From the 1930s till the 1950s Krasnoyarsk territory became a region of mass exile of removed kulaks (rich farmers) and various ethnic groups. The majority of special resettlers was made up by so-called “punished peoples”. Just as much as in other Siberian regions, the natural make-up of the people deported there was not homogenous . there were Poles, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Germans, Kalmucks, Greeks, etc. According to the Archives of the Krasnoyarsk regional State Administration of internal Affairs there were 170.000 resettlers under the surveillance of special commandants in 1951. The biggest special contingent was made up by Germans there were more than 60.000 of them in the region.
The German ethnical group had always differed from others by its impresing adaptability. In the course of many decades they had gathered much experience with regard to their adaptability to surroundings, where they had to get along with people of different nationalities. The Germans became participants of several huge migration processes going on in the country: the colonization of the 18th century, large-scale resettlements during the time of Stolypin’s agrarian land reform, deportations during the first years of World War I, compulsory collectivization and dekulakization in the 1930s.
Diligence, discipline and a sense of responsibility were the impressing distinctive marks of the German resettlers in their new social and cultural milieu. These attributes helped them to overcome climatic and economic difficulties.1 They cultivated relations within their ethnic group – a fact which allowed the Germans to stand up against uncustomary influeneces from their new social surroundings.2
The deportations of the 1940s particularly differed from previous migrations for they assumed alarming proportions and were carried out on a compulsory basis. Apart from the considerations of the “state security” organs, the Soviet power aimed at a forcible resettlement to use people for the economic exploitation of the eastern regions of the country. Under these conditions the capability to adapt themselves once again became an immediate problem for the historically experienced Germans – another great challenge. The physical and cultural preservation of their ethnos depended on their adaptability.
The process of settling into their new, entirely strange surroundings was a very bitter and painful one. The well-known sanctions of the second deportation to the fishing districts, the mobilization of the contingent capable of work (both men and women) into the labour army, the lack of familiar living conditions in the new places of residence, the performance of tasks they were not at all qualified for, unsatisfactpory attention and respect from the part of the authorities – all this retarded the process of familiarization. For the Germans this process was to be a long haul – it continued till the late 1940s.
As persons directly concerned with the deportations recall, some kind of a psychologic adaptation to the new living conditions took place during the first two years. This very first period was the hardest for the resettlers from the physical and moral point of view.
The continent was a great support for the head of the kolkhoz farm, for the combine drivers, mechanisators and tractorists who had just arrived from the ASSR of the Volga-Germans were now replacing the local men, who had been sent to the front. Thus, in some kolkhoz farms of Bolshemurtynsk District, the Germans were representing up to 50% of the available manpower in the autumn of 1941.3 In various reports kept with the district committees they were mentioned as reliable workers.4 According to their own opinion, diligence and discipline once again helped the resettlers to survive.
A hard lot fell upon thos Germans, who, in accordance with the decree of the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevists) “About the development of the fishing industry along Siberian rivers and in the Far East” had been sent to these regions. In 1943 and 1943 fishery kolkhozes were organized in the northern districts of the region from among the special resettlers. Their excellent experience and know-how permitted the Germans to get responsible jobs within the administration of the newly founded collectives. According to datails provided by the Turukhansk Fishery Association, 23 Germans were members of the kolkhoz management in 1944, 29 were working for auditing commissions. Germans had taken the chair in ten of the these newly organized collectives.5
The authorities were not at all in a hurry to acknowledge the brilliant achievements of the resettlers. Only in the postwar period, production workers belonging to the special contingent appeared among the number of shock workers, the so-called “record setters” or “Stakhanovites”. The enormous labour productivity of the German special resettlers is mentioned, for instance, in a report made by the Taymyrsk Fishery Kolkhoz on the year 1945, in which they, in fact, made up 90% of the best fishermen by fulfilling the planned quota by 160-230%. In 1949 the Krasnoyarsk brick works No. 1 acknowledged 13 Germans shock workers, who had given an exemplar of self-sacrifying efforts. 7 Some special resettlers were awarded medals for having done “Heroic Labour during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”. 8 We would like to note that the acknowledgment of such facts was no large-scale phenomenon. It often happened that the regional executive committee would delete special resettlers from the lists of honour, just because they were of German nationality. In return, such an attitude evoked a justified disgust among the Germans.
The most ambitious and exating resettlers were those, who had received a higher education or were members of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevists). In the second half of the 1940s they started little by little to take more responsible positions in various organizations – no executive or managerial positions, but jobs like book-keepers, economists, statisticians, planners and schedulers, brigadiers or group leaders. In mainy districts of the region Germans were employed within the national education system, although they were reluctantly assigned pedagogic tasks, and if so, they were merely deployed for lack of local teaching staff. Principally, the adaptation of the communist resettlers did not differ from the situation of the crossbench contingent. Their partybooks were kept in safe custody and they were obliged to attend party meetings held in the new places of residence. The NKVD organs assessed the characters of the members of these small groups of resettlers ideologically firm and considered them fit for doing operative work.
The organizational aspects of labour and the good production results had an insignificant influence on the material situation of the special resettlers’ life, which was considerably complicated by the war, the deprivations of the postwar years and the big labour deficit.
The hard living conditions of the Germans only changed towards the late 1940s, when those men who had survived the labour army, returned home, for this implied an improvement of their possibilities to settle the narrow economic circumstances within the families. In particular, the Krasnoyarsk regional executive committee was forced to deal with an increased number of petitions on the part of German special resettlers in 1948, who claimed compensations for the property they had to leave behind at the moment of their deportation.
