region. As a matter of fact, numerous witnesses mentioned that a power struggle between Braun and Kunaev might have been the true reason behind Kunaev’s opposition to the creation of a German autonomous region. The two men had clearly opposite ideas about the governing of Kazakhstan. At the time, Braun favored acknowledging various ethnic sentiments and supporting territorial ambitions of each ethnic group, although nine years later he would say that Kazakhs had no reason to give up their ethnic historic land to “some Germans.”24 Kunaev, to the contrary, believed in the territorial integrity of Kazakhstan and the complete assimilation of other cultures into Kazakh culture, although he never supported the assimilation of Kazakh culture into Russian and was the only non-Russian First Secretary of any of the Soviet republics to serve in this position for such a prolonged period of time. Kunaev believed that Braun hoped to take his position at some point, and he was most likely correct about this. Braun, who was at the time the first Secretary of Akmolinsk oblast’ in Kazakhstan, clearly lost his battle. Although Kunaev explicitly and implicitly opposed the creation of a German autonomous region, he offered his own explanation of why the German autonomous region proposed in 1979 was never established despite the official resolution of the Soviet government to do this. Kunaev acknowledged that “it happened occasionally that decisions made by Politburo for various reasons were never implemented. Such was the case with the decision to organize an autonomous German region on the territory of Kazakhstan.”25 But he explained this situation by citing the fact that after signing the decree on autonomy, Moscow was bombarded with an avalanche of letters from Germans pleading against the establishment of such a region in the northern parts of Kazakhstan. Presumably, it was the Germans themselves who did not want to see such a turn of events. According to Kunaev, Germans from all over the Soviet Union argued that their previous letters had requested the establishment of an autonomous region on the Volga, in the area of the former Volga German Republic, and that the autonomous region in Kazakhstan would not solve their problems. After all, Germans wanted complete rehabilitation and restoration of their rights, including the right to return to their places of residence prior to the deportations.26

At the end of the road . . . 159 Kunaev further added that he never saw a reason for Germans to be autonomous, and hence he acted accordingly. He argued repeatedly that “hardworking and honest, Germans, who ended up in Kazakhstan against their own will, were never treated here as aliens, as outsiders.”27 He maintained that the local population always treated Germans with respect and offered moral and financial assistance to the best of its abilities. Kunaev continued that local officials, including himself, were also always willing to help Germans in any way they could. Moreover, he personally rewarded and supported various initiatives of German “industrial innovators” such as I. Miller, V. Gartman, and others. Germans, according to Kunaev, were always free to express their national sentiments as well as practice their culture. He cited as an example of this that a local publishing house was recently given permission to publish several books in German, and a local radio station started to broadcast a one-hour-long program in German as well. Hence, since Germans were already an integral part of Kazakistani life, they did not need to be autonomous, he concluded.28 Kunaev clearly “forgot” in his arguments the long history of hardships and repressions that the Germans were subjected to, as he failed to mention many Germans residing outside of Kazakhstan who were interested in a region of their own. Nowadays, it appears doubtful that ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union had any real objections to the establishment of an autonomous German Republic in Kazakhstan (unless a few Germans who lived far away in Siberia did not want to relocate to Kazakhstan), although the existence of a power struggle among local party officials is very possible. Most likely, a blend of various circumstances was to be blamed for the failure to establish German autonomy. In Moscow, it is also possible that this decision was never implemented because the Central Committee was disturbed and preoccupied, above other things, with the situation in Afghanistan, especially in the last few months of 1979 (on December 12, 1979, it was finally decided that the Soviet troops must enter Afghanistan). Under these conditions and shocked by the extent of popular and official opposition in Kazakhstan, Moscow abandoned its ideas to enforce the establishment of a German autonomous region there. Besides the actual events of this opposition to a German autonomous region in Kazakhstan, the understanding of national politics among the officials and population in general was also important in explaining the position of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Both the discussion of and opposition to the territorial autonomy of Germans in Kazakhstan demonstrated that neither local nor Moscow officials, nor local population, nor even Germans perceived themselves as anything but a united ethnic entity of “Soviet Germans,” united, above all, by their immediate history of repressions, by their “lived commonality.” The failure of the 1979 German autonomy discouraged many Germans from fighting for their own autonomous region. The discussion of the German autonomy was revived only a decade later in the late 1980s after Germans throughout the Soviet Union decided to establish nation-wide organizations to represent their political and social aspirations and protect their rights. During this time of

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many changes, three German organizations were created: the All-nation Union of Germans Vozrozhdenie (“Revival”),29 the Union of Russian Germans (MSRN), and the International Union of German Culture (MSNK).30 The leaders of Vozrozhdenie received the support of the overwhelming majority of Soviet Germans and renewed the struggle for German autonomy. Under their pressure (and with the support of the Federal Republic of Germany for members of Vozrozhdenie), in 1989 the Soviet government established a commission to consider once again the question of a German autonomous region. This time, the autonomy was proposed to be in the Saratov province, located where the former Volga Germans Republic used to exist.31 But as earlier in Kazakhstan in 1979, in 1989 and the early 1990s this proposal for German autonomy met with some opposition from both local residents and the local administration. This opposition assumed a mass character when Izvestiia and other Moscow-based newspapers published a report that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR had reviewed the work of the Special Commission on the Question of German and Crimean Tartar Autonomous Regions and found their proposition to restore the German Volga Republic within its pre-World War II borders “very satisfactory.”32 Many Germans suspected (and subsequent research demonstrated) that popular opposition to the creation of the Volga German Autonomy was partially fueled by popular ethnic hatred based on the persistent old stereotypes of Germans as “fascists.” Moscow newspapers reported that various questionnaires distributed in the factories in the Saratov region and the analysis of the local press supported the view that the majority of the local population believed Soviet Germans to have been “the instigators of World War II,” “damned fascists,” and/or “unpatriotic traitors of the Soviet lands.”33 Although most of these sentiments were quite likely overemphasized in the central press to show the “backwardness” of local provinces (Moscow often had a negative attitude toward the underdeveloped “peripheries”), some hard-core conservatives, especially among the older generation, were likely to share at least some of these beliefs and fears about the restoration of a German autonomous region. But it is more likely that popular fears about German autonomy in Saratov were based primarily on rumors concerning financial matters rather than ethnic feelings. Ordinary people heard rumors that their houses had been sold to an unknown company from Germany that planned to forcefully evacuate all local residents from premises that were previously (before the deportation) occupied by German families. People believed that this forceful approach was adopted to solve the housing problem of newly arriving Germans. Since over 400,000 Germans had resided in the Volga region prior to deportation, it was believed that a corresponding number of local people would be thrown out of their homes into the streets. No assurance from members of Vozrozhdenie that these rumors were false could calm down the widespread panic over this matter. Of course, the overall sense of insecurity and the early stages of economic and political disintegration in the country in the late 1980s only made the local Saratov

At the end of the road . . . 161 population more sensitive to such rumors and to anything that constituted a potential threat to their precarious economic and social stability. On their part, local officials figured out that the creation of a German Autonomous Republic in the Saratov region would take away some important industrial and agricultural sections from their control. Parts of Saratov farm lands, gas and oil pipelines, strategically important airports, and all industries in the towns of Mars, Engel, and Krasnoarmeisk (which were to become a part of the German autonomy) would be lost to the Saratov region, or at least removed from the control of the Saratov regional administration. Germans clearly saw that the loss of such important industrial and farming centers would provoke objections from the local administration, and many Germans later blamed actions of various local “bureaucrats and politicians” for the failure of their bid for autonomy in the USSR. In any case, the opposition to German autonomy sometimes took extreme forms. The first widespread reaction was the creation of anti-autonomy committees in Saratov factories which met to discuss the negative consequences of the potential creation of German autonomy on the Volga. Such committees existed in most local factories by December 1989, and many of them took the explicit names of “Otechestvo” (“Motherland”) and “Zashchita” (“Protection”). During the meetings of these committees, participants signed letters of protest and took measures to “enlighten” those participants who favored German autonomy. It should be noted, however, that most of these committees were not against Germans per se but against the creation of a German autonomous territory in the Saratov region.34 Saratov obkom leaders possibly played an important role in this opposition, especially in these committees, as it was commonly believed that the committees were organized by the local party authorities. Although the evidence for this statement is too sporadic to assess decisively in all cases, Moscow newspapers reported, for example, that Saratov party officials issued orders to local industries requiring them to send factory representatives to attend anti-autonomy meetings and to join various anti-autonomy committees.35 These committee members as well as other anti-autonomy enthusiasts and ordinary people organized meetings and demonstrations against the creation of a German autonomy. One such demonstration took place at the end of March 1990. Many people attending this demonstration carried banners with signs saying “We cannot let our children lose their Motherland!” and “We will not let [them] cut Volga region into pieces!” Journalists in attendance recorded statements made by meeting leaders that “History is not a streetcar to go backwards. Yes, Russian Germans were innocent yet suffered . . .. Yes, they were repressed. But what peoples in our country were not subjected to repressions [during the war]; weren’t even Russians a part of the common suffering?”36 Earlier that year, in January 1990, some activists went to Moscow and staged a demonstration there under the general theme “Germans – yes! Autonomy – no!”37 This was not the first or last of such demonstrations, and the anti-autonomous emphasis of such meetings was always the same. The most active protestors attempted to revive the image of Germans as an

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At the end of the road . . .

internal enemy to promote their case. They used banners comparing contemporary discussions of German autonomy to the Soviet Union’s attempts to protect its independence from Nazi German occupation during World War II. A leaflet was distributed at the time under the title “An Appeal from the Workers of Saratov and Volgograd regions to the Citizens of Russia” that read: Comrades! Behind people’s back [the Center] decided to create the third Germany in our Motherland. Neither Crusaders [Teutonic Knights] nor Keiser in 1914 nor Hitler in 1941 could achieve this goal, but activists from “Vozrozhdenie” with the help from FRG and Moscow are attempting to achieve this goal now. Functionaries of “Vozrozhdenie” sound the alarm about the restoration of historical justice, about creation of German autonomy in the Volga region. What justice are we talking about? Justice done by the German Tsaritsa [Catherine the Great] for Germans? Russian people never invited Germans. Or are we talking about justice when German autonomy was forced onto Lenin with the aid of humiliating Brest Peace Treaty? . . . Members of “Vozrozhdenie” are trying to scare us by saying that without autonomy Germans will go to FRG. Yes, Germans can leave and go home to their motherland, to Germany. But we ask Moscow: “Where are we to go from our motherland when Germany will be created here?”38 Although this particular leaflet went to an extreme in its anti-German fears, it reflected the broader sentiments in the population against the creation of a German autonomy. Finally, the anti-autonomy opposition recruited some researchers to provide additional legitimacy to their resistance to the re-establishment of a German autonomy. For example, several professors from the Saratov State University were enlisted to argue that German colonists in tsarist and early Soviet Russia were prosperous at the expense of the local population and often “took away” from the local population what rightfully belonged to Russians (e.g. jobs or land). Moreover, several local sociologists conducted research to show that roughly 97 percent of the local population in the Saratov region actively opposed the creation of a German autonomous region in the Volga area. They said that they interviewed 13,417 people, of whom only 357 supported the autonomy and 117 had no opinion. The rest of the group was against the autonomy. But even local administration and journalists at the time doubted the accuracy of such surveys and suspected extreme exaggeration of the negative role played by Germans during the pre-deportation period.39 The final waves of protest subsided only in 1992, when on January 8, 1992, Boris Yeltsin made an official visit to the Saratov region. Although he was believed to be sympathetic to the case of ethnic Germans and their struggle for autonomy, during his public appearance, Yeltsin made it clear that “the German autonomy [in the Saratov region] will be created only when Germans make up at least 90 percent of all the local population in this region.”40 In other words, the

At the end of the road . . . 163 question of German autonomy in the Saratov region was closed. Yet these events had a broader meaning than just the struggle for a German autonomy. Once again, this case had shown that to the general public, “Soviet Germans” comprised a single homogeneous ethnic entity. The situation of ethnic Germans in post-Soviet Russia changed in a positive direction later in 1992 and in 1993. Immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union, the Interstate Union of Russian Germans (MGSN) was created to represent interests of all Germans in all newly independent states of SNG (Union of Independent States that succeeded the Soviet Union), in addition to organizations established in the late 1980s. In June 1992, Germany organized Russian-German, Kazakistani-German, Kyrgyz-German and Ukraine-German commissions to care for and protect the interests of ethnic Germans in these regions. Through these commissions the German government gives substantial financial support to Germans in these regions up until the present day. At the Third Congress of Germans of the former Soviet Union that convened in February 1993, Germans throughout the former USSR held a referendum and organized a VolksStaat, or the first popularly elected “People’s Parliament of Russian Germans.” VolksStaat members held numerous meetings with Boris Yeltsin to discuss the establishment of German districts in the Volgograd and Saratov regions. Although this autonomy never materialized, in 1993, the Russian Federation government established two German national districts, one in the Altai region and another in Omsk oblast’.41 In the German district of Omsk alone, as of 2004, there were forty-three centers for cultural enrichment for Germans and twenty-six schools that provided intensive training in German. Since the overwhelming majority of Germans there do not speak German fluently enough to use it daily, the language of instruction in these schools is Russian. Yet a special program in language training has been developed to allow for the intensive learning of the German language and the reintegration of the German language into local Germans’ everyday lives.42 Although the situation of ethnic Germans who still reside in their country of birth is no longer problematical in the Russian Federation, in the early 1990s and later the position of Germans in the newly independent countries of Central Asia became challenging. This challenge arises from the difficult national past of indigenous populations of Central Asia and the quest for independent “nationhood” that these local populations embarked upon following the demise of the Soviet Union. Rogers Brubaker pointed out in a 1996 article that all post-Soviet states are geared to function as states of and for particular ethnocultural nations.43 The leaders and peoples of these newly independent nations do not feel comfortable about their “nationhood” and hence are reluctant to allow various minority groups into the picture. The indigenous peoples of Central Asia (meaning the indigenous and titular groups, as some indigenous minorities have always been under-represented) feel that their cultures and languages, much less territory, had been threatened and marginalized for decades by the political, economic, and even demographic dominance of the Russia-centered Soviet Union.

164

At the end of the road . . .

Their claims to “nationhood” are based primarily on their territorial, “historic” rights to their respective countries. In the 1990s, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Central Asian peoples, due to and based on their immediate past, attempted to establish complete cultural hegemony in their new states and perceived themselves to be the only titular and indigenous nationality in each respective state. This claim effectively excluded Germans from active participation in the political, social and cultural life of the new countries and denied them the possibility of reasserting and revitalizing their own threatened German culture and language. In brief, there was little space for ethnic minorities like Germans in post-Soviet discussion of nationhood and ethnicity in the Central Asian countries. Germans in the post-Soviet Central Asian nations are not repressed in any way similar to the Soviet repression of the 1940s and 1950s, and even thereafter. But due to the inherent insecurities of the Central Asian local populations, Germans are denied any real political or social presence in the affairs of their respective countries. Even if Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakhstan’s President, and the current leadership of other Central Asian countries have expressed their support for multi-ethnicity and internationalism and their desire to have a civil (rather than ethnic) national identity for the many peoples of their countries, these claims remain more theoretical than practical. Until recently, the Constitution of Kazakhstan, for example, only promised to protect the right of Kazakh people to selfdetermination.44 Even though this clause was removed several years ago and since then Central Asian officials have encouraged in many ways the creation of national centers for various ethnic minorities including Germans, the overall lack of representation and the resulting distrust of the regime has promoted the desire among ethnic Germans to emigrate to Germany despite the demise of the Soviet Union. Emigration seems to offer a solution to some problems the Germans face, at least from their point of view. Even though many ethnic Germans shared a common hatred toward the Soviet Union and expressed a desire to leave the country while the Soviet Union still existed, only about 40,000 Germans were allowed to emigrate to Germany and other countries in 1955–89.45 In 1989–96, however, over a million Russian Germans moved to their historic motherland,46 taking advantage of German laws that restored full German citizenship to Volksdeutsche of the (former) Soviet territories. Although the number of emigrants to Germany began to decline in 1997 and in subsequent years, an additional 800,000 Germans have moved to Germany in 1997 and thereafter.47 If the immigration solved some of the problems of ethnic Germans in the (former) Soviet Union, it created many new problems. For the overwhelming number of Soviet Germans who moved westward to their historic motherland, integration and assimilation into German society has proven illusory. Integration implies both full embracement by immigrants of cultural norms and values of their new society, and the availability of economic, political, social, and cultural opportunities equal to indigenous people, offered by the host society to its new members. Hence integration is a two-way process which depends equally on the

At the end of the road . . . 165 response of the society receiving immigrants and on people emigrating to another nation. However, in the case of Soviet German immigration, neither side (either immigrants or the host society) has been able to practice, support, promote, or achieve integration fully and successfully. The response of the German government and Reichsdeutsche following the reunification of Germany has changed dramatically from the Cold War era to the present day, and this change has taken more substantial forms than the reduction of the immigration quota. In 1993, the German government issued a law KriegsfolgenbereiNigungsgesetz which set a quota for ethnic German immigration from Eastern Europe (mostly fulfilled by ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union) at 225,000 a year. But overwhelmed with the financial responsibility to support immigrants that came with the passage of this law, the German government reduced its immigration quota to 100,000 a year in 2000.48 The quota reduction, however, was only one of many other changes. These changes reflected not only the new political situation in the post-Soviet block and overwhelming financial hardships experienced by the German government, but also the government’s and local residents’ disappointment with the lack of immigrant integration into their new host society. When the mass immigration of Soviet Germans to their historic motherland began in the late 1980s, the newcomers, or Aussiedler (resettler, immigrant),49 were bestowed with substantial benefits that sought to acculturate and fully integrate them into German society. Aussiedler received substantial social insurance in the form of pensions equal to those of German citizens with experience in equivalent work, full health insurance coverage and welfare benefits for unemployment. To promote integration, the German government paid for language training, including both the cost of language training courses and living expenses while immigrants attended such courses, as well as professional education and training if immigrants’ previous qualifications or professions failed to meet the standards of German society or if their previous training was entirely inadequate for their new life in Germany. Finally, the government offered lump-sum payments for relocation (as a compensation for past sufferings) and housing loans at substantially reduced interest rates.50 Yet already by the early 1990s, the German government realized that its loose definition of German ethnicity for Aussiedler had created more problems than it solved. Any person born after December 31, 1923 was recognized as German if he/she was a descendant of a German parent, possessed a knowledge of German culture and language, and was recognized as of German nationality in any official way according to the laws in their country of residence. However, the German government recognized that under some circumstances (e.g. the Soviet regime) the learning of language and culture was impossible and the recognition of German ethnicity by the government was disadvantageous for a German. Hence Soviet Germans were recognized as of German ethnicity solely if they were descendants of a single ethnic German.51 As a result, it was enough to claim German ancestry without any knowledge of culture or language to receive

166 At the end of the road . . . substantial benefits from the German government. Aussiedler learned to rely heavily on monetary benefits provided by the German state yet have failed to utilize social benefits that promote integration and acculturation. To address this problem, in June 1996, the German government introduced a mandatory language exam as a part of the entry requirements for Aussiedler and reformed their benefits, taking away some of the monetary rewards but offering more benefits aimed at social integration. The oral language exam was conducted by an immigration officer to investigate whether a potential immigrant was capable of carrying out a basic everyday conversation in German. If potential German immigrants were capable of doing this, they could be admitted to Germany as Aussiedler and claim certain benefits. The German government reduced the pension and welfare benefits to 60 percent of the native German rate and limited welfare payments to six months. It similarly introduced a six-month limit for job retraining and language training. Yet it kept health insurance at its full coverage and offered a variety of new programs such as “Sports with Aussiedler.” Although the German government aimed at better integration of immigrants through these new regulations and argued that too much dependence on social welfare and other benefits prevents rather than stimulates integration into German society, many observers and immigrants believe that these changes in policies further undermined the possibility of integration as they took away the much-needed period of economic security and support from newcomers who inevitably faced a long process of integration.52 In addition to limitations on government assistance, the most significant difficulty experienced by Soviet Germans in immigration is the lack of common language to communicate with the surrounding society. As has been mentioned repeatedly, the majority of Germans in the former Soviet territory do not possess adequate German language skills to integrate easily into German society. For example, when the language test was introduced in June 1996, the number of immigrant applications from the former Soviet Union declined significantly. Yet out of those who decided to take the test, over 35 percent failed.53 Moreover, regardless of state support, ethnic Germans often face a problem with finding suitable employment. Many Aussiedler remain unemployed for prolonged periods of time and have to rely on government welfare support or live marginalized lives. To add to this marginalization, the Aussiedler complain that the government offers them subsidized housing in unattractive sections of towns. These town communities of subsidized housing are often “international in their character” (i.e. consisting of immigrants) and very isolated from the rest of German society. Moreover, ‘indigenous’ Germans have a negative attitude toward people who reside in such sections of a town. Hence, reliance on government subsidized housing, while offering a jump-start on housing needs for Aussiedler, simultaneously increases ghettoization of ethnic Germans and fosters the creation of their own communities outside the German mainstream. The historical legacy of the different political, social, and cultural structure that ethnic Germans experienced and adapted to in the Soviet Union and afterwards also often prevents Russian Germans from integrating successfully into

At the end of the road . . . 167 their host society. Ethnic Germans are accustomed, for example, to the fact that a government is solely responsible for providing proper medical care for its citizens, along with education and other social benefits. When the German government limited the extent of its help in the social realm to ethnic Germans, Aussiedler regarded this as “unfair” and were disappointed with their experience in immigration. Culturally, the patterns of socialization and overall understanding of the social structure that ethnic Germans emigrants from the former Soviet Union share is very different from what they find when they arrive in Germany. But the most difficult point of intersection with the outside community turned out to be in the religious sphere. Accustomed to years of religious persecutions and Soviet policies of banning religion and driving it underground, Soviet Germans learned to be indifferent to religion in general or to distinctions among various religious denominations (and this is especially true for younger people), or they perceive religious belief as a “private matter” which requires little church intervention or church attendance. As a result, as Andreas Heinrich points out: The lack of social structure to which [ethnic Germans] had got accustomed in the Soviet Union, the social distance between them and “indigenous” Germans, and the large number of foreigners in Germany, from whom they try to distinguish themselves clearly, make social participation of [ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union] in Germany difficult and have contributed to an increasing lack of integration into mainstream society.54 In brief, the overall system of values and norms that former Soviet Germans bring with them works to their disadvantage in immigration and prevents their successful integration into a new host society. As many researchers have noted, “the behavior of [Russian] Germans in migration was in a great degree determined by their historical experiences of life in the Soviet Union.”55 Even younger immigrants have difficulty adjusting to their new lives in Germany for a variety of reasons. Many young Russian Germans emigrate to Germany involuntarily with their parents. They leave their friends and familiar setting behind and they often view the need to readjust to their new life in Germany as a burden. Many of them lack any knowledge of German language and are indifferent to any expressions of German culture, since they had learned to accept their post-Soviet environment. Many young people, especially teenagers, refuse to learn the German language and prefer to communicate with friends and family predominantly in Russian.56 Moreover, their expectations of the new society often do not correspond to the reality of immigrant life. Their parents, who are struggling to find their own niche in the new society, often cannot offer any support to their children. These young German immigrants become outsiders in a society with which they share nothing in common, and they create their own groups or gangs of ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union.57 As a result of insufficient integration, all Soviet Germans create their closely knit communities of Russian Germans with members who share not only a

168 At the end of the road . . . common history but also common values, traditions, background, and language. They choose to speak Russian and live in enclosed communities of zemliaki (people from one place).58 Such a desire to create communities is very much expected from immigrants who experience severe culture shock, and these communities often become the necessary milieu to ease the difficulties of immigration. Yet simultaneously, as community life eases the culture shock and assimilation process, it creates additional barriers to such assimilation because the indigenous population tends to reject Aussiedler who reside in these communities as Germans.59 As a result, it often happens that these Germans from the former Soviet Union ironically become more “Russian” in their historic motherland than they had ever been under the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, the difficulties that many Russian Germans face in exile do not prevent Germans who still reside in the former Soviet territories from aspiring to immigrate to Germany. The Director of the German House in Almaty (former Alma Ata), Kazakhstan, Mr. Dederer, mentioned in our conversation that in 2004, out of the 300,000 ethnic Germans who resided in Kazakhstan at the time of our discussion, over half had already expressed the intention of emigrating to Germany and other countries, and had submitted their emigration applications to foreign embassies. Germans in Russia similarly aspire to emigrate to Germany. Only 597,000 Germans remain in Russia,60 many of whom, like their fellow Germans in Kazakhstan, had expressed a desire to move to their historic motherland or other countries.

