Soviet Documents in German-Russian History Series: Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet "Concerning the Removal of Restrictions in the Legal Status of Germans and Their Family Members Situated in the Special Settlement" (December 13, 1955) (original) (raw)
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The Persecution of Ethnic Germans in the USSR during World War II
The Russian Review 2016, 2016
The ethnic Germans were the single largest and one of the oldest diaspora groups in the USSR connected to a foreign state. During the Second World War the Soviet government forcibly resettled the German communities living in territory it controlled west of the Urals to Kazakhstan and Siberia. It placed these internal deportees under special settlement restrictions which greatly limited their freedom of movement and choice of residency. The NKVD counted, registered, and instituted a system of surveillance over the special settlers to prevent them from moving from their assigned places of resettlement. This in turn greatly constrained their options regarding education and employment. Initially almost all of the deportees including urban populations from Engles and other cities found themselves settled on kolkhozes and sovkhozes and assigned to unfamiliar agricultural work. The failure to integrate these men and women into productive agricultural work on the kolkhozes led to widespread unemployment, lack of work days, and subsequently severe food shortages. The Soviet solution to integrating them into the economy was to again move them and assign them to extractive enterprises. This took two forms. The first was a second deportation of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans to Siberia northward to work in the fishing industry. These men, women, and children remained special settlers. The second form was the mobilization of ethnic German men and later women into the labor army to work building factories, felling trees, and laying rail lines in NKVD camps, and mining coal, extracting oil, and manufacturing munitions for civilian commissariats under UNKVD supervision. The restrictions on the men and women in the labor army which ultimately comprised over a quarter of all ethnic Germans in the USSR were even more onerous than the special settlement regime and closely resembled the situation of convicted Gulag prisoners. The Stalin regime's policy towards its ethnic German citizens during World War II involved ethnic cleansing, the imposition of apartheid like residency restrictions, and their mass conscription into forced labor detachments.
Compiler's Note: I have translated some of the following entries directly from the German and Russian languages out of numerous academic and popular sources. For many of the translated entries, I have taken the liberty to make careful modifications of words and phrases or include corrections and additional pertinent information. I also have tracked down much new information on my own from diverse materials. Like an expanding coral reef, key historical dates, personalities, events, and developments continue to be collected, layer upon layer. Documentation of both our individual lives and family histories remains enmeshed by this accumulation of knowledge. Different versions of the historical timeline have already appeared in a number of significant publications: Eric
The Deportation and Destruction of the German Minority in the USSR
2001
The once large and culturally vibrant German minorities of the former USSR are today rapidly disappearing. In 1897 the Russian Empire had 1,791,000 ethnic German subjects. The German population of the USSR numbered 1,621,000 in 1918, 1,238,000 in 1926, 1,152,000 in 1937, 1,620,000 in 1959, 1,846,000 in 1970, 1,936,000 in 1979 and 2,038,000 in 1989. Descendants of German immigrants to the Russian Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries, the ethnic Germans of Kazkhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia have lost much of their cultural vitality in the second half of the 20th century. In 1926, 94.9% of the Germans in the USSR spoke German as a native language. By 1989, this percentage had been reduced to a mere 48.7%. The elimination of Germans as viable cultural minorities in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) has been exacerbated in recent years by massive emigration to the Federal Republic of Germany. Between 1987 and 1997, 1,584,566 ethnic Germans from the former USSR emigrated to...
Atatürk yolu, 2023
The main objective of the study is to examine the population of Russia Germans in the Soviet Union, which is a part of the cosmopolitan structure of the Soviet Union. In the census results, the total population of the USSR and the Germans, their distribution by gender and place of residence are given in detailed tables. The main source of the study is the census results made in the Soviet Union. The fact that these censuses are the primary source has added importance to the study. The aim of this study is to examine the demographic structure of Russia Germans living in Russia through the census results. In this context, the study focuses on issues such as migration and war that affect population mobility. As a result of the study, we see that the Russia Germans living in the Soviet Union were subjected to certain periods of immigration and pressure in the country, although the population increased slightly in each census. In addition, it has been determined that the German population in the country has increased from west to east as a result of immigration and that the female population is more than the male population. In this increase, the bad conditions of the men sent to the labor camps and the death caused by the war were effective in the decrease in the male population. On the other hand, in 1964, it was observed that the German population immigrated to the western parts of the country, with the deportation decision of 1941 and the annulment of its provisions. Finally, it was determined that the German population was the highest in Soviet Kazakhstan in 1970 and after, and the least population was in Soviet Armenia.
disCREPanCiEs aRising ouT of ThE Russian-gERman ConsuLaR ConvEnTion of 1958
Adjustment (Anpassung / Angleichung) is an institute of Private International Law which means non-application or modified application of substantive rules of applicable law. The method is mostly used in German scholarly writing and court practice. The need for adjustment is usually generated either by a lack of rules 'Normenmangel' or by an abundance of norms (Normenhäufung). It occurs if the conflict of law rules refer to the applicability of substantive law pertaining to two or even more legal orders which, when applied together, produce a result which is either contradictory or which is unintended by any of the applicable legal orders. The need for adjustment is deemed to be justified by the doctrine for grounds, such as the requirement for unity of legal order, the requirement for elimination of normative contradictions which are sometimes logically untenable, etc. The modern approach to the need for adjustment is depicted as accidental discrimination which contradicts the principle of equality before the law. By relying on provisions contained in the Russian-German Consular Convention of 1958, the author demonstrates that any method of adjustment violates the right to a fair trial and vested rights as well.