The regional authorities turned to the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR in order to have the mandatory 14.500 thousand rubles made available from th Soviet budget.9
The economic activities of the special resettlers gave reason to a new decree passed by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet on 26 November 1948 “About prosecution upon cases of escape from the places of obligatory permanent settlement”, to which the national contingent had been deported from their previous places of residence for eternal settling.10
In the course of time the special resettlers began to strive for professional education. In various personal files we find petitions addressed to the commandants of the settlements or districts, in which the resettlers ask to grant them the possibility to go to town, in order to attend training schools for an average specialized or even higher education.
The young generation of German resettlers (up to the age of 25) who was growing up under the stringent conditions and aggravating circumstances of their deportation, was considerably more susceptive to the influeneces of the new, entirely different national milieu. According to the 1959 population census, the younger age groups among the German polpulation were showing the most striking characteristics of linguistic assimilation – up to 40% acknowledged that Russian was their mother tongue.11
One of the indications of the resettlers’ adaptation to the new living conditions was an increasing birth-rate. The 1959 census explicitly showed a trebled birth-rate among the German families, which set in in 1949-1953, i.e. about 10 years after the deportation of their people to Siberia.12
Life within unfamiliar national surroundings only entailed insignificant changes with regard to the the cultural traditions of the Germans. Due to progressing adaptation new confessional connections were created - little communities consisting of 15-20 believers were founded in the settlements.13 They became the centres of preservation of religious culture and folkmusic. In the 1950s the Germans began to organize their own choirs and instrumental collectives.
One of the most important elements regarding the preservation of the national cultural milieu was the people’s mother tongue. 70% of the Germans were, in fact, considered Germans in the late 1950s, because German was their first language. 14 In this connection we think that E.R. Barbashina’s opinion is completely justified. He thinks that the process of an active assimilation became more intense yet, after the abolition of the special resettlement regime, when the Germans were refused the right to restore their autonomy.15
Thus, the process of adaptation, which was primarily geared to mere physical survival, got another significance in the late 1940s – the long-term adaptation to a different national milieu by preserving one’s own national characteristics. In our opinion, the adaptation of the German resettlers may only be regarded as an act from necessity – to somehow organize their everyday life, find a job and improve their material situation. It was in no case a replacement of their own cultural values.
By the time when the special resettlement regime was liquidated, many Germans had already very well settled in the region, had their own houses and supplied themselves from their own little vegetable gardens. Apart from this, their wish to one day receive the permission to go back to their home fields on the banks of the Volga remained a very important and even dominant aspect of their ethnic self-confidence.
Finally, we would like to mention that, under the conditions of their special resettlement, the German ethnic group had to undergo a very difficult process of adaptation. However, as we learn from the 1959 population census, they managed to preserve their ethnic characteristics even in exile. The restored image of the adaptation of the German resettlers in the region does not reflect all features of confessional and often rather individual appearances of the process described. All in all we may assume that the Germans reproduced their previous ethnic stereotype - even under the hard conditions caused by their deportation and the attendant, extraordinary circunstances.
1. P.P. Wibe. About the factors which determined the possibilities of
colonization of
the German settlers in Siberia (at the end of the 19th / at the beginning of the
20th
century) // The Russian Germans: Problems regarding history, language and
present situation. International scientific conference, Anapa, 20 – 25th
September
1995. Moscow, 1996, p. 238.
2. V.I. Brul. The Germans in West-Siberia. Topchikha, 1995, p. 18.
3. Krasnoyarsk regional Center of the Preservation and Study of documents of contemporary history, record group 869, unpublished inventory N°. 1, file N°. 19, Sheet N°. 5.
4. Ibidem, record group 26, unpublished inventory N°. 3, file N°. 107, Sheet N°. 153, 155.
5. Krasnoyarsk regional States Archives, record group (register) N°. – 1444, unpublished inventory N°. 1, file N°. 16, Sheet N°. 61.
6. Ibidem, File N°. 8, Sheet N°. 13.
7. Ibidem, record group (register) N°. – 2116, unpublished inventory N°. 1, file N°. 29, Sheet N°. 49.
8. Ibidem, record group (register) N°. – 1386, unpublished inventory N°. 1, file 3202, sheet 20-22.
9. Ibidem, record group (register) N°. – 1386, unpublished inventory N°. 4, file N°. 113, sheet 9-10.
10. The istory of the Russian Germans in documents (1763-1992). Moscow, 1993, p. 176.
11. L.N. Slavina. The Germans in Krasnoyarsk Territory (some results regarding the demographic and socio-cultural development under conditions of special resettlement) // The Germans of Russia in the USSR (1900-1941). Papers from the international scientific conference. Moscow, 2000, p. 515.
12. Ibidem, p. 506.
13. Krasnoyarsk regional States Archives, record group (register) N°. – 2384, unpublished inventory N°. 1, file N°. 105, sheet 2-3.
14. L.N. Slavina. Ukaz. soch. …, p. 514.
15. E.R. Barbashina. Problems of the assimilation of the Germans in Siberia (1941-1955) // The Germans of Russia in the USSR (1900-1941) …, p. 483-501.
Author – Yelena Leonidovna Zberovskaya, senior lecturer cahir of history of the Krasnoyarsk State University of Pedagogics. E-mail address: zberovskiy@mail.ru.
Published in: Anthology “Historic experience of economic and cultural
development in
West-Siberia: Papers from the 4th scientific series of lectures in remembrance
of A.P. Borodavkina. – Barnaul, 2003. – P. 332-336.