Epilogue

At the end, all that is left to say is that Germans of the former Soviet Union had survived as an independent ethnic group regardless of the numerous harsh trials they had to endure during the years of the Soviet regime. Their ethnic identity was homogenized, and many Germans were assimilated into the surrounding cultures or died off in the chaos of wartime deportations and resettlement in alien places. The loss of representatives of the German ethnos and many German ethnic elites of the older generation had undeniably exerted a negative impact on the broader Russian German community, which is more than evident even today. Nowadays, Russia and Central Asia are also paying for the mistakes made in their Soviet past; the massive outflow of people due to the German emigration aboard cannot pass unnoticed as it will erode these countries’ human resources. Nevertheless, I see a bright future for ethnic Germans of the former Soviet Union, or Russian Germans, either in the form of “returning to the ethnic roots” and becoming adjusted to life in Germany, or in the form of freedom of ethnic cultural expression and reinvigoration of their ethnic roots in the territory of post-Soviet nations. For Germans, it is not too late to re-embrace their ethnic culture and their ethnic roots in any location. The “short twentieth century” altered many identities and many lives, and Germans of the former Soviet Union are definitely among the survivors of this terrifying century.

Appendix

Prior to 1941, Germans were repressed and resettled most often for reasons other than their ethnic origin. For example, they were subjected to the kulak deportations and suffered greatly from these dekulakization campaigns. Even though there were some German-specific decrees in 1934, 1935, and 1937–38 (for more information, refer to Chapter 2), Table A.1 lists most significant orders (organized chronologically) that affected Germans from 1941 onwards and that influenced their life in special settlements. Table A.1 Legal regulations 1841

June 22

1941

August 8

1941

August 26

1941

August 27

1941

August 28

1941

August 30

1941

September 6

1941

September 6

1941

September 8

1941

September 8

1941

September 12

TsK VKP (b), order on evacuation of socially dangerous elements from the Crimea TsK VKP (b), Resolution No. 2060–935, “About the resettlement [rasselenie] of Volga Germans in Kazakhstan” TsK VKP (b), order, “About the deportation [pereselenie] of all Germans from the Republic of Volga Germans, Saratov and Stalingrad regions to other krai and oblast’” NKVD, Order No. 001158, “Instruction for the deportation of Germans from Republic of Volga Germans, Saratov and Stalingrad regions” Local resolution, “About the resettlement of Germans, living in the Volga region” NKVD, Order No. 001175, “About the measures for resettlements of Germans and Finns from Leningrad region in Kazakhskaia SSR” Tsk VKP(b), resolution, “About administrative control of the territory of the former Republic of Volga Germans” NKVD, Order No. 636, “About resettlement of Germans from Moscow and Moscow region and Rostov region” Order No. 35105, about removal (iz’iatie) of all soldiers of German origins from the Red Army NKVD, Order No. 001237, resolution with instruction about the “resettlement of Germans from Moscow and Moscow region and Rostov region” TsK VKP(b), Order No. 2060–935, “About resettlement of Volga Germans in Kazakhstan”

Appendix 171 1941

September 21

1941

September 22

1941

September 22

1941

September 23

1941

October 8

1941

October 8

1941

October 22

1941

October 30

1941

November 2

1941

November 21

1942

January 6

1942

January 10

1942

February 14

1942

May 29

1942

May 30

1942

June 20

1942

July 9

1942

August 20

1942

August 26

1942

October 7

Order No. 698, “About resettlement of Germans from Krasnodar and Ordzhonikidze krai, Tul’sk oblast’, KB and SO ASSR”a Order No. 702, “About the deportation of Germans from Zaporozhskaia, Stalingard and Voroshilov regions” NKVD, Order No. 001347, “On measures to be taken for the deportation process of Germans from Krasnodar and Ordzhonikidze krai, Tula oblast’, KB and SO ASSR” NKVD, Order No. 001354, “About measures to be taken for the deportation process of Germans from Zaporozhskaia, Stalingard and Voroshilov regions” Order No. 743, “About the deportation of Germans from Voronezh region” Order No. 744, “About the deportation of Germans from Georgia, Azerbaidzhan and Armenian SSR” Order No. 827, “About the deportation of Germans from Dagestan and Checheno-Ingush ASSR” SNK,b Order No. 57k, “About the resettlement of people of German nationality from industrial to agricultural regions” SNK, Order No. 84a, “About the deportation of Germans from Kalmyk ASSR” SNK, Order No. 180, “About the resettlements of people of German nationality from the border to interior regions within the limits of Chita region” SNK, Order No. 197, “About the deportation of the Germans from various parts of the Soviet Union” Order No. 1123, “About the use of German resettlers [pereselentsy] of call-up (military draft) age of 17 to 50 years old” Ministry of Defense,c Order No. 1281a, “About the mobilization of German men aged 17 to 50, residing in all districts, regions, autonomous and Soviet republics” Ministry of Defense, Order No. 1828, “About the additional deportation from Krasnodar region Rostov region of socially dangerous elements, Germans, Rumanians, Crimean Tartars and foreign citizens (Greeks)” Ministry of Defense, Order No. 1828, “About the deportation of the Germans from various parts of the Soviet Union” Resolution about the deportation of Germans from some parts of the country Ministry of Defense, “About the deportation from Leningrad and surrounding town of socially dangerous elements” NKVD, order, “About the organization of convoy of echelons with special settlers by the troops of NKVD USSR military convoy,” with various resolutions and instructions Ministry of Defense, “About the mandatory evacuation of German and Finn population from the borderline regions of Leningrad” Ministry of Defense, Order No. 2383, “About the additional mobilization of Germans for national production” [narodnoe hoziaistvo]

172

Appendix

1942

October 24

1942

October 24

1943

March 2

1943

August 19

1944

January 7

1944

January 29

1944

January 31

1944

January 31

1944

March 31

1944

April 13

1944

May 25

1944

August 24

1944

October 20

1945

January

1945

January 8

1945

January 8

1945

March 5

1945

July 28

1945

August 18

1946

January 8

1946

August 13

SNK, Order No. 1702, “About the mobilization of deported German population in trudovaia armiia” SNK, Order No. 732, “About the resettlements of workersspecial settlers for work in the North MD, Order No. 3857, “About the mobilization of deported German population in trudovaia armiia” MD, Order No. 3960, “About the mobilization of deported German population in trudovaia armiia” NKVD, Order No. 0013, “About the organization of special Chernogorsk camp in Krasnoyarsk region for Volksdeutsche” NKVD, resolution, “About the procedures for deportation of Chechens and Ingush”d Ministry of Defense, Order No. 5073, “About the measures to be taken for resettlement of special settlers within the limits of Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSR” Ministry of Defense, Order No. 5074, “About the regulations for the receipt of cattle and agricultural products in the Northern Caucasus” NKVD, order, “About the deportation of families of ounovsty in Krasnoiarsk krai; Omsk, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk regions” NKVD, Order No. 00419–00137, “About the measure to cleanse the territory of Crimean ASSR of anti-Soviet elements” NKVD, Order No. 00620/001/190, “About the deportation from Kabardinskaia ASSR of family members of German [read: Nazi] collaborators and traitors, who voluntarily left with Germans”e NKVD, Order No. 001036, “About the deportation from the towns of Kavminogroup resorts of family members of German [read: Nazi] collaborators and traitors [posobnikov, predatelei i izmennikov Rodiny], who voluntarily left with Germans” Crimean Section of VKP(b), “About renaming of all towns, mountains and rivers [bearing names] of Tartar, Greek, or German origins” NKVD, Order No. 008, “About the deportation from the city of Stavropol’, Cherkesskaia AO, and Stavropol’ region of families of collaborationists and those voluntarily departed with Germans” SNK, Order No. 34–14, “Resolution about NKVD spetskomendaturas” SNK, Order No. 35, “About the legal regulations and rights of special settlers” SNK, Order No. 399, “About the ways to reimburse special settlers from Georgia for goods left behind” SNK, Order No. 1927, “About the rights and privileges of special settlers” Ministry of Defense, order No. 9871, “About the deportation of Vlasovites NKVD order allowing the unification of families of people working in oil-related industries Soviet of Ministers (SM), Order No. 1767–796, “About the

Appendix 173

1947

November 26

1948

February 21

1948

February 22

1948

June 2

1948 1948

November 24 November 26

1949

May 29

1951

October 9

1952

July 7

1952

March 11

revocation of special settlement regime in special settlements of Stavropol’ region” Order, “About the criminal prosecution for escapes from the places of required and permanent places of residences for people, deported to distant parts of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War” SM, Order No. 418–161, “About the resettlement, deportation and special settlements” SM, Order No. 413–162, “About the resettlement of those deported from European parts [of the Soviet Union] to Siberia and Kazakhstan” SM, Order No. 1841–730, “About the deportation to distant places of people, [who]habitually evade labor responsibility in the agricultural sector and lead an anti-social parasitical way of life” SM, Order No. 4367–1726, “About resettlers [vyselentsy]” NKVD, Order, “About criminal prosecution for escapes from the places of required and permanent places of residences for people, deported to distant parts of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War” SM, Order No. 2214–856, “About the resettlement and employment of deportees from the territories of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan SSR, and also from the Black Sea coast” Order, “About keeping seven punished peoples, and also Greeks, as special settlers forever [navechno]” SM, order, “About keeping in special settlements in people deported during the Great Patriotic War” Order, “About sending to special settlers of released convicts whose families are residing in special settlements”

Primary sources: GARF: fond 5446, opis 566, d. 42, ll. 59–60, delo 43, l. 45; fond 7523, opis 4, delo 49, ll. 151–154, 163; fond 9401, opis la, d. 118, ll. 145–149, delo 157, ll. 7–8, opis 2, delo 1, ll. 415–425, 430–437, 461–464, delo 3, ll. 627–629; delo 5, ll. 51–91; fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1944, list 13; fond 9479, opis 1, delo 641, l. 363, delo 213, l. 1, delo 371, l. 4. RGASPI (formerly RTsKhIDNI), fond 17, opis 3, delo 1042, l. 20; fond 644, opis 1, delo 8, ll. 171–172, delo 10, l1. 42–43, 62–63, 195, delo 12, l. 176; delo. 19, l. 49; delo 21, l. 51; delo 36, l. 170; delo 61, ll. 138–140; delo 146, ll. 108–109. Secondary Sources: Pavel Polian, Ne po svoiei vole: Istorria i geografiia prinuditel’nykh migratsii v SSSR, Moscow: Memorial, 2001, pp. 125, 255, 260, 262, 265; Nikolai Bougai, “Ikh nado deportirovat’ . . .” Dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii, Moscow: Druzhba narodov, 1992, p. 55–57; N. Bougai, L. Beria – I. Stalinu: “Soglasno Vashemu ukazaniiu . . .”, Moscow: AIPO, 1995, pp. 202–206, 221, 223; N. Bougai, A. Gonov, Kavkaz: narody v eshelonah (20–60-e gody), Moscow: Insan, 1998, pp. 142, 220, 233, 273. Notes a SO ASSR refers to Severo-Osetinskaia Avtonomnaia SSR (Northern Ossetia Autonomous SSR); KB ASSR is Kabardino-Balkarskaia ASSR (Kabardino-Balkaria ASSR). b SNK stands for the Council of People’s Commissars (Soiuz Narodnykh Komissarov). c In fact, this was the State Committee for Defense, or Gosudarstvenny Komitet Oborony (GKO). The term “Ministry of Defense” is used to facilitate the understanding of this table. d This order affected Germans in the Caucasus indirectly only insofar as Germans were present among those deported from the Caucasus at this moment. Most Germans from the Caucasus were deported according to the order of 22 October 1941. e This and several subsequent orders of a similar nature were not aimed directly at Germans yet included them.

174

Appendix

Table A.2 Ethnic Germans in special settlements as of January 1, 1953

Deported Repatriated Locals Labor mobilized Othersa Volksdeutsche and collaborationists b

Overall

Officially registered

Of those, escaped and being searched for

Of those, arrested

, 855,764 , 208,388 , 111,324 , 48,582 , ,963

642 147 25 20 –

8,692 4,445 ,967 ,561 , 2

,4,834

33

,127

1,224,931

843

,127

Source: GARF, fond 9479, dela 110, 248, 256; GARF, fond 9414, delo 1157. Notes a The category “others” included people of non-German origin who were deported along with ethnic Germans and were subsequently listed with Germans. These non-German settlers were usually Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and others. b This number is the official number given for Germans in special settlements but it does not include occasional references to Germans appearing in other categories. For example, the socalled “Crimean contingent” included 427 Germans as of March 1949 in a subcategory of “others.” In most cases, ethnic German women married to deported men of other nationalities remained listed in their husbands’ categories.

The following tables and figures are based on various Soviet censuses, though the use of all-Soviet censuses for a statistical analysis of any population trends in the Soviet Union poses substantial difficulties. These difficulties mainly originate in two primary inconsistencies inherent in the Soviet censuses, namely lack of territorial unity and stability from 1917 to the present day and changing criteria for analysis and the type of questions asked from census to census. For example, the pre-war Soviet censuses did not include the Baltic States which were reincorporated into the USSR in 1939. Yet since most Germans who resided in the Baltic States prior to their Soviet deportation were middle and upper class (as discussed in Chapter 1), the literacy rates among these Germans, their native language proficiency, and their level of education were exceptionally high compared both to their fellow Germans residing in the Soviet territory and to other Soviet nationalities. Second, some questions either changed from census to census or were simply withdrawn. Whereas one of the earliest censuses inquired about the religious profession of respondents, the question was banned from censuses since 1939. The question of ethnic intermarriages, on the other hand, changed constantly; first it failed to register nationality of the respondent (registering only the fact of their ethnic intermarriage), and later the fact of intermarriage itself was no longer registered as only marital status of respondents was included. Moreover, some statistics presented in the Soviet censuses appear to be questionable, as they might reflect the Soviet government’s desires and biases rather than actual realities, whereas some answers may be skewed because of improper

Appendix 175 or imprecise questioning. For example, the census of 2002 in the Russian Federation did not ask about the native language of respondents but rather inquired whether respondents knew any second or subsequent languages. In response to this question, nearly seven million Russian citizens claimed that they knew English. Hence the replies to this question implied nothing in the way of language proficiency (whether a respondent spoke a language fluently, barely, could write and read in another language, and so on.), or whether any given language was a native or second language for respondents. In other words, when 30 percent of Germans who resided in the Russian Federation in 2002 identified that they knew the German language, there was no differentiation between Germans who used German as their native language, knew the language “somewhat,” or knew only occasional phrases. As a result of these and many other unmentioned inconsistencies, the analysis of census information might not be possible for some criteria (e.g. interethnic marriages, religious profession). Moreover, at least on some occasions sociological surveys might offer more accurate analysis and description of population trends in the Soviet and post-Soviet space than do Soviet censuses (e.g. language proficiency among various nationalities in post-Soviet territories). Nevertheless, the analysis of Soviet and post-Soviet censuses is an important indicator of various changes that took place among the Soviet population, especially among ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Hence the following tables and figures offer an analysis of native language proficiency, educational levels, literacy rates, and urban/rural ratios among ethnic Germans and various major nationalities that formerly resided in the Soviet territories.

120 100 80 60 40 20 0

1939

1959 Germans Kazakhs

1970 Russians

Ukrainians

Azerbaijanis

1989

2002

Estonians Armenians

Figure A.1 Native language proficiency among various nationalities of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states, based on the Soviet and post-Soviet censuses.

,322,652 ,109,903 u/ka ,67,793 ,50,576 ,100,505 ,401,880 ,80,568 u/k ,1,430 ,9,677 u/k u/k u/k u/k u/k

,379,630 ,93,915 ,81,414 ,54,064 ,43,631 ,98,254 ,393,924 ,51,102 ,13,149 ,12,047 ,7,075 ,4,646b ,4,291 ,1,276 See noteb , ,131

,366,685 ,112,944 ,93,035 ,66,721 ,51,299 ,171,820 ,392,458 ,92,571 ,23,133 ,20,527 ,8,448 ,10,049 ,11,741 ,3,346 ,2,022 , ,433

1,427,232 ,862,504

1939 1,846,317 ,761,888 – – ,761,888 – – – – ,858,077 – – – – ,89,834 – ,37,712 –

–c – ,820,091 – – – – ,658,698 – – – – ,39,915 – ,32,588 –

1970

1,619,655 ,820,091

1959

Notes a The number of Germans in these regions was unreported (or “unknown,” u/k) but the overall number of Germans in these regions totaled 6,618 people. b This number includes both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which then was a single entity. c In many regions Germans were not numerous enough to benefit from a separate entry in the censuses and were included in the category of “other nationalities.” Hence their exact numbers for all regions with the mark “–” is undeterminable. This fact also explains the discrepancy between the overall number of Germans and the total of other graphs (a difference of 68,363 people).

Sources: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naselelniia, 1937g. Kratkie itogi, Moscow, 1991, pp. 85–97; Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda: Osnovnye itogi Moscow: Nauka, 1992, p. 59–79; Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1970 goda: National’nyi sostav naseleniia SSSR, Tom IV, Moscow: Statistika, 1973, pp. 9–19; Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naselelniia 17 dekabria 1926g. Kratkie svodki. Vypusk IV. Narodnost’ i rodnoi iazyk naselelniia SSSR, Moscow, 1928.

1,151,602 ,651,429

1,238,549 ,750,908

USSR total RSFSR total (excluding Kazakhstan and Kyrgyziia), including: Volga German region Northern Caucasus Siberia and Far East Saratov and Stalingrad regions Crimea Other regions Ukrainian SSR Kazakh SSR Azerbaijan SSR Georgian SSR Belorussian SSR Uzbek SSR Kyrgyz SSR Turkmen SSR Tajik SSR Armenian SSR

1937

1926

Region

Table A.3 Distribution of the German population by region of the Soviet Union, 1926–70

Appendix 177 Table A.4 Native language proficiency among various nationalities in the Soviet Union and beyond based on Soviet and post-Soviet censuses (supplemental statistics for Figure A.1) (%) Nationality

1939

1959

1970

1989

2002

Germans Russians Ukrainians Estonians Kazakhs Azerbaijanis Armenians

88.4 99.8% 88.0 68.4 99.0 97.2 89.2

75.0 99.8 87.7 95.5** 98.4 97.3 89.9

66.8 99.8 85.7 95.5 98.0 98.2 91.4

48.74 99.8 51.5 95.5 98.6 87.1 73

30.59 99.8 43.05* 83*** 99.4 81.38 73.24

Overall

94.9

94.3

93.9

92.7

n/a

Sources: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda: Osnovnye itogi, Moscow: Nauka, 1992, p. 80; Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1970 goda, Moscow: Statistika, 1976, pp. 196–198; Kratkie itogi perepisi naseleniia 1999 goda v Respublike Kazakhstan, Almaty, 1999, p. 6; Dannie za 2002 god: Raschitano po: Vserossiiskaia perepis’ naseleniia 2002, at www.perepis2002.ru/ct/html/ TOM_04_05.htm; National’nyi sostav naseleniia SSSR: po dannym Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 g., Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1991, pp. 20–27. Notes a This number indicates the native language proficiency among Ukrainians who currently reside in the Russian Federation. The native language proficiency among Ukrainians in Ukraine reportedly reaches nearly 100 percent. b The sharp increase in the native language proficiency for Baltic nationalities (Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians) is commonly explained by the addition of the Baltic States to the Soviet territories. c This number is derived from the Estonian Census of 1999 and represents the number of Estonian citizens who speak “the native tongue of the country, namely Estonian.” Hence this number represents Estonians and non-Estonians who claim Estonian as a native language. A similar problem is equally applicable to many censuses conducted in the newly independent states that formerly comprised the Soviet Socialist republics.

178

Appendix 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

1926

1939 Germans

1959 Overall

1979 Kazakhstan

Figure A.2 Literacy rates among overall Soviet population and ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union, 1926–79 (sources: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda: Osnovnye itogi, Moscow: Nauka, 1992, p. 80; Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda: Tom III: Uroven’ obrazovaniia naselelniia SSSR, soiuznykh i avtonomnykh respublik, kraev i oblastei, Moscow: Statistika, 1972, pp. 570–572; Naselenie SSSR: po dannym vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1979 goda, Moscow: Politizdat, 1980, p. 18; Kratkie itogi perepisi naseleniia 1999 goda v Respublike Kazakhstan, Almaty, 1999, p. 6; Dannie za 2002 god: Raschitano po: Vserossiiskaia perepis’ naseleniia 2002, at www.perepis2002.ru/ct/html/TOM_04_05.htm).

Appendix 179 100 90 80

Percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10

Among them, with education

Others

Shamanists

Buddhists

Islamists

Judaists

Other Christians

Protestants

Catholics

Gregorians

Orthodox

0

Believers

Figure A.3 Proportion of educated population by religious confession, 1939 (source: Calculated based on Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1937 g. Kratkie itogi, Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1991, pp. 106–107).

This figure indicates that the number of educated people among religious believers was the highest among Catholics and Protestants if compared to other confessions. Since the majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant (see Chapter 1 for more details), this graph represents indirect proof of a high literacy and education rate among ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union prior to deportation.

180

Appendix

7 6

USSR Russians Central Asian nationalities Germans

5 4 3 2 1 0 1939 250

USSR Russians Central Asian nationalities Germans

200 150 100 50 0

1989

Figure A.4 and Figure A.5 People with university education per thousand of population, by nationality (sources: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda, Osnovnye Itogi, pp. 86–87; http://www.perepis 2002.ru/index.html?id=39; E. R. Barbashina, “O problemakh issledovaniia kul’tury i obrazovaniia rossiiskikh nemtsev,” in Rossiiskie Nemtsy. Problemy kul’tury i obrazovaniia, Novosibirsk, 1996, pp. 1–35, here p. 17; these numbers are calculated by Barbashina based on the 1989 Soviet census.

Figures A.4 and A.5 demonstrate that the number of Germans with university education declined significantly between 1939 and 1989, compared to the number of people with university training for other nationalities. In 1939, only select nationalities, such as Poles, Russians, Jews, Czechs, and Slovaks, had more people per thousand with advanced formal training than did ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union. In 1989, however, ethnic Germans had fewer people with university training than the overwhelming majority of other nationalities in the Soviet Union, including Central Asian titular nationalities that traditionally fell far behind other ethnic groups in such categories as formal training.

Appendix 181 80 70 60 50

Rural (%) Urban (%) German rural German urban

40 30 20 10 0

1939

1959

1970

1979

1989

2002

Figure A.6 Urban/rural ratio (absolute values) among overall soviet population and ethnic Germans, 1939–79 (sources: O predvaritel’nykh itogakh Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naselelniia 1979 goda: Soobshchenie Tsentral’nogo statisticheskogo upravleniia SSSR, Moscow: Statistika, 1979, p. 4; Huey Louis Kostanick, ed., Soviet Preliminary Population Statistics, 1959 Census, University of California at Los Angeles: Russian and East European Studies Center Press, December 1960, p. 3; Dannie za 2002 god: Raschitano po: Vserossiiskaia perepis’ naseleniia 2002, at www.perepis2002.ru/itogi; Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda, Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi Komitet SSSR po statistike i analizu, 1991, pp. 117–119, 215, 225, 234; Perepis’ 1939 goda, Volume 5, Moscow: Akademiia Naul SSSR, 1990, p. 947; Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1959 goda: SSSR, Moscow: Gosstatizdat, 1962, pp. 184–190. Note The 1939 Census included rural/urban ratio for all residents of the Volga German ASSR but did not include rural–urban ratio among German settlers in other regions and provinces of the USSR. Hence the statistics presented here for 1939 may only be perceived as a rough estimate rather than as precise data for all ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union in 1939. Only in 1959 and thereafter did the information become more specific, mostly thanks to the much more compact areas of residence for Germans of the USSR.

182 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Appendix

1939

1959

1970 Overall population

1979

1989

2002

Ethnic Germans

Figure A.7 Urban ratio (relative values) among overall Soviet population and ethnic Germans, 1939–79.

Figures A.6 and A.7 indicate that the relative proportion of the urban ethnic Germans to the overall percentage of urban population in the Soviet Union has not changed significantly from the pre- to the post-deportation period. Although the gap between two figures increased in the 1970s and 1980s; the increase was not significant enough to indicate a massive “de-urbanization” of Germans. Hence the fact that higher education was not available to Germans equal to other nationalities cannot be explained by the fact that more Germans (percentagewise) resided in the countryside than other nationalities. But it does demonstrate that prior to deportation, the relatively high percentage of rural population among Germans did not prevent this ethnic group from having high numbers of people with formal training per thousand as compared to other ethnic groups (see Figures A.2–A.5).

Notes

Introduction 1 The subsequent discussion does not imply that the studies of Soviet nationalities are limited to Central Asia. In fact, they often include an analysis of peculiar features of ethnic identity and national self-consciousness among the residents of the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belorussia, and so on. 2 For example, see Francine Hirsch, “Toward an Empire of Nations: Border-making and the Formation of ‘Soviet’ National Identities,” Russian Review, vol. 59, no. 2, April 2000, pp. 201–226; Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” in R.G. Sunny and T. Martin, A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 67–92; also refer to Hajda N. Bessinger, ed., The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society, Oxford: Westview Press, 1990; Yu. Bromley, “Soviet Ethnography: Main Trends, Problems of the Contemporary World,” in Social Sciences Today, Moscow, 1976; Zvi Y. Gitelman, ed., The Politics of Nationality and the Erosion of the USSR, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. 3 Other national groups were studied as well, especially those residing in the Caucasus area of the Soviet Union. For example, similar claims have been advanced in relation to the fact that Chechens did not possess a unified “Chechen” identity prior to 1917 but perceived themselves only as mountain people who were identified by their affiliation with various auls, or villages. 4 See, for example, Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, New York: Tauris, 2000, pp. viii–ix. Kenneth Minogue and Beryl Williams, “Ethnic Conflict in the Soviet Union,” in Alexander J. Motyl, ed., Thinking Theoretically About Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 226. 5 Rasma Karklins in Ethnic Relations in the USSR mentions ethnic Germans only on rare occasions; Islamists in the Soviet Union and other nationalities that possess designated territories benefit from more attention. In Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union, by Erich Goldhagen, ethnic Germans never appear as a separate sub-category for research and are usually included in discussions on Baltic States. Similar criticism may be applied to such works as Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in and After the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame; Bogdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda’s Soviet Disunion, and others; Rasma Karklins, Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below, Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1986; Erich Goldhagen, Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968; Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR, New York: the Free Press, 1989; Valery Tichkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in and After the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame, London: Sage, 1997.

184

Notes

6 Roy, op. cit., pp. 201–240, 280–333. 7 GARF fonds located at Harvard are listed with the prefix “r” (as in r-9479, r-9401), which I omit throughout this book for simplicity. 8 See, for example, P.A. Berg, “Vospominaniia o davno prozhitom,” in Zhertvy repressii. Nizhnii Tagil 1920–1980-e gody, Ekaterinburg: Izdatel’stvo UGTU, 1999; Bol’ i pamiat’: Sbornik vospominanii, Moscow: MSNR, 1993; G.A. Vol’ter, Zona polnogo pokoia: Rossiiskie nemtsy v gody voiny i posle nee (svidetel’stva ochevidtsev), Moscow: Variag, 1998; Ida Bender, The Dark Abyss of Exile: A Story of Survival, translation from German to English by Laurel Anderson and William Wiest, with Carl Anderson, Fargo, ND: North Dakota University Press, 2000; Berta Bachmann, Memories of Kazakhstan: A Report on the Life Experience of a German Woman in Russia, Lincoln, NB: AHSGR, 1983; Georg Hildebrandt, Why are You Still Alive?: A German in the Gulag, Fargo, ND: North Dakota State University Libraries Press, 2001. For other references, see Bibliography. 9 One of the best and earliest interview projects with Soviet Germans was conducted in the early 1980s by German researchers as a part of the “Soviet Interview Project” (SIP). Barbara Dietz, “Interviews with Soviet German Emigrants as a Source of Information for Soviet Studies,” Osteuropa-Institut, Munchen, working Paper #G4. 10 Beatrice F. Manz, “Multi-Ethnic Empires and the Formulation of Identity,” in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, January 2003, p. 70. 11 Ibid., p. 94. 12 Webster Dictionary, any edition. 13 A note on transliteration: I universally use a Library of Congress system of transliteration for transliterating Russian-language terms into English. However, there are several exceptions. When I use common names or well-known terminology, I use the form most common to the English-language reader (e.g., Kyrgyzstan rather than Kirgizstan). I use original spelling for Latin-alphabet terms which were not transliterated into Russian (e.g., Latvian newspaper Tajvia) and for the most common foreign terms used in all languages (e.g., Volksdeutsche, Reichsdeutsche). 14 For example, this term was used by Katherine Jolluck, Exile and Identity: Polish Women in the Soviet Union in World War II, Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2002. 15 Ibid. 16 Most commonly, this term is associated with various works by Pavel Polian. See, for example, Pavel Polian, Ne po svoiei vole . . . Istoriia i geographiia prinuditel’nyh migratsii v SSSR., Moskva: Memorial, 2001. 17 I. Fleischhauer and B. Pinkus, Die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1987. 18 Nikolai Bougai, ed., “Mobilizovat’ nemtsev v rabochi kolonny . . . I. Stalin.” Sbornik dokumentov 1940-e gody, Moscow: Gotika, 1998, p. 8. 1 ‘Many Germans’ – Germanic communities in the Russian Empire 1 A.A. Klaus, Nashi kolonii: Opyty i materially po istorii i statistike inostrannoi kolonizatsii v Rossii, St. Petersburg, 1869; A.A. Velitsyn, Nemtsy v Rossii: Ocherki istoricheskogo razvitiia i nastoiaschchego polozheniia nemetskikh kolonii na iuge i vostoke Rossii, St. Pebersburg, 1893; Axel Gernet, “Die Deutschen in Rußland,” Deutsche Monatsschrift für Rußland Vol. 1, 1912, No. 1, pp. 1–7; No. 2, pp. 97–103; Johanne Haller, “Die Deutscher in Rußland. Süddeutsche in Rußland,” Deutsche Erde, Vol. 4, 1905, pp. 205–207; Nastavleniia dlia komissii sel’skogo hoziaistva v nemetskikh koloniiakh Iuzhnogo kraia Rossii, Berdiansk, 1885. 2 Numerous references in any edition of Kliuchevski and Soloviev. For example, see S.M. Soloviev, Sochineniia v 18 knigakh. Kniga 7, 8, 10, Moscow, 1991, especially sections referring to the reign of Peter the Great; and V.O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia

Notes 185

3

4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25

v 9-ti tomakh. Tom 8 (Moscow, 1990), also especially sections referring to the reign of Peter the Great and others. For references in scholarly works, see, e.g., N. Popov, “Nemtsy v vooruzhennykh silakh Rossiiskoi Imperii,” in Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri (XVI–XX vv.). Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii “Germaniia – Rossiia: istoricheskii opyt mezhregional’nogo vzaimodeistviia XVI–XX v,” Ekaterinburg: “Volot,” 2001, pp. 165–175. Velitsyn, op. cit., p. 60. It should be noted, however, that by the early 1900s some of the designations blurred and that Velitsyn was not always correct in assessing types of segregation among ethnic Germans (mostly because he often ignored ethnicity and included many “non-Russian” colonists in his discussion who were not at all Germanic). Ibid., throughout the book, but especially pp. 58–59. Ibid., pp. 92–93. Velitsyn occasional cross-referenced Bavarian colonists as Josefstal colonists but this term should not be confused with a later Volga settlement of Josefstal named after the original place of residence of its members. Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 128. This was the only “territorial” name used by Velitsyn (meaning the reference to the territory of contemporary settlements rather than former place of residence). The name Khortitsa refers to the territory in Ukraine which almost in its entirety belonged to Germans until the end of the nineteenth century. Ibid., p. 117. Velitsyn mentions that these designations apply only to later periods in history, to the end of the 1800s. Ibid., pp. 150–158. Ibid., pp. 104–105. “Dancing Brotherhood” was a sect similar to Khlysty. Ibid., pp. 248–252. Velitsyn never refers to the last four groups of settlers as “Germans” or “colonists;” they were settlements of people unified by one religion, which mattered more than their ethnicity. Ibid., pp. 116, 248–252, 277. John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 81, 329. See the text of The Manifesto by Catherine II issued on July 22, 1763. Karl Stumpp, Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862, Lincoln, Nebraska: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1978, pp. 15–32 (“history and causes of emigration”). See Chapter 2 for more information on Volga Germans in the Soviet period. S.V. Smirnitskaia, “Issledovania nemetskih dialektov povolzhia,” in Nemtsy v Rossii: Lyudi i sud’by, St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia Akademia Nauk, 1998, p. 37. Ibid., pp. 36–37. Based on M.M. Zagorul’ko, ed., Gosudarstvo i religioznye organizatsii nizhnei Volgi i Dona v XX veke. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov.Katalog kul’tovykh zdanii, Volgograd: Izdatel’, 2002, pp. 3–27. Volhynia (a.k.a Volynia, Volyn, Wol´yn´) is the historic region in western Ukraine between Pripyat and Western Bug rivers. Volhynia Germans were deported in massive numbers in 1915 but came back after World War I. Based on Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda. Osnovnye itogi, Moscow, 1992. S.I Bobyleva, “Nemetskie shkoly i nravstvenno-psikhologicheskie problemy obrazovaniia v 20–30-e gody XX v,” in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional’nie osobennosti. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva 17–20 sentiabria 1998 g., Moscow: Gotika, 1999, p. 394. Ibid. Some historians also mention the Germans of Transcaucasus as part of “Soviet

186

26

27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39

40 41 42

Notes

German” settlements. However, they never identified themselves with Soviet Germans and their history was very different. See, e.g., GAKK (State Archive of Krasnodar Region), fond 774, opis 2, delo 155, ll. 27–31 f&b; GAKK, fond 454, opis 1, delo 5170, ll. 58 f&b; GAKK, fond 449, opis 1, delo 323, ll. 3 f&b; TsDNI KK (Center for Documentation of the Newest History of the Krasnodar Region), fond 1, opis 85, delo 13, l. 16–29; various documents published in A.A. German, Nemetskoe naselenie Severnogo Kavkaza: Sotsial’noekonomicheskaia, politicheskaia i religioznaia zhizn’ (posledniaia chetvert’ XVIIIseredina XX vv): Sbornik dokumentov, Stavropol’, 2002. T.N. Plokhotniuk, “Politika germanskikh okkupatsionnyh vlastei v otnoshenii folksdoichei na Severnom Kavkaze (1941–1943 gg.),” in Aktual’nye voprosy istoricheskoi i iuridicheskoi nauki: Sbornik nauchnykh statei, Stavropol: SGPU, 1994. E.A. Osokina, Za facadom “stalinskogo izobiliia”: raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody idustrializatsii, 1927–1941, Moscow: Rosspen, 1998. According to an over-simplified version of the complicated history, the territory of the three future Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were incorporated into the Russian Empire partially according to the Peace of Nystadt (1721), which concluded the Great Northern War waged by Peter the Great against Sweden, and partially after the three partitions of Poland, completed in 1795 during the reign of Catherine the Great. For a detailed discussion of this subject, refer to Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastward: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Italics in original. Burleigh, op. cit., pp. 18–19. Gregory L. Freeze, “Lutheranism in Imperial Russia: A Critical Reassessment,” in Luther zwischen den Kulturen, ed. Hans Medick and P. Schmidt, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003. D.L. Spivak, Metafizika Peterburga: Nemetskii dukh, St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 2003. Ibid., p. 410. Although the settlements of Siberia and Central Asia are often mentioned as only various branches of other settlements, many Germans would later mention that their counterparts who resided in Central Asia assumed some of the local characteristics and became “different” from their “relatives by motherland” elsewhere. Last but not least, the location of these local Germans assured various privileges for them at the time of mobilization and deportation in the 1940s and distinguished their position, de facto if not de jure, from those deported from elsewhere. Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda. Osnovnye itogi, Moscow, 1992, pp. 59–65, 76. A. Eisfeld, Russland (Sowjetunion)// Informationen zur politischen Bildung, Munchen, 1991, p. 10. G.K. Krongardt, Nemtsy v dorevoliutsionnom Kyrgystane, Bishkek, 1995, pp. 18–20, 122–123. Kurland, located between the Baltic Sea and the Western Dvina River, was also known as Kurzemes and Courland with the administrative center in the town of Jelgava (a.k.a. Mitau, Mitava); now a part of Latvia. In the early nineteenth century, however, the present-day territory of Latvia consisted of three Russian provinces of Kurland, Livland, and Witebsk. North-western part of present-day Estonia; Ezel’ region was an independent entity until 1561. G.F. Solovieva, “Fondy Luteranskoi Tserkvi v Rossiiskom Gosudarstvennom arkhive,” in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional’nye osobennosti, pp. 465–466. W. Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union, London: Macmillan, 1961, p. 249.

Notes 187 43 L. de Iong, Nemetskaia piataia kolonna vo Vtoroi Mirovoi voine, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnaia literatura, 1958, p. 216. 44 O.A. Litsenberger, “Raskol v Evangelichesko-Luteranskoi tserkvi SSSR v 1920-e gg.,” in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii, pp. 417–418. 45 Kolarz, op. cit., p. 249. These numbers are being disputed at the moment. However, they appear to be correct if one takes into consideration the overall number of Germans and extracts the number of Catholics, Mennonites, and others among them. It must be noted that the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA), in fond 841, opis 133, delo 1104, l. 1, gives the number of Lutherans as 3.5 million people in the late Russian Empire (excluding the territory of Poland), of whom 40 percent were presumably Germans. This number is very likely to be over-inflated. According to these statistics, the number of German-Lutherans exceeds the overall number of Germans in the Russian Empire. 46 See sources for Table 1.1. 47 Helmut Moll, ed., Witnesses for Christ: A German 20th Century Martyrology, Fargo, ND: Dakota State University Press, 2003, p. 5. 48 M.B. Shkarovskii, N. Iu. Cherepenina, and A.K. Shiker, Rimsko-Katolicheskaia tserkov’ na Severo-Zapade Rossii v 1917–1945 gg., St. Petersburg: Nestor, 1998, p. 9. 49 Fleischhauer and Pinkus, op. cit., pp. 31–66. 50 Revd Christopher Lawrence Zugger, The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001, pp. 35–93. 51 Ibid., p. 50. 52 Ibid., p. 74. 53 Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri, pp. 151, 155. 54 Fleischhauer and Pinkus, op. cit., p. 50. 55 I. Pleve, Nementskie kolonii na Volge vo vtoroi polovine XVIII veka, Moscow: Gotika, 1998, p. 207–208. 56 On conversion problems and crises in Lutheran and Catholic churches, see, for example, Gregory L. Freeze, “Lutheranism in Imperial Russia: A Critical Reassessment,” in Luther zwischen den Kulturen, ed. Hans Medick and P. Schmidt, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003; O.V. Kurilo, Ocherki po istorii liuteran v Rossii (XVI–XXvv.), Moscow: IEA RAN, 1996, pp. 19–21; Dennis J. Dunn, The Catholic Church and Russia: Popes, Patriarchs, Tsars, and Commissars, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004; E. N. Tsimbaeva, Russkii katolitsizm: zabytoe proshloe rossiiskogo liberalizma, Moscow: Editorial URSS, 1999. For an introduction to the various Christian groups and sects (including Old Believers, Dukhobors, Molokane, Baptists, and Pentecostals) as they existed in Russia, see Susan Wiley Hardwick, Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. See also a work by Heather Coleman, “Becoming a Russian Baptist: Conversion Narratives and Social Experience,” Russian Review, 61, 2002, pp. 94–112. 57 Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri, p. 143. 58 Statistics are calculated based on “Unterrichtssprache” table in Richard H. Walth, Flotsam of World History: The Germans from Russia between Stalin and Hitler, Essen, Germany: Verlag, 2000, pp. 101–102. 59 A.L. Pinin, Arkhitektura Peterburga serediny XIX veka, Leningrad, 1990, p. 172. 60 N.A. Evsina, Russkaia arkhitektura v epokhu Ekateriny II. Barokko – klassitsizm – neogotika, Moscow, 1994, p. 132. 61 V.F. Hodasevich, Derzhavin, Moscow, 1988, p. 102. 62 D.D. Blagoi, “Derzhavin,” in G.A. Gukovskii and V.A. Desnitskii, eds, Istoriia russkoi lieratury. Tom IV. Literatura XVIII veka, chast’ 2, Moscow, 1947, p. 420. 63 V.F. Odoevsky, Russian Nights, any edition, Night Two. 64 L. Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, any edition, part eight, ch. IX.

188

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65 A.T. Dvortsov, Gegel’, Moscow, 1972, pp. 136–143; V.V. Zen’kovskii, Istoriia russkoi filosofii, tom I, chast’ 2, Leningrad, 1991, p. 55. 66 R. Iu. Danilevskii, “Pushkinskii obraz Germanii – ‘tumannoi’ i ‘svobodnoi’,” in Nemtsy Rossii: Problemy kul’turnogo vzaimodeistviia, St. Petersburg, 1998, p. 120. 67 Ibid. 68 Translation by Natalie Duddington on request by Progress Publishers; emphasis added. 69 Iu. M. Lotman, “‘Pikoavaia dama’ i tema kartochnoi igry v russkoi literature nachala XIX veka,” in Iu. M. Lotman, Izbrannyi stat’i v 3-h tomakh. Tom II, Tallin, 1992, p. 406. 70 Iu. D. Levin, Poet E.I. Guber, Leningrad, 1981, pp. 106–123; from a poem “Antonii.” Rough and unpoetic translation is mine. 71 This last name is derived from German stolz (proud) and identifies a character trait that was condemned by the Russian Orthodoxy but was acceptable and even expected, according to many Russians, from hard-working and ambitious Germans. 72 I.A. Goncharov, Oblomov, any edition, ch. 4. 73 Emphasis added. 74 Richard Pipes, Rossiia pri starom regime. Perevod s angliiskogo, Moscow, 1993, p. 374. 75 V.V. Kolesov, Iazyk goroda, Moscow, 1991, p. 52. 76 See, for example, vol. 2, part three, ch. XI of Tolstoy, War and Peace. 77 I.M. Trotsky, III Otdelenie pri Nikolae I: Zhizn’ Shervuda-Vernogo, St. Petersburg, 1990, p. 84. 2 Many deportations and their legal basis 1 Refer to Chapter 3 for more information on discourse of genocide in the context of Soviet deportations. 2 The only real attempt to present a complete history of Germans in Russia had been made by I. Fleischhauer, Die Deutschen im Zarenreich, Stuttgart, 1986. This was later extended into another publication by Ingeborg Fleischhauer and Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. 3 Joseph V. Stalin, Sochineniia, Tom 2, Moscow: Politizdat, 1951–52, pp. 296–297. 4 This is point 4 of the “Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia,” issued on November 2, 1917. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, Tom 1, Moscow: Politizdat, 1957, p. 40. See also V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Tom 35, Moscow: Politizdat, 1962, p. 11. 5 A.A. German, Istoriia Respubliki Nemtsev Povolzhia v sobytiiakh, faktakh, dokumentakh, Moscow: “Gotika,” 1996, pp. 10–13, 147–178. 6 See pertinent discussions in V.G. Chebotareva, Gosudarstvennaia natsional’naia politika v Respublike nemtsev Povolzhia, 1918–1941 gg, Moscow, 1999, pp. 6–32; V.A. Airikh, “K voprosu o sozdanii Trudovoi Kommuny pervogo avtonomnogo obrazovaniia nemtsev Povolzhia,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura, Omsk, 1993, pp. 36–41; A.A. German, Nemetskaia avtonomiia na Volge, 1924–1941, in dvukh tomakh, Saratov: Izdatel’stvo Sarat. Gos. Universiteta, 1992. 7 German, Nemetskaia avtonomiia na Volge, pp. 51–64. 8 The word “korenizatsiia” derives from the same word as “indigenous population” and hence may be translated as “indigenization” campaign. But “nativization” is the most commonly adopted translation in the English-language scholarship and is probably justified, considering that many Soviet official figures (including Stalin) referred to this campaign as “nationalization” (natsionalizatsiia). 9 German, Istoriia Respubliki Nemtsev Povolzhia v sobytiiakh, faktakh, dokumentakh, p. 15. 10 See, e.g., P.M. Shastitko, Obrechennye dogmy: bol’shevism i natsional’nyi vopros,

Notes 189

11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

Moscow: RAN, 2002, pp. 186–187; V. Isupov, Tretii front: Spetspereselentsy v gody voiny – vozvrashchenie pamiati, Novosibirsk, 1991, pp. 51–52. A. German, “Deportatsiia,” Noies Leben, vol. 32, September 1995, p. 5. By far the most ardent defender of this view is Alexander Schwartz, “Rossiiskie Nemtsy v Sibiri,” Novosibirskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, Kandidatskaia Dissertatsiia (unpublished). Aleksander Statiev, “Soviet Ethnic Deportations: Intent Versus Outcome (1935–44),” presented at the Seventh World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, held in Berlin, Germany, on July 25–30, 2005, p. 29. The most prominent defenders of this view are Fleischhauer and Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present, 1986, and L. de Iong, Nemetskaia piataia kolonna vo Vtoroi Mirovoi voine, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnaia literatura, 1958. Numerous works by Bougai, as previously cited in the Introduction. The text of this decree is widely available. For example, refer to “My ne znaem poshchady . . .” Izvestnye, maloizvestnye i neizvestnye sobytiia iz istorii Tiumenskogo kraia po materialam VChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB, Tiunem: Iz-vo Mandriki, 1999, p. 139. A.V. Shtul’berg, “Nekotorye voprosy uchastiia nemtsev v trudovoi armii v period 1941–1945 gg, “ in Istoriia nemtsev Tsentral’noi Asii, Almaty, 1998, p. 125. This is a Russified spelling of the name used in pertinent official Soviet documents. AP RF, fond 3, opis 58, delo 254a, ll. 84–88, as printed in V.N. Khaustov, V.P. Naumov, and N.S. Plotnikova, eds, Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD. Arkhiv Stalina. Dokumenty vysshikh organov partiinoi i gosudarstvennoi vlasti. 1937–1938, Moscow: MFD, 2004, pp. 461–462 (also numerous other documents in this publication, e.g. on pp. 92, 490–496). A visual representation of this policy is available in John Keegan, ed., Atlas of the Second World War, New York: Harper & Row, 1989, p. 91. For a more detailed discussion of the movement of the front line, refer to Keegan, op. cit., pp. 59–63. S.G. Nelipovich, “Rol’ voennogo rukovodstva Rossii v ‘nemetskom voprose’ v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917),” in Rossiiskie nemtsy: Problemy istorii, iazyka i sovremennogo polozheniia, Moscow, 1996, p. 263. S.G. Nelipovich, “Repressii protiv poddannykh ‘tsentsral’nykh derzhav’: Deportatsii v Rossii v 1914–1918 gg,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, vol. 6, 1996, p. 41. D.G. Reshetov, “Nemetskie kolonisty zapadnykh gubernii Rossii,” in Migratsionnye protsessy sredi rossiiskikh nemtsev, pp. 185–193. Data presented in the following three paragraphs is widely available. Refer, for example, to Statiev, op. cit., pp. 5–10; Pavel Polian, Ne po svoiei vole . . . Istoriia i geographiia prinuditel’nyh migratsii v SSSR, Moskva: Memorial, 2001. Pavel Polian, Ne po svoiei vole . . . . A. German, Nemetskaia avtonomiia na Volge, 1918–1941, part 2, Saratov: Izdatel’stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1992, p. 110. Lynne Viola, V.P. Danilov, N.A. Ivnitskii, and Denis Kozlov, The War Against the Peasantry, 1927–1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 355–356. For more information, see Robert Conquest, Zhatva skorbi: Sovetskaia kollektivizatsiia i terror golodom, translated by I. Koen, London, 1988, pp. 409–410. In English edition, R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine, London: Hutchinston, 1986. Viktor Kondrashin and Diana Penner, Golod: 1931–1933 gody v sovetskoi derevni (na materialakh Povolzhia, Dona i Kubani), Samara-Penza, 2002, pp. 224–226. Ibid., pp. 223–224. Ibid., p. 296.

190 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Notes TsA FSB, fond 3, opis 2, delo 809, l. 58–62. Kondrashin and Penner, op. cit., p. 296. TsA FSB, fond 3, opis 2, delo 809, l. 58–62. We can roughly identify it with 1918–1950s. Overall, the study of Mennonites is in dire need of expansion. For one of the most recent works, see A.A. Fast, V setiakh OGPU-NKVD (Nemetskii raion Altaiskogo kraia v 1927–1938 gg), Barnaul, 2002. Refer to O.V. Kurilo, Ocherki po istoriii liuteran v Rossii (XVI–XXvv.), Moscow, 1996, pp. 19–21, for a recent overview of the historiography of the Lutheran Church in Russia; see also idem, Luteranskaia tserkov’ v Sovetskoi Rossii, 1918–1950-e gody: dokumenty i materially, Moscow: RAN, 1997; O. Litsenberger, Evangelichesko-liuteranskaia tserkov’ sv. Marii v Saratove (1770–1935), Saratov, 1995; idem, “Luteranskaia tserkov’ v Saratovskom Povolzhie v gody sovetskoi vlasti,” in Rossiiskie Nemtsy na Donu, Kavkaze i Volge: Materialy Rossiisko-germanskoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Anapa, 22–26 sentiabria 1994 goda, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi soiuz nemetskoi kul’tury, 1995, pp. 115–135; collection of articles in “Protestantism v Sibiri: istoriia i sovremennost”: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii “Protestantizm v Sibiri,” Omsk, 1998. Although the Catholic German communities are still under-studied, for the “Catholic side” of the story see Dennis J. Dunn, The Catholic Church and Russia: Popes, Patriarchs, Tsars, and Commissars, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2004; E.N. Tsimbaeva, Russkii katolitsizm: zabytoe proshloe rossiiskogo liberalizma, Moscow, 1999. TsA FSB, fond 3, opis 2, delo 815, l. 1–62. Based on statistics from V. Khaustov, “Repressii protiv sovetskikh nemtsev do nachala massovoi operatsii 1937g.,” in Nakazannyi narod: po materialam konferentsii “Repressii protiv rossiiskikh mentsev v Sovetskom Soiuze v kontekste sovetskoi natsional’noi politiki,” Moscow: “Zvenia,” 1999, pp. 82–83. Most of the general information and basic statistics are based on N. Okhotin and A. Roginskii, “Iz istorii ‘nemestkoi operatsii’ NKVD 1937–1938 gg,” in Nakazannyi narod, pp. 35–75. This resolution was published repeatedly; its original is available at AP RF, fond 3, opis 58, delo 254a, l. 82. The word “all” (vse, vsekh) is repeated three times in the original document. As in the case of the previous note, this order (along with subsequent order No. 00447) was published several times and is now available in various sources. See, for example, Butovskii poligon, 1937–1938 gg., Moscow, 1997, pp. 348–356. Okhotin, Roginskii, op. cit., pp. 48–51. For more information on the Polish operation, refer to William Chase, Enemies Within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 263, 273. Okhotin (op. cit.) estimates the number of Germans arrested before 1 February 1938 at over 40,000 people. RGANI, fond 6, opis 13, delo 4, l. 19. Various attempts have been made to explain and re-evaluate the origins of ethnic cleansing; see, for example, Terry Martin, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4, December 1998, pp. 813–886. However, even regional studies are still article-length and in need of major expansion. See various works such as: F.A. Ishibulaev, “Sudby repressirovannyh nemtsev Orenburga,” in Orenburgskie nemtsy: etnicheskaia istoriia i duhovnaia kul’tura: Materialy nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii “Mnogonatsional’nyi mir Orenburzhia, Orenburg, 1998, pp. 54–96; O.A. Gerber, “Etnicheskaia chistka v Sibiri (1934–1935),” in Iz proshlogo Sibiri, Vol. 2, No. 4, Novosibirsk, 1996; L.P. Belkovits, “ ‘Bolshoi terror’ v nemetskikh selakh Zapadno-Sibirskogo kraia,” in Rossiiskie nemtsy: Problemy istorii, iazyka i sovremennoe polozhenie: Materialy

Notes 191

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79

mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moscow: Gotika, 1996, pp. 452–456; V.I. Brul’, “Iz istoricheskogo naslediia i etnicheskogo proshlogo altaiskikh nemtsev,” in Rossiiskie Nemtsy, pp. 446–451. Ibid., p. 70. Ibid., p. 71. E.g. N. Bugai, ed., Deportatsiia narodov Kryma: dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii, Moscow: “Insan,” 2002. GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1157, l. 120. Census of 17 January 1939, as quoted in GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 83, ll. 1–3. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 284, l. 1. GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 4475, l. 20. Ibid., l. 27. GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1157, l. 121. GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 4475, l. 25. Ibid., l. 27. The works are too numerous to mention them all, and all major studies of deportations (e.g. J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the Soviet Union. Contributions to the Study of World History, No. 65, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999) concentrate on this deportation. For more localized studies, see, for example, A.A. German, “Deportatsiia nemetskogo naseleniia iz Saratova i Saratovskoi oblasti,” in Migratsionnye protsessy sredi rossiiskikh nemtsev: istoricheskii aspect: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moscow: Gotika, 1998. TsSKhD, fond 3, opis 58, delo 178, ll. 1–5, as published in N.F. Bugai, ed., “Mobilizovat’ nemtsev v rabochii kolonny . . . I. Stalin,” pp. 19–22. Richard H. Walth, Flotsam of World History: The Germans from Russia between Stalin and Hitler, Essen, Germany: Verlag, 2000, p. 103. GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 35, l. 235. GANO, fond 1020, opis 5, delo 46, ll. 150–155; delo 66, l. 20; Schwartz, Kandidatskaia Dissertatsiia p. 56. Ibid. V.N Zemskov, “Massovoe osvobozhdenie spetsposelentsev i ssyl’nykh (1954–1960gg),” Sotsis, No. 1, 1991, p. 10. See, for example, GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, ll. 24–26. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, ll. 24–26. Schwartz, op. cit., fn. 448. NKVD document for ASSR NP, as printed in G.A. Vol’ter, Zona polnogo pokoia: Rossiiskie nemtsy v gody voiny i posle nee (svidetel’stva ochevidtsev), Moscow: Variag, 1998, p. 55. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, ll. 12–16; GARF, fond 9579, opis 1, delo 83, l. 45. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, ll. 7–11. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 84, ll. 137–144. For such orders, see, for example, GARF documents published in Nikolai Bougai, ed.,“Mobilizovat’ nemtsev v rabochie kolonny . . . I. Stalin,” p. 29. Vol’ter, op. cit., pp. 62–63. See, e.g. F.K. Nad’, “Tragediia sovetskikh nemtsev,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i sovermennost’, pp. 83–86; V.A. Autman, “Deportatsiia rossiiskikh nemtsev v vostochnye raiony SSSR (1941),” in Nemetskii rossiiskii etnos: vekhi istorii, pp. 77–84. The order concerned the resettlement of Finns and Germans together and gave only combined statistics for the number of deportees at 132,000 people. Hence it is impossible to determine the exact number of Germans affected by this decree. GARF, fond 9401, opis 12, delo 35, ll. 239–240. This decree was issued in early September but the exact date is unclear. GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 35.

192 80 81 82 83 84 85

86

87 88 89

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102

Notes RGASPI (formerly RTsKhIDNI), fond 644, opis 1, delo 8, ll. 171–172. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 84, l. 131. GARF, fond 9479, delo 85, l. 110. GARF, fond 9401, opis 2, delo 65, l. 49. These numbers differ by no more than a few hundred people and convey the same tendency. GARF, fond 9401, opis 2, delo 65, l. 49. Polian, in Ne po svoiei vole . . ., cites that 23,580 Germans were deported from Georgia, 22,741 from Azerbaijan and 212 from Armenia (p. 113), or a total of 46,533 Germans. J. Otto Pohl, in The Stalinist Penal System, cites the same numbers for Georgia and Armenia but notes 23,593 Germans from Azerbaijan (p. 78). V.I. Kotov, “Deportatsiia narodov Severnogo Kavkaza: krizisnye iavleniia etnodemograficheskoi situatsii,” in Severnyi Kavkaz: vybor natsional’nogo puti, Maikop, 1994; T.N. Pokhotniuk, “Rossiiskie Nemtsy Severnogo Kavkaza v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny,” in Istoriia i kul’tura rossiiskikh nemtsev, Saratov, 1996, pp. 78–98. General information on the origins of “trudarmee” is based on G.A. Goncharov, “‘Trudovaia armiia’ perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny,” Ekonomicheskaia Istoriia. Obozrenie, vol. 7, 2001, 154–162. See, for example, S. V. Cheshko, “Vremia stirat’ ‘belye piatna’,” in Sovetskaia etnografiia, Vol. 6, 1988, p. 12. See, for example, O.A. Gerber, “Istochniki izucheniia problemy ispol’zovaniia prinuditel’nogo truda mobilizovannykh nemtsev v ugol’noi promyshlennosti Kuzbassa v 1940-e gody,” in Rossiiskie Nemtsy: problemy istorii, iazyka i sovremennogo polojeniia, pp. 97–116. RGASPI, fond 644, opis 1, delo 19, ll. 49–50. RGASPI, fond 644, opis 1, delo 36, l. 175, as published in V. Autmann and V. Chebotareva, eds, Istoriia rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh (1763–1992 gg), Moscow, 1993, pp. 172–173. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 112, l. 68. V.P. Brul’, “Povtornaia deportatsiia nemtsev v Narym i v raiony krainego Severa,” in Iz proshlogo Sibiri, part 2, Novosibirk, 1996, pp. 96–101. A.V. Schtul’berg, “Nekotorye voprosy uchastiia nemtsev v trudovoi armii v period 1941–1945 gg,” in Istoriia nemtsev Tsentral’noi Azii, Almaty, 1998, p. 123. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 436, ll. 98–99; P.B. Belan, “Maloizvestnye stranitsy istorii sovetskikh nemtsev v gody otechestvennoi voiny,” in Istoriia nemtsev Tsentral’noi Azii, Almaty, 1998, p. 108. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 112, l. 69. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 896, l. 173. Refer to Table 2.3 for the number of repatriated Germans. GARF, fond 9479, dela 110, 248, 256; GARF, fond 9414, delo 1157. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Postwar Soviet Society: The ‘Return to Normalcy’, 1945–1953,” in The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, ed. Susan J. Linz, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985, p. 132. See, for example, V.N. Zemskov, “K voprosu o repatriatsii sovetskih grazhdan, 1944–1951 gody,” Istoriia SSSR, vol. 4, 1990, pp. 26–41; idem, “Prinuditel’nye migratsii iz Pribaltiki v 1940–1950-h godakh,” Otechestvennye arhivy, vol. 1, 1993, pp. 4–20; idem; “Repatriatsiia sovetskikh grazhdan i ikh sud’by,” Sotsis, 1995, pp. 5–6; P.J. Polian, “OSTy – zhertvy dvyh diktatur,” Rodina, Vol. 2, 1994, pp. 51–57; T.S. Ilarionova, “Zhelaniia i vozmozhnosti: problema vyezda nemtsev iz SSSR v kontekste poslevoennykh sovetsko-zapadnogermanskih otnoshenii (1955–1964),” in Migratsioonnye protsessy sredi rossiiskih nemtsev: istoricheskii aspect, pp. 367–384. Resolution of GKO No. 6457c, dated 24 August 1944, as cited in Polian, Zhertvy, p. 333.

Notes 193 103 Ibid. 104 GARF, fond 9526, opis 4a/2, delo 37, ll. 1–2. 105 Top Secret Report of the British Control Commissioner for Germany at Lubbecke dated 11 August 1945, as published in Carol Mather, Aftermath of War: Everyone Must Go Home, New York: Brassey’s, 1992, pp. 20–21. 106 Vladimir Bauer and Tatiana Ilarionova, Rossiiskie nemtsy: pravo na nadezhdu, Moscow: Respublika, 1995, p. 20; also various memoirs. 107 Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001, p. 65. 108 Nelly Däs, Gone Without A Trace: Russian Women in Exile, translated by Nancy Bernhardt Holland, Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001, p. 5. 109 Article from Pravda, 4 November 1944. 110 Polian, Zhertvy, p. 339. 111 Krymskaia (Yaltinskaia) konferentsiia rukovoditelei trekh soiuznykh derzhav – SSSR, SShA i Velikobritanii. 4–11fevralia 1945g., Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow: Politizdat, 1984, pp.194–195, p. 211. 112 Polian, Zhertvy, p. 350. 113 Ibid., p. 352. 114 Mather, op. cit., p. 20. 115 GARF, fond 9409, opis 1, delo 213, l. 3, 20; delo 224, l.7; see also GARF, fond 9409, opis 1, delo 492, l. 32. 116 Ibid. 117 GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 4152, ll. 242–249. 118 GARF, fond 9409, opis 1, delo 132, ll. 122–126. 119 GARF, fond 9401, opis1, delo 4152, ll. 242–249. 120 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 360, l. 128. 121 GARF, fond 9409, opis 1, delo 118, ll. 1–35. 122 GARF, fond 9409, opis 1, delo 76, ll. 109–110. 123 V.N. Zemskov, “K voprosu o repatriatsii sovetskikh grazhdan, 1944–1951gg.,” p. 32. 124 Reports are numerous; see, for example, GARF, fond 9409, opis 1, delo 132, ll. 39–42. 125 In general, the term Volksdeutsche referred to ethnic Germans residing outside of Germany proper (originally meaning East of Germany, in Central and Eastern Europe). It was later “popularized” to mean ethnic Germans without German citizenship. However, in the context of the NKVD documents and deportation the term “Volksdeutsche” did not necessarily refer to ethnic Germans but often to members of their families of various nationalities who were deported from the Ukraine and Caucasus in 1944–45 (as opposed to earlier, pre-occupation deportations). Thus, as of March 1949, in Novosibirsk region 2,357 adult “Volksdeutsche” consisted of 875 Ukrainians, 834 Germans, 326 Russians, 196 Poles, 44 Czechs, 20 Belorussians, 10 Latvians, 10 Jews, 7 Swedish, 6 Estonians, and occasional representatives of other nationalitites. See V.N. Zemskov, “Zakliuchennye, spetsposelentsy, ssyl’noposelentsy, ssyl’nye i vyslannye,” Istoriia SSSR, vol. 5, 1991, p. 165. 126 T.N. Plokhotniuk, “Politika germanskikh okkupatsionnyh vlastei v otnoshenii folksdoichei na Severnom Kavkaze (1941–1943 gg.),” in Aktual’nye voprosy istoricheskoi i iuridicheskoi nauki: Sbornk nauchnykh statei, Stavropol: SGPU, 1994. 127 T.N. Plokhotniuk, Rossiiskie nemtsy na Severnom Kavkaze, Moscow, 2001, pp. 164–166. 128 V.N. Zemskov, “Prinuditel’nye migratsii iz Pribaltiki v 1940–1950-kh godakh,” in Otechestvennye arkhivy vol. 1, 1993, pp. 4–20. 129 Filial estonskogo gosudarstvennogo arkhiva (ERAF), fond Ministerstva Inostrannyh Del (SM), op. 1735, tom 1, list 139, as published in Nemtsy SSSR v gody Velikoi

194

130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139

140 141

142

143 144 145 146 147

Notes Otechestvennoi Voiny iv pervoe poslevoennoe desiatiletie, 1941–1955gg. Materialy 7-y mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva, 19–22 Oktiabria 2000g, Moscow: Gotika, 2001, pp. 276–277. Ibid., pp. 277–278. GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1157, ll. 149–150. The exact number is 928,299: GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 364, l. 305. Bugai, Deportation of the People, pp. 84–85. An unpublished interview with O. Hubiev. Vol’ter, op. cit., p. 55. Walth, op. cit., pp. 104–105. Karl Stumpp, Auslandsdeutschtum in Osteuropa, Stuttgart: DAI, O.J., p. 93. John Barber and Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II, New York: Longman, 1991, pp. 216–217. For various accounts of women in the Soviet Union, see, for example, S. Bridger, Women in the Soviet Countryside, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; L. Edmondson, Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; G. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974; L.N. Denisova, Zhenshchiny russkikh selenii. Trudovye budni, Moscow: Izdatel’skii dom “Mir istorii,” 2003. These works are too numerous to list them all; refer, for example, to B.V. Sokolov, “Tsena viony: liudskie poteri SSSR i Germanii, 1939–1945,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, March 1996. G.F. Krivosheev, ed., Grif sekretnosti sniat’. Poteri vooruzhennykh sil SSSR v voinakh, boevykh deistviiakh i voennykh konfliktakh, Moscow, 1993, p. 329; Alan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, eds, Military Effectiveness, Volume 3, Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1988, p. 263. It needs to be noted that there is still no agreement on the exact death-toll among military personnel and the civilian population of the Soviet Union. These numbers are the latest estimates which are considered by many to be the most accurate. Refer, for example, to Gregory L. Freeze, ed., Russia: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 334. Although Krivosheev (op. cit.) never calculates this number of male–female ratio, his statistics lead to such conclusions. Refer to the above-mentioned work. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 98, l. 364, 1947. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 89, ll. 364, 1/IV, 1947. GANO, fond 1020, opis 5, delo 39, l. 20, as cited in Schwartz, op.cit, fn. 279. Archive of Upravlenie MVD po Novosibirskoi oblasti, fond 5, opis 9, por. 1, delo 9, ll. 108–110, tom 2, ll. 182–183 (as printed in Nakazannii narod, 1999, pp. 176–180).

3 Intentions and realities of early years, 1941–45 1 Although the human loss among German deportees was massive (refer to Chapter 2 for statistics), it was not necessarily incompatible with losses suffered by other deported nationalities or those of the overall Soviet population; for example, the death-toll amounted to 25 percent of all Chechens and Ingush in 1944–50 and for 18 percent of all Kalmyks in the same period (J. Otto Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror, 1930–1953, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1997, pp. 105–107, 97–99). For the overall Soviet population, the number of casualties in World War II, and especially for the civilian population, is still very disputed and contested. Most historians estimate the number at roughly seven million (e.g. Norman Davies, Europe: A History, New York: Perennial, 1998; Britannica; John Keegan, ed., Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War, New York: MetroBooks, 1997). The latest estimate for civilian casual-

Notes 195

2

3 4

5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

ties is seventeen million (Gregory L. Freeze, ed., Russia: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 334) out of the 148.8 million of Soviet population recorded by the 1937 census. However, historians agree that the majority of these deaths took place in the Western European parts of the Soviet Union, and these deaths were mainly the result of military actions and occupation policies practiced in Soviet Nazi-occupied territories. Crucially, the number of deaths in areas which were not directly affected by the war actions (e.g. Central Asia) was only slightly higher than average. Although the exact numbers are often undeterminable due to the massive influx of newcomers into these territories, it has been established that the decrease in indigenous populations of these areas, and especially Central Asia, was mainly the result of military service and war conscription. The same general tendencies held strong for the 1946–47 famine. Out of two million people who died as a direct result of starvation and diseases associated with malnutrition, the overwhelming majority resided in the Ukraine and Belorussia. Hence it could be argued (and has been argued by ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union) that had these Germans been allowed to stay in their home territories (many of which never fell under the German occupation), they would not have experienced such a decrease in their ethnic group. The term is taken from <www.soviethistory.org> but it was similarly used in various other studies, e.g., Eric J. Schmaltz and Samuel D. Sinner, “‘You Will Die under Ruins and Snow’: The Soviet Repression of Russian Germans as a Case Study of Successful Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 4, no. 3, 2002, pp. 327–356. Aleksandr Nekrich, The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of the Soviet Minorities a the End of the Second World War, New York: Norton, 1978. In 1940, 31.8 million tons of wheat were collected out of 95.6 million tons of overall grain production: V.D. Pannikov, Pochva, udobreniia i urozhai, Moscow: “Kolos,” 1964. The same statistics are offered in Paul R. Gregory and Robert C. Stuart, eds, Soviet Economic Structure and Performance 4th edn, New York: HarperCollins College Division, 1990, p. 117. In absolute numbers, the production outputs for the Soviet Union in 1940, 1945, and 1946 were as follows (for each respective year): grain – 95.6, 47.3, 39.6 million tons; oil – 31.1, 19.4, 21.7 million tons; steel – 18.3, 12.3, 13.3 million tons, (Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 60 let, Moscow, 1977). L.N. Denisova, Zhenshchiny russkikh selenii. Trudovye budni, Moscow: Izdatel’skii dom “Mir istorii,” 2003, pp. 21–22. Statistics are based on Denisova, op. cit., pp. 20–30. See also V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 1946–47 godov. Proishozhdenie i posledstviia, Moscow: Istitut Rossiiskoi Istorii RAN, 1996, pp. 11, 178. For example, see numerous references in a document collection compiled by U Khe Li and Kim En Un, Belaia kniga o deportatsii koreiskogo naseleniia Rossii v 30–40kh godakh, Moscow: Interpraks, 1992. Numbers of settlers changed from year to year. The number of all settlers of various ethnic origins (726,051) is based on the report for 1945, TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 20, l. 7. For discussion of various ethnic groups that were deported during the war and who became special settlers, refer to Chapter 2. TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 33, ll. 16f&b. TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 16, l. 6. These families numbered roughly 36,000 members at the time, although the exact number of those affected by this distribution is undeterminable. Ibid., l. 7. These numbers correspond to 2,138,000 pounds of potatoes (77 pounds per capita) and 506,600 pounds of corn (18 pounds per capita). TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1c, delo 20, l. 8.

196

Notes

16 Ibid., ll. 8–10. 17 TsGARK, fond 1146, opis 1, delo 626, ll. 5–10. 18 TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 30, l. 21. Although the distributed amount of 62.01 rubles per capita was not a substantial amount of money when we consider the purchasing power of the ruble in 1947 (the amount was enough to purchase only several kilograms of grain), it was important that settlers, who were supposed to survive on their own, unlike, for example, prisoners, were entitled to some financial support. 19 This number amounts to 13.2 pounds of bread per capita per month, or 7 ounces per day. For comparative purposes, the rations in besieged Leningrad were as follows: in the fall months of 1941, workers and engineer-technical personnel received 500 grams per day (13.2 ounces per day); the ration was decreased in December 1941 to 350 grams for the same group (11.2 ounces) and to 200 grams per day (7 ounces) for other employees, dependants, and children. Already in November 1941, 20 to 50 percent of this bread consisted of edible cellulose rather than flour. In January 1942, rations were decreased again to a mere 125 grams per day for everyone (4.4 ounces per day): David M. Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, 1941–1944, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2002, pp. 133–135. It should be noted, however, that unlike Gulag prisoners or Leningrad residents, special settlers were responsible for finding their own food and were never meant to be fed by the Soviet government. Like any “free laborer,” it was their responsibility (and their own failure) to locate sufficient food resources and to work sufficient hours. Hence the requests on the part of various officials were more a call of desperation than a call of duty, and these supplementary rations requested for special settlers were never meant to be the sole source of food as was the case in Leningrad. 20 TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1c, delo 20, l. 11. 21 See, for example, TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 31. 22 Ibid., l. 7. 23 TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1c, delo 9, l. 7. 24 TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 198, l. 53f&b. 25 Ibid., ll. 109, 112, 113, etc. 26 TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 198, ll. 295–296. 27 TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 191, l. 79. 28 These requests for workers were numerous; see, e.g., TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 191, l. 5. 29 TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 191, ll. 13, 21. 30 TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 198, l. 190, dated 1 June 1944. 31 TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, delo 198, l. 189. 32 Ibid., l. 295. 33 These numbers are calculated based on TsGAKyrSSR, fond 350, opis 17, dela 191 and 198. For example, list 191 of delo 198 gives the following numbers: of 15,341 settlers, 11,671 were given land, 12,307 were given seeds, and 12,373, food. 34 TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, dela 10 & 11; TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 12c, l. 3. 35 In the 1930s, the population of Uzbekistan was roughly four million people. After the deportations and evacuation, in 1959 the population of Uzbekistan reached 8.1 million and grew to approach the twenty-million mark by the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Nowadays, it is the most populous country of all former Soviet republics in Central Asia. 36 Although this document does not specify whether the money was issued per family or any other unit, subsequent references make it clear that the allowance was per household. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, l. 39. 37 TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, l. 9. 38 This documents states that 2,412 houses comprised 14 percent of all houses and flats

Notes 197

39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

which housed settlers but it does not offer an exact number of these houses. We can estimate it at about 17,230 houses and flats. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, ll. 10f&b, 11. Although the initial report has no information on the number of settlers who could potentially benefit from a free pair of shoes, a later report mentions the quoted number (13,649 families, or 48,594 people). TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, l. 212. The date goes unmentioned in this document but, judging from its location and documents immediately preceding and following it, the report must have been written no more than two months after the official resolution for the distribution of goods. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, l. 36. Ibid., l. 90. This is roughly 10 ounces per day. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 313, ll. 106–110. It was said that 20,725 sheep and 7,581 cows were distributed, making it 85.4 percent of the plan. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6c, delo 15, l. 31. Settlers from Georgia included Turks, Kurds, Kremshils, Azerbaijanis, and others, and were estimated at 50,000 people in Uzbekistan. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, ll. 4f&b, 5. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, ll. 12–14. Ibid., ll. 110–114. Ibid. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, ll. 72, 73, etc. TsGARK, fond 1146, opis 1, delo 272, l. 636. TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 18, ll. 4–6. According to official documents, due to various factors ranging from poor weather to the lack of mechanization and resulting harvesting by primitive manual methods, in Kazakhstan alone 68.4 thousand hectares of grain was left in the field and “wintered” under the snow (68.4 hectares = 169 acres). Denisova, op. cit., p. 23. At present, septic tonsillitis is an easily curable illness. However, if not property and promptly treated, it can lead to lethal complications, such as “killing tonsil” (swallowing of tonsils to prevent air circulation); air compromise; high fevers; septic thrombophlebitis involving the internal jugular vein or internal carotid artery leading to septicemia with metastatic foci of infection, especially in the lungs, and subsequent complications of lung disease; hemorrhage as a result of iatrogenic injury to major vessels on attempted aspirations or incision and drainage; and others. TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 31, l.17. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6c, delo 14, ll. 152–155. TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 14, ll. 13; TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, ll. 210, etc. TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1c, delo 16, ll. 13, 15–16. E.g., TsGAUzSSR, fond 314, opis 6, delo 13, ll. 10, 11; ll. 97–99f&b; ll.110–114; l. 198; ll. 203–205. For a more detailed discussion of death rates among German special settlers, refer to Chapter 2. Dokumenty Sovetskoi istorii. Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953, Moscow: Posspen, 2003, pp. 466–467. The term “our, Soviet Germans” (nashi, sovetskie nemtsy) is quoted from this letter. For example, the letter states that prior to 1941, there were five million “Soviet Germans” in the Soviet Union. The number was, in fact, much smaller than that. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, l. 16. See V.N. Zemskov, “‘Kulatskaia ssylka’ v 30-e gg.,” Sotsis, vol. 10, 1991, pp. 2–21. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 133, l. 306. Ibid. L.I. Oberderfer, “Deportirovannye nemtsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri (1941–1944),” in V.I.

198

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91

Notes Shishkin, ed., Sibir’ v XVII-XX vekakh: Problemy politicheskoi i sotsial’noi istorii: Bakhrushinskie chteniia 1999–2000gg, Novosibirsk: Novosibirskii Gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2002, pp. 187–200, with a reference to GANO, fond p-89, opis 1, delo 133, ll. 11; fond p-80, opis 1, delo 682, l. 12f&b; fond p-4, opis 33, delo 619, l. 82. RGASPI, fond 644, opis 1, delo 19, ll. 49–50. On 8 January 1942, Moscow required all local officials to compile lists of settlers. Inevitably, two days was not enough time to achieve any real results. GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1169, l. 1. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 112, l. 58. RGASPI, fond 644, opis 1, delo 1, l. 51. RGASPI, fond 644, opis 1, delo 61, ll. 138–140. RGASPI (formerly RTsKhIDNI), fond 644, opis 1, delo 19, ll. 49–50. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 110, ll. 39, 11, 121, 123, and GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1169, l. 38. All decrees are listed in GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1215, ll. 1–43. Zemskov, “Kulatskaia ssylka,” pp. 22–23. V.A. Autman and V.G. Chebotareva, eds, Istoriia rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh, Tom 1, Moscow: MIGUP, 1993, p. 170. Ibid., p. 172. Historians are very careful to avoid using the term “forced labor” as applicable to this form of labor obligation. Whereas this labor mobilization was in many ways forced on to ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union, the term “forced labor” implies too much of a parallel to the Nazi practices and might thus be incorrectly perceived. General information on the origins of “trudarmee” is based on G.A. Goncharov, “ ‘Trudovaia armiia’ perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny,” Ekonomicheskaia Istoriia. Obozrenie, vol. 7, 2001, 154–162. A. German and A. Kurochkin, Nemtsy SSSR, Moscow: Gotika, 1998, p. 120; N. Paletskikh, Sotsial’naia politika na Urale v period Veliokoi Otechestvennoi voiny, Cheliabinsk, 1995, p. 20. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 157, ll. 206–210. V. Kriger, “Svideteli prestuplenii: pis’ma rossiiskih nemtsev,” in Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri, p. 234. This illness is characterized as “a deficiency disease that affects the young during the period of skeletal growth, is characterized especially by soft and deformed bones, and is caused by failure to assimilate and use calcium and phosphorus normally due to inadequate sunlight or vitamin D,” Webster (any edition). GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 157, ll. 206–210. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 135, ll. 2–128. Ibid. Various memoirs of German women. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, dela 111–150. A. German, Istoriia respubliki nemtsev povolzh’ia v dokumentakh, Moscow: Gotika, 1996, p. 143. During World War II, the Soviet government practiced the issuance of “State military obligations” (gosudarstvennye veonnye zaimy). In 1942–45, the Soviet Union issued four rounds of obligations to promote people’s financial investment into the war effort. In theory, these obligations were voluntary investments with guaranteed returns after the war’s end. Yet in practice, these obligations were rarely voluntarily and were rarely compensated for. Germans were reluctant to invest in these obligations because many holders of such obligations were practically forced into donating them to the defense industry before collecting any returns from these obligations. The Soviet government argued that such donations were the “true expressions of patriotism” as they allowed for additional funding of the military expenditures of the Soviet Union. Archive of MVD of Novosibirsk oblast’, fond 5, opis 9, por. 1, delo 9, ll. 108–110, tom 2, ll. 182–183, as printed in Nakazannii Narod, 1999, pp. 176–180.

Notes 199 92 Order from August 31, 1942; GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1157, l. 119. 93 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 146, ll. 102–106. 94 Ibid., also same, delo 147, ll. 84–89; GARF, fond 9401, opis 1a, delo 172, ll. 107–111; delo 184, l. 62–65; delo 179, ll. 80–81. 95 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, ll. 6–125. In this report, there was a mix of information based on location (without the specification of work type) and information based on the type of employment. 96 McCauley gives statistics in numbers which existed after the monetary reform of 1961 when money was exchanged at a ratio of 1:10. Martin McCauley, The Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (2nd edn) (New York: Longman, 1993), pp. 190–191. 97 “Statisticheskaia tablitsa TsSU SSSR,” RGAE, fond 1562, opis 41, delo 113, ll. 161f&b, as published in Dokumenty sovetskoi istorrii: Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953, Moscow: Rosspen, 2003, pp. 501–502. 98 M.A. Vyltsan and V.V. Kondrashin, “Patriotism krestianstva,” in Voina i obshchestvo, 1941–1945. Kniga 2, Moscow: Nauka, 2004, pp. 50–78, here pp. 63–65. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., p. 63. 101 One kilogram is 2.2 pounds; a liter of milk is roughly equal to a quart of milk. 102 “Doklad ot 8 marta 1946 goda,” RGASPI, fond 17, opis 88, delo 694, ll. 54–57, as published in Dokumenty sovetskoi istorri, pp. 503–505. The price of 50 rubles per loaf of bread was reported for Ivanovo oblast’. 103 GARF, fond 9401, opis 12, delo 154, l. 181. 104 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1169, ll. 41–45. 105 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, ll. 7–30. 106 Official rations for civilians in 1943–44 also were not necessarily up to these standards. Caloric values of civilian rations were distributed in the following way: children under 13 – 1,067 calories a day (including 400 grams of bread a day); adult dependants of workers – 780 calories a day (including 300 grams of bread); whitecollar employees – 1,074 calories a day (400 grams of bread); manual workers – 1,913 calories a day (700 grams of bread). John Barber and Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II, New York: Longman, 1991, p. 214. 107 Individual caloric values of each type of food for the first category were as follows: oatmeal or pasta – 50–70 calories (average of 200c/cup); meat or fish – 100 calories (average of 150c/3 oz); fats – 117 (9c/1 gram); potatoes – 216 (84c/4oz) or carrots/cabbage – 52 (20c/4oz); sugar – 48 (15c/4 grams); other (5 grams of flour and salt) – about 50. The total caloric value ranged from 414 to 581 calories a day. 108 GARF, fond 9401, opis 1a, delo 153, ll. 40–43. The resolution is mentioned in the same document. 109 Calculated based on statistics in GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1172, ll. 1–15; delo 1207, ll. 3–5. 110 GARF, fond 9401, opis 1a, delo 155, l. 33. 111 Ibid., ll. 33–34. 112 These women were allowed to go back home only at the war’s end. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 157, ll. 206–210. 113 All four quotes are from P.B. Rempel’, “Deportatsiia nemtsev iz evropeiskoi chasti SSSR i trudarmiia po ‘sovershenno sekretnym’ dokumentam NKVD SSSR 1941–1944 gg,” in Rossiiskie Nemtsy: Problemy istorii, iazyka i sovremennogo polozheniia, Moscow, 1996, pp. 76–78. 114 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, l. 417. 115 GARF, fond 9401, opis 12, delo 154, l. 181. 116 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, ll. 2–10. 117 Ibid., l. 20. 118 Rempel’, op. cit., p. 78.

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119 GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1183, ll. 120. 120 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 355, l. 89; similar statistics appear for various settlements in various locations throughout fond 9479, opis 1, dela 315 to 367. 4 Life in special settlements 1 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 213, l. 1. 2 N. Bougai and A. Gonov, Kavkaz: narody v eshelonah (20–60-e gody), Moscow: Insan, 1998, p. 233. 3 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 377A, ll. 299–301. 4 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 324, ll. 6–7. 5 Ibid. 6 For more information on repatriations, see Chapter 2, pp. 48–52. 7 TsAODM, fond 203, opis 1, delo 116, l. 10. 8 N. Bougai and A. Gonov, op. cit., p. 234. 9 N. Bougai, L. Beria – I. Stalinu: “Soglasno Vashemu ukazaniiu . . .,” Moscow: AIPO, 1995, p. 223. 10 GARF, fond 7523, opis 36, delo 450, l. 87 11 Also important are: NKVD Order No. 0170, “Instruktsiia po uchetu spetsposelentsev,” 16 August 1944; MVD order No. 001445, “Ob organizatsii personal’nogo ucheta spetspereselentsev po novoi systeme,” February 19, 1949; and MVD issued “Instruktsiia dlia komendantov spetskomendatur MVD po rabote sredi vyselentsev-spetspereselentsev,” June 3, 1949. V.A. Autmanova and V.G. Chebotareva, eds, Istoriia rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh, Moscow: MIGUP, 1993, pp. 441–445. 12 References to the creation of personal files are numerous; see, for example, GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 386, ll. 120–121. 13 The lack of ethnic-specific records on some aspects of special settlements indicates that deportations (and peoples subjected to them) were not perceived as ethnic cleansings by the Soviet government but rather as measures taken for security reasons. This is a recurring theme in many official Soviet documents. 14 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 381, ll. 245–246. 15 For example, this system was utilized in eastern parts of Kazakhstan. 16 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 381, ll. 315–318. 17 Timothy J. Kloberdanz and Rosalinda Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe: Volga German Folklife in a Changing Russia, Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001, pp. 267–268. 18 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 110, ll. 82f&b. 19 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 248, l. 58; GARF, fond 3, opis 11, delo 36, ll. 22, 27, 39, 43, 45. 20 GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 4475, l. 37. 21 Ibid., ll. 43–45. 22 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 386, l. 119. 23 TsA KSSR, fond 462, opis 4, svodka 4, delo 110, l. 29. 24 TsA KSSR, fond 462, opis 4, svodka 4, delo 122, l. 18. 25 GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 4475, l. 47. 26 “Razroznennost’ chlenov semei spetsposelentsev v znachitel’noi stepeni sposobstvuet pobegam,” “Note N AK-8968c,” 2/VII 1948, GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 373, 1. 19, though it should be noted that another documents mentions 5,132 runaways among Germans. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 364, l. 305. 27 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 363, l. 89. 28 Ibid., l. 277. 29 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 366, l. 317. 30 Most likely, this number was overestimated. The overall statistics for these years do

Notes 201

31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66

not demonstrate a sufficient decline in settlement population to support such a high figure, although the number of “hidden” runaways was still probably relatively high. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 386, ll. 104–106. Ibid., l. 107. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 325, l. 19. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 327, l. 231. V. Kriger, “Svideteli prestuplenii: pis’ma rossiiskikh memtsev,” in Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri (XVI–XX vv.). Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii “Germaniia – Rossiia: istoricheskii opyt mezhregional’nogo vzaimodeistviia XVI–XX vv,’ Ekaterinburg: “Volot,” 2001, p. 234. J. Otto Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror, 1930–1953, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1997, pp. 79–80. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 355, ll. 82–83. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 355, ll. 92–93. V.A. Diatlova, “Nemtsy Krasnoiarskogo kraia: istoricheskii aspect,” in Nemtsy v Rossii: Lyudi i sud’by, St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia Akademia Nauk, 1998, p. 43. 13 to 20 square feet. Ibid. Interview with N.A. Pozdniakova. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 365, ll. 119–123. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 362, l. 64. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 325, l. 108. Accounts of this nature are numerous, including numerous references in interviews I have collected. In published memoirs, similar references are made in Berta Bachmann, Memories of Kazakhstan: A Report on the Life Experience of a German Woman in Russia, Lincoln, NB, AHSGR, 1983, pp. 20–22, and Vol’ter, Zona polnogo pokoia: Rossiiskie nemtsy v gody voiny i posle nee (svidetel’stva ochevidtsev), Moscow: Variag, 1998. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 340, ll. 134. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, ll. 245–248. Ibid. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, l. 96. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 358, ll. 68–70; also GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 358, ll. 78–79. GARF, 9479, opis 1, delo 372, ll. 200–204. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 355, ll. 81–82. GA VKO, fond 462, opis 4, delo 104, ll. 476–477. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 85, ll. 12–16. Numerous official documents confirm this fact. See, for example, ibid., ll. 122–128. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 146, ll. 89–150. Ibid., l. 133. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 372, ll. 200–204. TsGARK, fond 1987, opis 1, delo 20, l. 117. Ingeborg Fleischhauer and Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986, p. 48. GARF document, dated 1 October 1939, published in German, ed., Istoriia Respubliki Nemtsev Povolzhia v dokumentakh, p. 254. G. Luft, Respublika Nemtsev Povolzhia pered tretiei piatiletkoi, pp. 57–59. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 89, ll. 256. GANO, fond p-4, opis 5, delo 352, l. 38. The documents cited here from GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, and GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 182 are published in Migratsionnye protsessy, pp. 284–313 and are used as appearing in this publication. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 185, l. 108.

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67 David McKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999, p. 473. 68 Roberta T. Manning, “Women in the Soviet Countryside on the Eve of World War II,” in Beatrice Farnsworth and Lynne Viola, eds, Russian Peasant Women, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 216. 69 Environmental Justice Foundation, White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton, London: Emmerson Press, 2005, pp. 21, 36. 70 Numerous interviews and memoirs attest to this fact. 71 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 84, ll. 137–144. 72 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 579, l. 285. This number appears to be correct if we judge from other documents on overall statistics of special settlers. The following statistics, however, represent an employment pattern for 1,402,041 Germans, showing a great difference of roughly 300,000 people. Even if the latter number is overestimated, as are the numbers of employed Germans in each particular category, these nevertheless reflect the overall dynamics of work that Germans performed in exile. 73 Ibid.; also GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 248, l. 58; GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 2158–165, l. 141. 74 Individual reports were occasionally issued to allow the employment of skilled workers according to their qualifications. There were certain restrictions for work in production sectors of “high sensibility and importance.” For example, it was permitted to hire German tractor drivers but not to allow Germans close to any hydroelectric station equipment. See e.g. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 148, l. 127. Employment in teaching, bookkeeping, and medical work, among other similar occupations, was also considered “of importance.” Hence Germans were banned from these jobs. Even some skilled jobs in agriculture were out of reach for Germans as these jobs presumably opened up possibilities for sabotage. 75 For example, the second husband of Evgeniia Ginzburg was a Volga German doctor employed in the Gulag hospitals. Yet the situation in Gulag camps was different to a degree, and his case was rather exceptional. Evgeniia Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind, New York: Harvest Books, 1982. 76 For numerous other examples, refer to GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 370. 77 The documents cited here from GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, and GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 182 are published in Migratsionnye protsessy, pp. 284–313, and are used as appearing in this publication. 78 GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 182, ll. 26, 39. 79 Ibid. Noteworthy is the fact that most of these “deficit professions” were male occupations, and hence women were more prone to relocation than men. 80 GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, ll. 38–42. 81 GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, l. 4. 82 The number of children is unaccounted in two out of twelve districts which sent Germans to Narym. The number presented (3,430) is the total of children in ten districts. Women and men were not counted separately but it was widely reported that the few remaining men after the deportation were already in labor armies and virtually no men were present at this relocation. 83 Sporadic references appeared for separate smaller regions. For example, in the Krivoshchekovo region 115 children of school age were left to live with parents while 114 infants and toddlers were placed in daycare orphanages: GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, ll. 35–40. 84 The exact numbers of Germans employed in various industries in Narym are unavailable for this period of time. 85 GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 182, l. 131. 86 The term “bakhily” refers to all types of shoe covering but most often they are used as plastic covers in medical facilities and “slippers” in museums around the world. There exists a great variety of other forms of bakhily.

Notes 203 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112

113

GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 182, ll. 129–131. GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 565, ll.185–190. GANO, fond p-4, opis 34, delo 182, l. 71. Ibid., l. 132. Ibid., l. 68b. Of course, none of these restrictions or shortcomings were aimed at Germans as an ethnic group. Rather, local authorities displayed typical “Soviet” behavior and Germans were “caught in the system” and suffered from it along with other deportees and often local residents. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 570, l. 48. The closest distance from Orenburg to Tatar ASSR was 350 km (217 miles), implying a travel time of at least five hours one way; the distance from Krasnokamsk to the border of Bashkir ASSR is 300 km (186 miles) and from Krasnokamsk to the border of Tatarstan it is 620 km (385 miles). The latter distance could rarely be covered in one day. The exact number is 606,532. Vsesoiuzanaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda. Osnovnye itogi, Moscow, 1992. A.A. German, ed., Istoriia Respubliki Nemtsev Povolzhia v dokumentakh, p. 253 (source of this document is not cited). Ibid., source not cited. Manning, op. cit., pp. 215–216. Paula Michaels, “Ethnicity, Patriotism, and Womanhood: Kazakhstan and the 1936 Ban on Abortion,” Feminist Studies, vol. 27, no 2, 2001, pp. 307–333. For a detailed discussion of the shortage of medical and daycare facilities in the Soviet countryside, refer to Manning, op.cit, pp. 206–235. See, for example, Barbara Evans Clements, Daughters of Revolution: A History of Women in the USSR, Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1994, p. 75. A.V. Shalak, Usloviia zhizni i byt naseleniia Vostochnoi Sibiri v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (1941–1945), Irkutsk: IGEA, 1998, pp. 56–57. Ibid., pp. 58–60. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 133, ll. 308, 315f&b, 316, 346. GARF, fond 9414, opis 1, delo 1207, l. 15. I.V. Kherkazianova, “Popytki Vozrozhdeniia,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura: Sbornik resume dokladov Chetvertoi mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (29–31 2002), Omsk: OmGPU, 2002, p. 73. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 133, ll. 308, 315f&b, 316, 346. See, for example, a document in Reabilitatsii: kak eto bylo, mart 1953 – fevral’ 1956. Dokumenty, Moscow: “Demokratiia,” 2000, p. 95. The term “besprizorniki” is often translated as “wolf children” and implies children living on their own according to the harsh “laws of the street.” Such neglected children became habitually involved in various criminal activities (most often theft) and were considered a threat to society and ordinary people. For more information on besprizorniki, see Alan M. Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. TsGARK, fond 837,opis 27, delo 224, l. 102. GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 151, l. 17. For a comparative perspective on education and literacy rates among the entire Soviet population and for more detailed information, see Chapter 6 on the consequences of deportation and literacy rates among Germans released from special settlements and pertinent figures in the Appendix. The number of children was reported in 1954 as 872,909: GARF, fond 9479, delo 115, l. 173. But the number was presumably lower for July 1952 when the problems with schools were reported.

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114 Iz istorii nemtsev Kazakhstana (1921–1975 gg.): Sbornik dokumentov, Almaty, 1997, pp. 159–160. 115 This report is dated June 1952: GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 570, ll. 227–247. 116 Malinovskii, Leues Leben, July 2–16, 1969. 117 It should be noted that in the Soviet Union, medical institutes and the medical profession never had the prestige similar to Western Europe or other countries of the world, and medical employment implied one of the lowest paid jobs similar in its wage range to schoolteachers. 118 Iz istorii nemtsev Kazakhstana, pp. 176–177. 119 N.A. Bulganin, Proekt zakona o gosudarstvennykh pensiiakh, Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1956. 120 Manning, op. cit., pp. 215–216. 121 McCauley, op. cit., p. 253. 122 For example, there was a short-lived campaign in the postwar Soviet Union to distribute free “pseudo-automobiles” (smaller versions of cars for two passengers with special equipment for hand control) to invalids who lost both legs serving in the Red Army during World War II. Needless to say, this program was implemented on only a very limited scale and was very short-lived. 123 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 355, ll. 180–185. 124 Ibid. 125 GANO, fond 1030, opis 1, delo 210, ll. 15–28, as published in Migratsionnye protsessy, p. 305–311. 126 Manning, op. cit., p. 207. 127 Some cases are reported in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional’nie osobennosti. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva 17–20 sentiabria 1998 g., Moscow: Gotika, 1999, pp. 338–340. 128 A.A. Zinoviev, Kommunizm kak real’nost’: Krizis kommunizma, Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 1994, pp. 259–260. 129 TsDNIChO (Tsentr dokumentatsii noveishei istorii Cheliabinskoi oblasti), fond 288, opis 8., delo 303, ll. 10–11, as printed in Nakazannyi narod, 1999, p. 137. 130 References to this nature are common; see, for example, RGASPI, fond 17, opis 117, delo 533, ll. 10–23, published in Dokumenty Sovetskoi istorii, pp. 368–377. 131 Ibid., pp. 372–373. 132 GARF, fond 9479, opis 1, delo 57, l. 64; delo 87, ll. 150–154; delo 725, l. 72. 5 Women’s dimension of Soviet exile and the end to hardships 1 A letter from an ethnic German woman, born in 1916, published in G.A. Vol’ter, Zona polnogo pokoia: Rossiiskie nemtsy v gody voiny i posle nee (svidetel’stva ochevidtsev), Moscow: Variag, 1998, p. 61. 2 Eric J. Schmaltz, An Expanded Bibliography and Reference Guide for the Former USSR’s Ethnic Germans: Issues of Ethnic Autonomy, Group Repression, Cultural Assimilation, and Mass Emigration in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, Fargo: North Dakota State University Libraries Press, 2003, p. 40. 3 Elizabeth Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn’,” Church History, vol. 67, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–31. 4 This information is based on interviews and memoirs; no scholarly works have addressed this aspect of the problem among deportees. 5 Nelly Däs, Gone Without A Trace: Russian Women in Exile, translated by Nancy Bernhardt Holland, Lincoln, NB: American Histoical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001, p. 70. 6 I estimate the number of women who stopped menstruating at somewhere between 60 and 80 percent. Unfortunately, due to the intimacy of these matters and the

Notes 205

7 8

9 10 11 12 13

14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

death of many women, it is impossible at the moment to calculate a more precise number. E. Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992. N. Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1999, p. 95. See also J Elson, ‘Am I Still a Woman?’: An Analysis of Gynecological Surgery and Gender Identity, Unpublished [at the time of manuscript preparation] doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 2000; P. Shuttle and P. Redgrove, The Wise Wound: Myths, Realities, and Meanings of Menstruation, New York: Bantam Books, 1978. Berta Bachmann, Memories of Kazakhstan: A Report on the Life Experience of a German Woman in Russia, Lincoln, NB, AHSGR, 1983, p. 79. Vol’ter, op. cit., p. 201. L.N. Denisova, Zhenshchiny russkikh selenii. Trudovye budni, Moscow: Izdatel’skii dom “Mir istorii,” 2003. Judging from the rising number of births in the late 1940s to early 1950s and from personal accounts. Abundant research has also shown that in migrant and displaced communities, male exogamy (formal and informal) is not perceived as a threat to ethnic identity and ethnic community, while female exogamy is. For obvious reasons, the case of Jews is the only exception to this rule. Hence in practically all similar situations (with or without demographic imbalance) the number of intermarriages of displaced men with indigenous women greatly exceeds the number of intermarriages between displaced women and indigenous men. See, for example, discussion of various studies of this phenomenon in Mark C. Elliott, “Manchu Widows and Ethnicity in Qing China,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 41, no. 1, January 1999, pp. 33–71. L.P. Belkovets, “Spetsposelenie nemtsev v Zapadnoi Sibiri (1941–1955),” in Nakazannyi narod: po materialam konferentsii “Repressii protiv rossiiskikh mentsev v Sovetskom Soiuze v kontekste sovetskoi natsional’noi politiki,” Moscow: “Zvenia,” 1999, p.161. Initial encounters of German deportees with ethnic and cultural “other” were very similar to experiences of Polish deportees in Central Asia, discussed at length and in great detail in Katherine R. Jolluck, Exile and Identity: Polish Women in the Soviet Union During World War II, Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2002, pp. 220–245. Hence I refrain from offering a long and repetitious discussion of this problem. Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat; Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Paula Michaels, “Motherhood, Patriotism, and Ethnicity: Soviet Kazakhstan and the 1936 Abortion Ban,” Feminist Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, summer 2001, pp. 307–333. Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. John McLeish, “The Soviet Conquest of Illiteracy,” The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, vol. 18, 1972, pp. 307–326. Bachmann, op. cit., pp. 55–58. Jolluck, op. cit., p. 233. The study of religion and religiosity is still exceptionally difficult for the period following the deportations and prior to the liquidation of the special settler regime. There are very few and meager documents dealing with religion and very few sources of a personal nature. This explains why the study of religion among ethnic Germans in 1945–53 is almost non-existent, and works which have been done on Soviet German churches tend to study the years prior to 1938. Even those works that attempt to cover all of the Soviet period fall back on generalizations when it comes to religion

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28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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in the 1940s and early 1950s. Thus, I. Trebtau says that based on archival documents from the Omsk region, one can conclude that the 1940s and early 1950s were a period of “underground existence” of the Church, with relatively little attention from the authorities. I.Ia. Trebtau, “Istoriia sel’skikh liuteranskikh obshchin Omskoi oblasti,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: Istoriia i kul’tura, pp. 142–145. See also, for example, O.A. Litsnberger, Evangelichesko-liuteranskaia tserkov’ sv[iatoi] Marii v Saratove (1770–1935), Saratov, 1995; A.I. Savin, “Mennonitskie obshchiny Sibiri v 20-e gody,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i sovremennost: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, chast’ 2, Omsk: 1995, pp. 19–22; M.N. Kolotkin, “Konfessional’nyi factor u nemtsev Sibiri v 1920–1930-e gody,” in Pretestantizm v Sibiri: Istoriia i sovremennost”: materially mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Omsk: 1998, pp. 43–47, etc. Bachmann, op. cit., p. 82. Savranina, op. cit., p. 320. TsGA KR, fond 350, opis 24, delo 38, ll. 63–66. TGA KR, fond 2597, delo 54, ll. 26, 109–110. “Spravka, sostavlennaia po dannym informatsionnykh otchetov za vtoroi kvartal 1946 g.,” in Dokumenty Sovetskoi istorii. Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953, Moscow: Rosspen, 2003, pp. 644–666. Original is located at GARF, fond 6991, opis 1, delo 451, ll. 79–83. Ibid. The file with pertinent information was formerly located in Upravleniie NKVD VKO (NKVD office of the Eastern Kazakhstan Region), now located in the Center for Statistics and Information of Public Prosecutors’ Office (prokuratura) of VKO (further appearing as AUVD VKO), and has been published in L.A. Bougard, Nemtsy v Vostochnom Kazakhstane: Konspekt lektsii, Ust’Kamenogorsk, 1997. AUVD VKO, fond 11, opis 2, delo 26, l. 5. AUVD VKO, fond 11, opis 2, delo 25, ll. 7–8. AUVD VKO, fond 11, opis 2, delo 26, ll. 15–16. AUVD VKO, fond 11, opis 2, delo 26, l. 26. AUVD VKO, fond 11, opis 2, delo 26, l. 27. The first names of these women are not given. It is possible to identify them as women because the documents refer to them as nemki (German women). Delo 26, l. 22. Delo 26, l. 27 lists his date of birth as 1906. However, another document (delo 26, l. 29) gives his date of birth as 1901. Ibid., l. 29. Ibid. All the reports on him were filed in January to November 1946. Unfortunately, the documents fell silent about Goss’ destiny after 1946. Most likely, he was arrested and prosecuted for his anti-Soviet speeches. C.L. Zugger, The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001, p. xvii. All of the above paragraph (including a quotation) is based on E. Eihel’berg, “Presledovaniia po religioznym prichinam nemtsev Tiumen’skoi oblasti,” in Nakazannyi narod, pp. 211- 220. This information is based on various memoirs and interviews. However, additional references may be found in T. Savranina, “Religioznye organizatsii nemtsev v Zapadnoi Sibiri v 1941–1955 gg,” in Nemtsy SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voinyi v pezurvoe poslevoennoe desiatiletie, 1941–1955gg. Materialy 7-y mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva, 19–22 oktiabria 2000g, Moscow: Gotika, 2001, pp. 313–323. It should also be noted, however, that Pentecostalism, originating in the USA in 1901, was and still remains one of the few religious denominations that proudly embrace women as preachers. Faced with the lack of men as religious leaders, this turn may have been just another way out of a difficult gender-imbalanced

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44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

situation. Its other features – faith healing, speaking tongues, and an overall quest for supernatural experiences – fulfilled many of the spiritual needs and craving for a miracle that the ethnic Germans had. For official realities of this statement, see, for example, Central State Archive of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan (Tsentral’ny Gosudarstvennyi arhiv Kyrgyskoi respubliki), g. Bishkek, TsGA KR, fond 2597, opis 1, delo 21, l. 2, as published in Nemtsy SSSR v gody . . ., pp. 405–408. It is also important to note that the majority of churches that were granted the permission to operate in 1945–47 were Baptists and Evangelical Christians, with occasional permissions granted to Old Believers. For various statistical information referring to this matter see, for example, GAVO, fond 6285, opis 1, delo 7, l. 16; delo 4, l. 1; delo 12, l. 3; fond 6284, opis 2, delo 8, ll. 4–5; delo 4, ll. 35b–36, as published in M.M. Zagorul’ko, Gosudarstvo i religioznye organizatsii v XX veke: sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Volgograd: “Izdatel’,” 2002, pp. 292–312. Even prior to 1941, especially in the 1920s, the Soviet state favored the Baptists and various forms of the Old Belief, presumably because these denominations were prosecuted under the Tsars. E. Eihel’berg, “Presledovaniia po religioznym prichinam nemtsev Tiumenskoi oblasti,” in Nakazannyi narod, pp. 211- 220. See, for example, Antonio Grumelli, “Religious Behavior of Migrants,” International Migration Digest, vol. 2, no. 2, autumn, 1965, pp. 158–164. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 162. See, for example, Harvey M. Choldin, “Kinship Networks in the Migration Process,” International Migration Review, vol. 7, no. 2, summer 1973, pp. 163–175. Ibid., p. 163. Cecilia Tacoli, “International Migration and the Restructuring of Gender Asymmetries: Continuity and Change Among Filipino Labor Migrants in Rome,” International Migration Review, vol. 33, no. 3, fall 1999, pp. 658–682, p. 658. Bachmann, op. cit., p. 123. This section is based primarily on interviews and published memoirs, except where stated otherwise. Timothy J. Kloberdanz and Rosalinda Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe: Volga German Folklife in a Changing Russia, Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001, p. 118. For a detailed discussion of ethnic German songs, see Johann P. Windholz, Nemetskie narodnye pesni, shvanki i instrumental’nye naigryshi, Karaganda: Inter-Union House, 1988. Interview with Katerina Kraft, from the author’s collection. For the study of pre-deportation traditions of ballad singing among Germans, see Johannes Kunzig and Waltraut Werner, Balladen aus ostdeutscher Überlieferung, Germany: Kommissionsverlag Rombach & Co., 1969. Kloberdanz and Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe, p. 189. For further discussion, see Rosalinda Kloberdanz, “Women Alone”: Separation as a Traditional Theme in Volga German Family Life and Culture (unpublished manuscript); Lawrence Weigel, “We Sing Our History,” Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, vol. 3, winter 1980, pp. 34–35. This is only a small section of a lengthy poem. Translation was found in Kloberdanz and Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe. The translation is taken from Kloberdanz and Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe, p. 185. Some Germans also mentioned attempts to celebrate Easter, St. Barbara Day (December 8), Twelve Days of Christmas, and so on, but their references and stories were neither numerous nor substantial enough to warrant a separate discussion. Settlers were not allowed to cut down trees for Christmas even if fir trees were in abundant supply in a nearby forest.

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63 Customs of pickle hiding (prior to deportation) are described in detail in Joseph S. Height, Paradise on the Steppe: A Cultural History of the Kutschurgan, Beresan, and Liebental Colonies, 1804–1872, North Dakota: North Dakota Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1973. 64 For a curious discussion of folk medicine, refer to Don Yoder, “Folk Medicine,” in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, edited by Richard M. Dorson, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 65 Unfortunately, the lack of many foods in places of deportation prevented traditional cooking in German families during exile. However, food customs and identity are perceived as directly linked, and the lack of means to pass on the knowledge of such customs was crucially damaging to ethnic Germans. For a theoretical discussion of the connection between food customs and identity, see Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell, eds, Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity, Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1984. 66 Licorice eases gastric pain, and other pains that are associated with stomach ulcers. Provided that ethnic Germans in exile could not have regular and nutrition-balanced meals, they most likely suffered from stomach discomfort and pain and used licorice to ease this pain and help digest foods that were often rotten and of poor quality. Licorice may also be used to adjust blood sugar; as a laxative; to reduce pain from arthritis; and it is also believed to build energy and help maintain muscle tone. It has a pleasant and very sweet taste. 67 Kloberdanz and Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe, p. 78. 68 This tradition was preserved much better among Germans from Russia who immigrated to Canada and the United States. For an interesting account of such a longestablished tradition, see Ruth Weil Kusler and Peggy O’Neil, Tender Hands: Ruth’s Story of Healing, Fargo: North Dakota University Press, 1998. 69 Similar traditions were also recorded among Amish in Pennsylvania Dutch County. This tradition is believed to originate in South Germany, Alsace, and Switzerland. 70 I was not able to find anyone who had a copy of the prayer in writing. Rosalinda Kloberdanz, however, says that she received a copy of one as a gift from an older German woman in Russia in the 1990s. 71 G.M. Malenkov (1902–88) was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (TsK KPSS) in 1946–57. At the time of this note, his primary position was Chairman (predsedatel’) of Council of Ministers of the USSR (he served in this position 1953–55). 72 M.A. Suslov (1902–82) was a member of the Politburo TsK KPSS in 1952–53 and 1955–82. Besides his other numerous positions, in 1947–82 he served as Secretary of TsK KPSS and in 1949–51 as Chief Editor of Pravda. 73 “Zapiska komissii TsK KPSS G. M. Malenkovu o trudovom i bytovom ustroistve spetsposelentsev:,” published in Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo, mart 1953-fevral’ 1956. Dokumenty, Moscow: “Demokratiia”, 2000, pp. 37–38. 74 “Postanovleniia presidiuma TsK KPSS ‘ob uprazdnenii pasportnykh ogranichenii i rezhimnykh mestnostei’,” GRANI, fond 3, opis 8, delo 26, ll. 24–29. 75 Ibid. 76 “O sniatii ogranichenii v pravovom polozhenii spetsposelentsev”, original is in AP RF, fond 3, opis 58, delo 181, ll. 10–13, published in Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Dokumenty, pp. 95–97. 77 “O osniatii ogranichenii v pravovom polozhenii spetsposelentsev,” 19 May 1954, GARF, fond 8131, opis 32, delo 3286, l. 113–116. 78 Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov o repressiiakh i reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii, chast’ vtoraia, Kursk, 1999, pp. 263–264. Actually, due to administrative protractions, this decree was signed into law only on July 16, 1954: GARF, fond 9401, opis 1, delo 1360, ll. 398–400. 79 This law has been cited repeatedly in Chapters 2 and 3.

Notes 209 80 See the body of the law “Ob otmene ukaza Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR ot 26 noiabria 1948 goda ‘ob ugolovnoi otvetstvennosti za pobegi iz mest obiazatel’nogo i postoiannogo poseleniia lits, vyselennykh v otdalennye raiony Sovetskogo Souiza v period Otechestvennoi voiny’,” signed on 13 July 1954: GARF, fond 7523, opis 72, delo 174, l. 176. 81 The law “O sniatii ogranichenii s byvshikh kulakov i drugikh lits” was proposed on 11 August 1954 and signed into law on 13 August of the same year: Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Dokumenty, pp. 169–170. 82 Ibid., pp. 206–207. 83 “O sniatii ogranichenii v pravovom polozhenii s chlenov KPSS i ikh semei, nakhodiashchikhsia na spetsposelenii,” Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Dokumenty, p. 216. 84 GARF, fond 7523, opis 72, delo 576, l. 79. 85 T. Ilarionova, “Posle repressii, nakanune ‘ottepeli’: polozhenie nemtsev v SSSR kak problema ustanovleniia sovetsko-zapadnogermanskikh diplomaticheskikh otnoshenii (1953–1955 gg.),” in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional’nie osobennosti. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva 17–20 sentiabria 1998 g., Moscow: Gotika, 1999, pp. 359–376. 6 Long-term consequences of deportation and exile: the formation of ethnic identity among Germans in the Soviet Union 1 J. Milton Yinger, “Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 11, 1985, p. 168. 2 Beatrice F. Manz, “Multi-ethnic Empires and the formulation of Identity,” in Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, January 2003, p. 70. For more detail, refer to Introduction. 3 M. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, New York: Bedminster Press, 1968, p. 389. 4 See, for example, Yinger, op. cit. 5 See, for example, R.D. Alba and M.B. Chamlin, “A Preliminary Examination of Ethnic Identification Among Whites,” American Sociological Review, vol. 48, no. 2, 1983, pp. 240–247. 6 See, for example, Paul Collier, “Implications of Ethnic Diversity,” Economic Policy, vol. 32, 2001, pp. 127–166; E.O. Laumann, Bonds of Pluralism: The Forms and Substance of Urban Social Networks, New York: Wiley, 1973. 7 V.A. Lukov and S.S. Nagdaliev, Vynuzhdennaia migratsiia: sotsial’nye posledstviia mezhnatsional’nykh konfliktov, Moscow: Sotsium, 2000, pp. 38–43. 8 Yinger, op. cit., p. 155. 9 Some information on schooling and education among ethnic Germans of the Soviet Union was offered in previous chapters and is not worth repeating. However, the Appendix offers a comparative statistical perspective for the entire Soviet period (when information is available) and is based on Soviet state censuses. 10 John McLeish, “The Soviet Conquest of Illiteracy,” The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, vol. 18, 1972, pp. 307–326; Mobin M. Shorish, “Planning by Decree: The Soviet Language Policy in Central Asia,” Language Problems and Language Panning, vol. 8, no. 1, spring 1984, pp. 35–49. Figures are calculated based on Soviet censuses. 11 The literacy rates among the indigenous population were no lower than 92 to 94 percent. 12 Narodnoe khoziaistvo Kirgizskoi SSR, Frunze, 1979, p. 285. 13 See, for example, Rasma Karklins, Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below, Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1986, p. 238, with references to Vysshee obrazovanie v SSSR, Moscow: Gosstatizdat, 1961, p. 85; Narodnoe obrazovanie, nauka i kul’tura v SSSR, Moscow: Statistika, 1977, p. 196; Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia SSSR 1970 goda, Moscow: Statistika, 1973, pp. 9–11, 360–364, etc.

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14 Karklins, op. cit., p. 64. 15 Barbara Dietz, “Interviews with Soviet German Emigrants as a Source of Information for Soviet Studies,” Osteuropa-Institut, Munchen, Working Paper #G4, p. 4. 16 Ibid., p. 10. 17 Narody Zapadnoi i Srednei Sibiri. Kultura Narodov Rossii, tom 6, Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2002, p. 105. 18 The percentage of German teenagers and the overall number of those who completed the survey is unlisted. V.A. Ten, “O kulturnoi assimiliatsii podrostkov nemetskogo i koreiskogo proiskhozhdeniia v Kazakhstane,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: Istoriia i kul’tura: Sbornik resume dokladov Chetvertoi mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (29–31 2002), Omsk: OmGPU, 2002, pp. 129–133, here p. 130. 19 E.R. Barbashina, “O problemakh issledovaniia kul’tury i obrazovaniia rossiiskikh nemtsev,” in Rossiiskie Nemtsy. Problemy kul’tury i obrazovaniia, Novosibirsk, 1996, pp. 1–35, here p. 17; these numbers are based on the 1989 Soviet census (see also the Appendix). 20 Foreign language was a mandatory course as the rest of the course work was under the Soviet system of education. Yet it was the only course which allowed some degree of choice. Parents were often (although not always) allowed to choose what language their children studied in schools based on the language choice offered by each individual school. After World War II, most schools offered a choice of either French or English. German was originally taught as one of the options prior to World War II but was disallowed at the war’s end. 21 Timothy J. Kloberdanz and Rosalinda Kloberdanz, Thunder on the Steppe: Volga German Folklife in a Changing Russia. Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001, p. 117–118. 22 Vladimir Bauer and Tatiana Ilarionova, Rossiiskie nemtsy: pravo na nadezhdu, Moscow: “Respublica,” 1995, p. 15. 23 “Study of Ethnic Groups,” NUPI – Center for Russian Studies Database, www.nupi.no/cgi-win/Russland/etnisk_b.exe?German> (7 January 2003). 24 E.P. Barbashina and E.V. Zakharova, “Problemy etnicheskoi identichnosti molodezhi rossiiskikh nemtsev segodnia (po rezul’tatam etnosotsiologicheskih issledovanii),” in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii, 1998, pp. 185–198. 25 See, for example, T.B. Smirnova, “Dinamika sovremennykh etnicheskikh protsessov u nemtsev Zapadnoi Sibiri,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: Istoriia i kul’tura, pp. 126–128, here p. 126. 26 Lennart Nyman, “Einige Beobachtungen zu Varietäten und Varietätenausgleich im Niederdeutsch der Orenburger Rußland-Mennonited,” in Historische Soziolinguistik des Deutschen III. Sprachgebrauch und sprachliche Leistung in sozialen Schichten und soziofunktionalen Gruppen. Internationale Fachtagung Rostock/Kühlungsborn 15–18/09/1996, Stuttgart, 1997, 261–276. 27 Dania Asfandiarova, “ ‘Mir verzehle doch Lutherisch und die Katholisch’ – Dialektmischung im Vokalismus in der deutschen Sprachinsel Alekseievka (Baschkortostan, Russiische Föderation),” in Gisela Brandt, ed., Historische Soziolinguistik des Deutsche IV: Soziofunktionale Gruppe – Kommunikative Anforderungen – Sprachgebrauch. Intern. Fachtagung, Rostok, 13–16/09/1998, Stuttgart, 1999, pp. 241–262. 28 Peter Rosenberg, “Dialect Convergence in German Speech Islands,” in Peter Auer, Frans Hentschel and Paul Kerswill, ed., Dialect Convergence and Divergence in Europe (2006). 29 This process has been described repeatedly. For the case of German “island” dialect, see Rosenberg, op. cit. 30 Rosenberg, op. cit.; also Suzanne Romaine, “Pidgins, Creoles, Immigrants, and Dying Languages”, in Nancy Dorian, ed., Investigating Obsolescence. Studies in Language Contraction and Death, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 369–383. 31 For a comparative perspective on the importance of language for national identity,

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32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

see, for example, Paul R. Brass, “Language and National Identity in the Soviet Union and India,” in Alexander J. Motyl, ed., Thinking Theoretically About Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp. 99–128. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (any edition). The literature on this subject is too voluminous to be cited in its entirety. Refer, for example, to the following works: Robert K. Merton, “Intermarriage and the Social Structure: Fact and Theory,” in Milton L. Barron, ed., The Blending American: Patterns of Intermarriage, Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1972; Peter M. Blau, Carolyn Beeker and Kevin M. Fitzpatrick, “Intersecting Social Affiliations and Intermarriage,” Social Forces, vol. 63, no. 3, 1984, pp. 585–606; Teresa Labov and Jerry A. Jacobs, “Intermarriage in Hawaii, 1950–1983,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 48, 1986, pp. 79–88; Deanna L. Pagnini and Philip Morgan, “Intermarriage and Social Distance Among U.S. Immigrants at the Turn of the Century,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 96, no. 2, 1990, pp. 405–432; Nikolai Botev, “Seeing Past the Barricades: Ethnic Intermarriages in Yugoslavia During the Last Three Decades,” Anthropology of East Europe Review, Special Issue: War Among the Yugoslavs, vol. 11, nos 1–2, autumn 1993, pp. 115–145. For further readings, refer to Ann Baker Cottrell, “Cross-national Marriages: A Review of Literature,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1990, pp. 151–165; Laura A. Shepard and Jonathan B. Jeffery, “Guide to Reference Sources for Intermarriage,” in G.A. Crester and J.J. Leon, eds, Intermarriage in the United States, New York: Haworth Press, 1982, pp. 101–104. Richard H. Walth, Flotsam of World History: The Germans from Russia between Stalin and Hitler, Essen: Klartext, 1996, p. 103. Rasma Karklins, op. cit., pp. 170–174. Berta Bachmann, Memories of Kazakhstan: A Report on the Life Experience of a German Woman in Russia, Lincoln, NB, AHSGR, 1983, p. 41. See Chapter 5 for more detail. Interview with Edward Piusovich Dill, in O. Ugriumov, Nemtsy: Pravda Severa (interviewed on 13 May 1999), p. 5. Narody Zapadnoi i Srednei Sibiri. Kultura narodov Rossii, tom 6, Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2002, p. 110. Tomas R. Jimnez, “Negotiating Ethnic Boundaries: Multiethnic Mexican Americans and Ethnic Identity in the United States,” Ethnicities, vol. 4, no. 1, 2004, pp. 75–97. N.V. Prokopieva, “Nemetskoiazychnaia pressa Altaia v 50–60-e gody XX veka,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura, pp. 63–67, here p. 63. T.I. Shatskikh, “Izdanie gazety ‘Trud’ na nemetskom iazyke v Altaiskom krae,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: Istoriia i kul’tura, pp. 85–90, here p. 87. L.V. Malinovskii, Nemtsy v Rossii i na Altaie, Vospominaniia, Barnaul: BGPU, 1998, p. 150. Shatskikh, op. cit., p. 86. Ibid., p. 87. Malinovskii, op. cit., p. 152. Shatskikh, op. cit., p. 87. Ibid. M. Fazylov, Religiia i national’nye otnosheniia, Alma Ata, 1969, pp. 81, 101. A. Kholmogorov, Internatsional’nye cherty sovetskikh natsii, Moscow, 1970, pp. 84, 109. R. Erhardt, “Aktiver Atheist sein,” Neues Leben, 12 April 1972. L.V. Skvortsov, ed., Religiia i obshchestvo, Moscow: RAN, 1999, pp. 88–89. A.P. Betkher, “Nekotorye izmeneniia v religiouznoi praktike u nemetskogo naselelniia Zapadnoi Sibiri,” in Protestantism v Sibiri: istoriia i sovremennost: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii “Protestantizm v Sibiri,” 26–28 maia 1998 g., Omsk: Poligraf, 1998, pp. 12–16, here p. 13.

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54 This fact has been mentioned repeatedly in various studies related to ethnic Germans. See, for example, T.B. Smirnova, “Izmenenie konfessional’nogo sostava nemtsev Zapadnoi Sibiri v XX veke,” in Protestantizm v Sibiri, pp. 130–133, here p. 131. 55 M. Burdo and S.B. Filatov, Sovremennaia religioznaia zhizn’ Rossii: opyt sistematicheskogo opisaniia, tom I, Moscow: “Logos,” 2004, pp. 32, 42, 44. 56 Ibid., pp. 320–321. 57 F.L. Sivatskii, “Protestantskie organizatsii v Sibiri: proiskhozhdenie i sotsial’nodemograficheskaia kharakteristika,” in Protestantizm v Sibiri: istoriia i sovremennost’. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii “Protestantizm v Sibiri”, 26–28 maia 1998 goda, Omsk: Poligraf, 1998, pp. 126–130, here pp. 127–129. 58 Ibid., p. 129. 59 I.Ia. Trebtau, “Istoriia sel’skikh liuteranskikh obshchin Omskoi oblasti,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura, pp. 142–145, here p. 144. 60 See, for example, the study of Poles in America by R. Basham and D. DeGroot, “Current Approaches to the Anthropology of Urban and Complex Societies,” American Anthropology, vol. 79, no. 2, 1977, pp. 414–440. 61 Scholarly works dealing with this question are numerous; see, for example, A.H. Beuf, Red Children in White America, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977; V. Gecas, “The Self-concept,” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 8, 1982, pp. 1–33. 62 D.C. Locke, Increasing Multicultural Understanding: A Comprehensive Model, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998. 63 See, for example, C.C. Lee, Multicultural Issues in Counseling: New Approaches to Diversity, Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association, 1997. 64 Yinger, op. cit., p. 154. 65 Hommi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge Press, 1994, p. 251. 66 For more information on relational identities among other ethnic groups in contemporary societies, see, for example, Dru C. Gladney, “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities,” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 53, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–34. 67 For a detailed discussion on the persistence of Russian cultural attributes among ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union in Germany, see Andreas Heinrich, “The Integration of Ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union,” in Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic, edited by David Rock and Stefan Wolff, New York: Berghahn Books, 2002, pp. 77–87. 68 The results of this survey were published in Narody Zapadnoi i Srednei Sibiri.. 69 Ibid., p. 93. 70 For the experiences of Crimean Tartars, see pertinent sections of Brian Glyn Williams, The Crimean Tartars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation, Leiden: Brill, 2001. In the case of Chechens, various studies demonstrate that clan and religion were the basis of their identity prior to their deportation. Chechen society at large consisted of numerous clans, members of which presumably had common interests, often possessed communal property, and supported each other in the times of hardship. During the early years of the Soviet regime, Chechens had roughly 300 clans. Yet these fine distinctions were eradicated during deportation and exile, and the identity of Chechens was solidified in the process similar to the one that took place among ethnic Germans. Makhach Magometov, “O nekotorykh osobennostiakh Oktiabr’skoi revolutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny na Severnom Kavkaze,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 6, 1997, 85–87; John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; A.M. Gonov, “Problemy deportatsii narodov severnogo Kavkaza, 20–90-e gody XX veka,” avtoreferat, PhD Dissertation, Kabardin-Balkar State Univeristy, Nal’chik, 1997.

Notes 213 71 Ismail Bey Gasprinskii (1851–1914) is commonly recognized as a promoter of ideas of modernizing Muslim life in Russia and a fighter to improve the life and position of Muslims in the Russian Empire. A Crimean Tartar and a Muslim, Gasprinskii attempted to reform the curriculum and the mode of instruction among Crimean Muslims and later developed his own program of reforms that he advocated via his newspaper Perevodchik/Tercuman. In general, Gasprinskii proposed to modernize Muslim education, end women’s seclusion, create a common Turkic literary language and a broader community of Muslims in Russia, and embrace greater contact and cooperation with the Russian government. For more information, see Williams, op. cit., and Edward J. Lazzerini, “Ismail Bey Gasprinskii and Muslim Modernism in Russia, 1878–1914,” PhD dissertation, Seattle, Washington, 1973. 72 M.M. Gordon, Human Nature, Class, and Ethnicity, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 169. 73 On the importance of social conflicts for ethnic identities, see J.M. Yinger, “Ethnicity in Complex Societies,” in The Uses of Controversy in Sociology, ed. L.A. Coser, O.N. Larsen, New York: Free Publishers, 1976, pp. 197–216. 7 At the end of the road 1 Various interviews and memoirs attest to this fact. For scholarly references, see, e.g., L.G. Ionnin, Sotsiologiia kul’tury, Moscow: Nauka, 1996, pp. 61–62; E.V. Konev, “Sotisal’no-ekonomicheskoe polozhenie nemetskogo natsional’nogo men’shinstva na territorii Kuzbassa vo vtoroi polovine XX veka,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura, pp. 38–41, here pp. 39–40. For official documents, e.g. refer to publications of fond 75, opis 8, delo 35 of the State Archive of Kemerovsk, which appeared in numerous published document collections. 2 The average Soviet salary at this time was between 120 and 200 rubles a month. 3 P.P. Vibe and L.I.. Sennikova, “Postradavshie za veru: o sud’be nemetskikh religioznykh obshchin Omskoi oblasti v 1950–1980 gg.,” Kul’tura dlia rossiiskikh nemtsev Omskoi oblasti, vol. 4, 2003, pp. 10–15, here p. 14. 4 Ibid., p. 15. 5 GARF, fond 7523, opis 72, delo 576, l. 79. 6 Materialy vtoroi delegatsii sovetskikh nemtsev (iun’-iul’ 1965). Dokumenty, Moscow: Tsentr “Rossiiskie Nemtsy,” 2004, p. 2. 7 Ibid. 8 Larisa Naidich, “Nemtsy v Kazakhstane. Problemy istorii i iazyka,” Tsentral’naia Aziia i Kavkaz, vol. 12, 1997, pp. 1–16. 9 F.D. Bobkov, KGB i vlast’, Moscow: “Veteran,” 1995, pp. 305–307. 10 Naidich, op. cit., p. 16. 11 Gregory L. Freeze, ed., Russia: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 360–361. 12 Mikhail Isinaliev, Shtrikhi k portretam, Almaty: “Sanat,” 1999, p. 75. 13 After deportation, Germans made up the third largest group of peoples in Kazakhstan. Thus, in 1989 there were 6,534,616 Kazakhs, 6,227,549 Russians and 957,518 Germans in Kazakhstan. Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda: Natsional’nyi sostav naseleniia Kazakhskoi SSR, oblastei i g. Alma-Aty, Alma-Ata: Goskomstat, 1991, p. 5 14 V.A. Vladimirov, Otvestvennost’ za korystnye posiagatel’stva na sotsialisticheskuiu sobstvennost’, Moscow: Iuridicheskaia Literatura, 1986, p. 115. 15 Vladimirov, op. cit., p. 115. 16 Dinmukhamed Kunaev, Ot Stalina do Gorbacheva (V aspekte istorii Kazakhstana), Almaty: “Sanat,” 1994, p. 261. 17 The city was originally named Akmolinsk but was renamed Tselinograd in 1961 to commemorate its central location in Virgin Lands regions (Tselinnyi krai). It was

214

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

Notes

renamed Aqmola in 1991 and in 1998 Astana. Astana has been made the new capital of independent Kazakhstan to replace Alma Ata in the south of Kazakhstan and now has a rapidly growing population. Bobkov, op. cit., p. 306. This one-sentence statement was recently added to the textbook on Kazakhstan’s history designed for high school students. Istoriia Kazakhstana, Almaty, 2004, p. 167. Vladimirov, op. cit., p. 116. Isinaliev, op. cit., p. 102. Isinaliev, op. cit., p. 104–105. Kunaev, op. cit., pp. 326–327. Numerous people remember Braun being anti-autonomous in the second half of the 1980s. This particular instance is cited from his speech which was recollected by Robert Korn who was present at the moment in the room to hear Braun’s remark. Kunaev, op. cit., p. 261. Ibid, pp. 261–262. Ibid., p. 263. Ibid., pp. 262–263. The full title of this organization includes both Russian and German names and appears as “Wiedergeburt-Vozrozhdenie.” Although the title “Wiedergeburt” is used occasionally, the name “Vozrozhdenie” is used more habitually. For separate studies about Vozrozhdenie, see, for example, V. Disendorf, Desiat’ let v ‘Vozrozhdenii’,” Moscow: Obshchestvennaia akademiia nauk rossiiskikh nemtsev, 2000; Eric J. Schmaltz, Soviet–German “Rehabilitation” and Ethnic German Nationalist “Wiedergeburt” in the USSR and CIS, 1987–1995, North Dakota: North Dakota University Press, 1996. These reports and articles are more than abundant in various newspapers. See, for example, “Activists Call for ‘German Autonomy’,” Pravda, 2 April 1989. Izvestiia, 30 January 1990. Izvestiia, 29 November 1989. O.E. Skuchaeva, “Antiavtonomistskaia kampaniia v Saratovvskom Povolzh’e,” in Nemtsy Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura, p. 68. Izvestiia, 30 January 1990. These words were recorded by Grigorii Kotoshikhin and later published in Grigorii Kotoshikhin, “Nemtsy v gorode,” Vek. Privolzhskii vypusk, vol. 45, 2001, pp. 1–4. Izvestiia, 6 January 1990. “Obraschenie trudiashchikhsia Saratovskoi i Volgogradskoi oblastei k grazhdanam Rossii.” I was able to write down the text in the leaflet when it was shown to me. Skuchaeva, op. cit., pp. 68–72. V. Bauer and T. Ilarionova, Rossiiskie Nemtsy: pravo na nadezhdu, Moscow: “Resbublika,” 1995, p. 449. See, for example, Federal’naia national’no-kul’turnaia avtonomiia “Rossiiskie Nemtsy,” Moscow: Ministerstvo natsional’noi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1999. Sibiriak, 22 March 2004. Rogers Brubaker, “Nationalizing States in the old ‘new Europe’ – and the New,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 411–412. See the Constitution of Kazakhstan adopted in August 1995. Various observations of this nature were also made by Edward Schatz in “‘Tribes’ and ‘Clans’ in Modern Power: The State-led Production of Subethnic Politics in Kazakhstan,” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin at Madison [unpublished at the time of manuscript preparation]. L.N. Shanshieva, “Emigratsiia nemtsev iz SSSR i Rossii: istoricheskaia spravka,” Rossiia i sovermennyi mir, vol. 1, 1993, pp. 97–111. This article also has statistics on emigration of Germans by year, from 1954 to 1984.

Notes 215 46 The number of ethnic German migrants from the former Soviet Union in 1989–96 is estimated at 1,391,131 people. 47 Infodienst Deutsche Aussiedler, no. 91, 1997, and no. 110, 2000, and various press releases of the Bundesinnenministerium of 1998, 1999, and 2000, as quoted in David Rock and Stefan Wolff, eds, Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic, New York: Berghahn Books, 2002, p. 78. 48 Barbara Dietz, “East West Migration Patterns in an Enlarging Europe: The German Case,” The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, vol. 2, no. 1, September 2002, pp. 29–40, cited on pp. 30–31. 49 Although this term is used as applicable to ethnic German immigrants from the Soviet Union and the communist bloc, Aussiedler means a special legal status rather than “an ethnic German immigrant.” 50 For an overview of Aussiedler benefits, see, for example, Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, “The Decline of Privilege: The Legal Background to the Migration of Ethnic Germans,” in Rock and Wolff, eds, Coming Home to Germany?, pp. 102–121. 51 Article 6 of Kriegsfolgenbereinigungsgesetz. 52 Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, op. cit., pp. 110–113. 53 Ibid., p. 113. 54 Andreas Heinrich, “The Integration of Ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union,” in Rock and Wolff, eds, Coming Home to Germany?, pp. 77–87, cited on p. 84. 55 V. Kriger, “ Vliianie opyta sotsializatsii deportirovannykh nemtsev v Kazakhstane na protsess ikh integratsii v germanskoe obshchestvo,” in Aleksandr Dederer, Ferdinand Shtol’ and Gert Shtrasser, eds, “Germaniia- Tsentral’naia Asiia – Dialog kul’tur”: Istoriia, Sovremennost, perspektivy. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, Almaty, 1–2 noiabria 2001 goda, Almaty: Vozrozhdeniie, 2002, p. 33. 56 On the language problems among ethnic German immigrant youth, see Barbara Koller, “Aussiedler in Deutschland. Aspekte ihrer sozialen und beruflichen Eingliederung,” in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. 48, 1996; Anatoli Rakhkochkine, “Neue Heimat – neue Zukunft. Eine soziologisch-pädagogische Studie über die Integration der Kinder der Aussiedler aus den GUS-Staaten,” in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, nos 7–8, 1997. Rakhkochkine also points out that the refusal to learn German is often related to the fact that roughly 40 percent of immigrant families have one non-German parent and nearly 90 percent of families prefer to use Russian as a means of communication at home. 57 For more discussion of these issues related to ethnic German youth problems, see, for example, Peter Hilkes, “The Situation of Aussiedler group from the former republics of the Soviet Union in the Federal Republic of Germany,” North Dakota: North Dakota State University Press, 1996; Conventions and Speeches Collection. 58 Ibid., pp. 27–35. 59 Andreas Heinrich, “The Integration of Ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union,” in Rock and Wolff, eds, Coming Home to Germany?, pp. 77–87, cited on p. 85. 60 Although precise numbers are available only for 2004 (Sibiriak; Perepis’ naselelniia 2002 goda, at www.perepis2002.ru), overall estimates have not changed since then. See, e.g., Olga Shadrina, “Konets nemekskoi mechty,” Narody Rossii: Edinstvo i mnogoobrazie, September 9, 2005.

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Index

adat 113 Adenauer, Konrad 130 Afghanistan 159 Alexander I of Russia 8 Alexander III of Russia 14 Altai region 16, 19, 41, 70–1, 86, 141–2, 163 amenorrhea see women, in special settlements Arbeit (Trud) see newspapers, in German Arbeitsbanner (Trudovoe Znamia) see newspapers, in German Arctic Circle 78 assimilation 134, 138–41, 149; factors in 152; types of 146–7 ASSR Nemtsy Povolzhia see Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans Aussiedler 165–8 Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans 10, 30–4, 37–8, 39, 42–5, 154, 158, 181 autonomy: fight for 152, 154–63; nonGerman demonstrations against 156–63 Bachmann, Berta 140 Baltic barons see Baltic States: Germans in Baltic Germans see Baltic States: Germans in Baltic States: Germans in 13–15, 17, 20, 26–7, 49, 50, 52–3; Soviet control of 18 Baptists, German 13, 17, 117–18, 144, 153 Bashkirskaia ASSR 72, 100 Bavaria 4–5, 22, 150 Beria, Lavrentii 66, 68 besprizorniki 103 Bobkov, Filipp 155–7 Bougai, Nikolai 33 Brauche (powwowing) 126 Braun, Andrei 156, 158 Brubaker, Rogers 163 burial, en route 54

Catherine II of Russia 22, 162; and Manifesto of 1763 8 Catholics, German 7, 11, 18, 19, 31, 39, 118–20, 137, 144 Cheliabinsk 70, 72, 88, 107 chinoiserie 22 Chortica see dialects collaboration 33–4, 38, 39–40, 49, 52, 108, 154 collectivization 35, 37–8, 58, 60, 95 colonists 7–9, 17–20, 25, 38, 148, 162 Commission for Repatriation see repatriation Crimea: Germans in 8, 11, 34, 40, 41–2 Crimean Tartars 11, 36, 63, 82, 127, 138, 143, 151–2 Czechoslovakia: Germans in 34 Danzig Platt see dialects Davyd, Elizaveta 119 death rates 47, 54, 57–8, 61, 65, 77, 132 dekulakization campaigns 31, 36–8, 40–1, 46, 55 demobilization 48 deportation(s) 36–56; classification of 33, 35–7; death rates during 47; de facto in labor armies 47, 69; definition of 5; family separation during 42, 44–5, 58, 67; and intermarriage 42–3; official resolutions for 170–3; organization and execution of 42, 43–4, 45–7; other ethnic groups 35–6; reasons for 32–5; in tsarist Russia 35 deportees: definition of 5; distribution of goods among 60–4; see also special settlers Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich 23 dialects 10, 20–1; convergence of 136–8 Dill, Edward 140

Index 237 disease see disorders disorders 51, 52, 58, 59, 61, 64–5, 70, 77, 90–1, 95–6, 106 displaced person, Germans as 49–51; see also repatriation dystrophy see disorders epidemics: of septic tonsillitis 65 Ermentau 155 espionage see collaboration ethnic cleansing 29, 32–3, 35, 39–41 ethnic identity: and a chain of stereotypical representations 148; and common historical experience 131; construction of 2, 30, 146–7; and the creation of ethnic label 132; Germans and 105, 119–20, 131–3, 138, 146–52, 168; and historical lapse of memory 150; measures of 3–4, 131, 147; as “relational identity” 148; and the size of an ethnic group 132; women as preservers of 110, 115–27, 145 evacuees see evakuirovannye evakuirovannye 5, 59, 62, 66 exile see special settlements: definition of famines 13, 30, 38, 51, 58 First Delegation of Germans see autonomy: fight for forced migration in world comparative perspective 148–9, 151–2 Freundschaft (Druzhba) see newspapers in German Gaspinski, Ismail 152 Gellner, Ernest 138 gender: as a factor in deportation 44–5; as a factor in exile 70–3; imbalance after deportations 55–6, 110, 116; imbalance in the Soviet Union 55; see also ethnic identity: women as preservers of; women, in special settlements genocide 29, 57–8, 65–6 German autonomous districts 163 German culture in Russia 22–6 Germanic settlements in Russia, diversity of 7–22, 32 “German operation” see ethnic cleansing Germans: and cultural self-expression 31, 143, 159; education and literacy rates among 11, 133–5, 174, 178–80; folklore among 122–7; folk medicine 125–7; image of, in Russia 24–6; literacy among 104; and native language

proficiency 26, 103, 107, 115, 122, 132, 135–8, 163, 165–7, 175, 177; territorial distribution of 27–8, 176; see also ethnic identity: Germans and; special settlers “German spirit” see German culture in Russia Germany 34, 49, 129–30, 149, 162; immigration to 149, 154, 164–8 Golikov, Fillip 50 Goncharov, Ivan 25 Gordon, M. 152 Goss, Genrikh Genrikhovich 117 grain procurement (prodrazverstka) 30 Grech, N.I. 26 Gulag 15, 32, 39, 45, 66, 68, 83 Hegel, Georg 23 High German see dialects Himmelsbrief (Letter from Heaven) 126 Hitler 38, 49, 107, 117, 162 Hoetzsch, Otto 14 hujum 113 Ilarionova, Tatiana 129 illness see disorders immigration: in post-Soviet countries 164–8; into Russia 9–16; other 38 integration in Germany, lack of 164–8 intermarriage: and cultural barriers 113–15; as a factor of preserving identity 131, 138–41; in special settlements 112, 115 International Union of German Culture (MSNK) 160 internees see deportees: definition of Interstate Union of Russian Germans (MGSN) 163 island languages see dialects: convergence of Japan, relations with 33, 129–30 Jews 11, 15, 34, 41, 53, 100, 134, 149 Kaliningrad 52 Kaluga region 108 kalym 113 Karaganda 78, 105 Karklins, Rasma 139 Kazakhstan 1, 3, 16, 35–6, 40, 42, 45, 48, 59–61, 78, 82, 88, 93–4, 104–5, 133–4, 139–40, 154–9, 164, 168 Kemerovo 86, 136 KGB 66, 155

238

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Khanty-Mansiysk 47 Khrushchev, Nikita 105, 130, 157–8 Klenze, Leo 22 Kliuchevskii, V.O. 7 Kluchevsky see Kliuchevskii, V.O. Komi ASSR 52–3 Kondrashin, V.V. 75 korenizatsiia (nativization) 31 Kostroma 56, 89, 92 Krasnoyarsk 72, 86, 102, 144–5 Kuibyshev, Valerian 96 kulak settlers 5, 66; see also collectivization; labor settlers Kun, Maria Rudol’fovna 117 Kunaev, Dinmukhamen (Dimash) Akhmetovich 155–9 Kyrgyzstan 1, 3, 59, 61–2, 82, 113, 133, 164; and pre-deportation Germans 16 labor army 47–8, 56, 61, 67–8, 69–80, 84; demobilization from 77–8; family separation in 70, 73; food distribution in 72–3, 78; housing in 78–9; lack of clothing in 78; occupational change as a result of 79–80; starvation in 76; wages in 72–3; women in 47, 78–9; see also social vulnerability, concept of labor mobilization see labor army labor settlers 66 Levin, I.G. 154 literature in Russia, German influence on 23–7 “lived commonality,” concept of 2, 4, 131, 151–2, 159 Lutherans, German 11, 14–15, 17–18, 19, 39, 117–20, 137, 144 McCauley, Martin 74 Magnitogorsk 70 Malenkov, G.M. 127 Mandelshtam, Osip 25–6 Manz, Beatrice 4, 131 Marshall Plan 130 Marx, Karl 23, 134 Mennonites 10, 13, 16, 18–20, 39, 119, 137, 143–4, 153 meshchane 20 Messerschmidt, Daniel Gotlib 16 MGB USSR 82 Mikoian, Anastas 154–5 Miller, Gerard 16 Ministry of Health 65 Molotcha see dialects Molotov region 72

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 52 Molotov, Vyacheslav 50, 129 Morozov, N.E. 157 Moscow, Germans in 15, 40, 45 MVD 66, 81–2, 85, 88, 112 Narym, Germans in 96–9 nationality, Soviet policy of 1–2, 29–31 Nazarbaev, Nursultan 164 Nekrich, Aleksandr 57 Nemetskaia Sloboda 7 Neues Leben (Novaia zhizn’) see newspapers, in German New Order theory 34 newspapers, in German 141–3 Nicolas I of Russia 22, 27 NKVD 66, 68, 73, 81–3, 103, 108, 116–19 North Caucasus: deportation from 35, 46–7; Germans in 12–13, 17, 20 Novosibirsk 47, 56, 86, 88, 91–4, 96–7, 99 Odoevsky, Vladimir 23 Old Believers 11; see also religion among Germans Omsk 47, 88, 103, 119, 153, 163 oral history 3 Ordzhonikidze 41–2 orphans, among Germans 70–1, 98–9, 103, 106, 110 Orthodox, Russian Church 11, 14, 19, 143–4; see also religion among Germans OSP see Sector of Special Settlements otdel spetsposelenii see Sector of Special Settlements Pentecostalism (piatidesiatnichestvo) 119 pereselentsy 5 Perm 100 Pipes, Richard 26 Polian, Pavel 36 political purges 31, 34, 36, 40–1, 58, 130, 154 promissory notes 44, 57, 60–1, 63–4, 98 Pushkin, Alexander: image of a German in writings of 23, 24–5 Red Army 48, 54, 55, 58, 61 rehabilitation 154, 158 religion among Germans 10–19, 31, 39, 115–21, 143–6, 167; blurring of confessional lines 119–20, 144–6; feminization of 118–21, 145–6; see also

Index 239 Catholics; Lutherans; Mennonites; Orthodox; Stundists religious persecution 39, 118–19, 153 repatriation(s) 15, 48–52, 83; camps for 50; fear of 49–51; see also special settlements: “personality factor” in Resettlement Commission 62 Rosenberg, Alfred 15 Rote Fahne (Krasnoe Znamia) see newspapers, in German St. Petersburg (also Leningrad): German influence upon 22; Germans in 15–16, 27, 40, 45 Samarka 117 Saratov region 155, 160–3 Schelling, Friedrick 23 Schiemann, Theodor 14 Second Delegation of Germans see autonomy: fight for Sector of Labor Settlements 66 Sector of Special Settlements 66 Senkevich, Nikolai 23 sharia 113 Shenkel’, Vasilii Iakovlevich 117 Siberia, Germans in 16, 40, 42, 47, 54, 92, 94, 115, 150–1 social vulnerability, concept of 72 socialist competitions, Germans in 65, 142 Society for the Advancement of German Culture 16 Soloviev, S.M. 7 Special Commission on the Question of German and Crimean Tartar Autonomous Regions 155, 160 special settlements 51, 57, 81–108; administrative punishments in 81, 90, 128; agentura work in 85–6; childcare in 100, 102–4, 106, 122–3; definition of 5; desiatidvorki in 87; division along ethnic lines in 87; early years in 67; end of 127–30; escapes from 83, 85, 87–90, 127–8; food distribution in 99; freedom of movement 128; gardening plots in 62, 74–5, 93–4, 97; housing in 59–60, 62, 90–4; komendatury in 81–2, 84–7; labor regulations see special settlers, employment among; medical care in 105–6, 125–7; number of Germans in 174; official regulations 66–9, 79–80, 81, 170–3; passports in 69, 94, 127–8; “personality factor” in 91, 107–8; registration in 81, 84–5, 128; schools in

100, 102–4, 106; separation of families in 87–90 special settlers: in collective and state farms 95, 99, 101; definition of 5; education of 94, 96, 98, 100, 104–5; employment among 67, 69, 73–5, 94–101, 128; labeling of (fascism) 108; loans to 91–3; loss of skill among 95–6, 100; and military draft 129; and payment of pensions to 105; personal files of 84–5; see also Narym, Germans in; special settlements: schools in spetsposelentsy see special settlers Spivak, Dmitrii 15–16 Stakhanovites 76, 79 Stalin 29, 32, 34, 44, 50, 66, 96, 127–8, 130 Stumpp, Karl 55 Stundists 10, 13 suicide see social vulnerability, concept of surgun (exile) 152 Suslov, M.A. 127 Sverdlovsk 70, 78–9, 86, 123 Tajikistan 1, 113, 133 taxation, and Germans 63 Teutonic Knights 13–14, 18, 162; see also Baltic States: Germans in Third Congress of Germans 163 Third Delegation of Germans see autonomy: fight for Tiumen’ 136 Tolstoy, Leo 23, 26 Tomsk 34, 86, 96–7, 99, 136 trudarmee see labor army trudposelentsy see kulak settlers; labor settlers Tselinnyi krai 157–8 Tselinograd 156–8 Tulsk 79 Turkmenistan 1, 113, 133 Ukraine, Germans in 11–12, 40, 49, 50, 59 Union of Russian Germans (MSRN) 160 Ural Mountains 70, 137 Uzbekistan 1, 59, 62–3, 82, 104, 113, 133 Velitsyn, A. 7 Verkh-Uba 116 Virgin Lands (tselina) 155–6 Vladimirov, V. 156 Volga Germans 8–11, 19; see also Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans

240

Index

Volga Soviet Commission 30 Volgograd 162 Volhynia Germans 8, 11, 12, 35, 150 Volksdeutsche 52, 129, 164 VolksStaat 163 Vozrozhdenie 160, 162 Vydrikha 116 Vyltsan, M.A. 74 Walth, Richard H. 42 War Communism in the Volga region 30 Weber, Max 131 Winkelmann, Johann Joachim 22 women, in special settlements 87, 96, 105, 108–27; and amenorrhea 110–11; and the idea of femininity 110–12; and religious practices, see religion among Germans; see also ethnic identity: women as preservers of; gender; intermarriage

World War I see deportation in tsarist Russia World War II 15, 17, 20, 29, 31, 35, 47–9, 52, 55–6, 69, 97, 100, 111, 113, 128, 130, 133, 140, 160, 162 Wunderbrief (Miraculous Letter) 126 Württemberg 4, 9–10 Yalta Conference 50–1 Yeltsin, Boris 162 Yinger, Milton J. 131, 139, 147 Yugoslavia 129–30 Zagotskot 98 zemliachestva 149, 168 Zemskov, V.N. 51 Zhenotdel 113