Thursday, August 28, 2014

The 73rd Anniversary of the Deportation of the Volga Germans

It has been 73 years since the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz 21-160 ordering the deportation of the Volga Germans. This decree put an official stamp of approval on the decision by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Council of Peoples's Commissars (SNK) to deport all of the ethnic Germans from the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast. The earliest evidence for the origins of this initial decree is a letter dated 25 August 1941 from Beria to the Central Committee of the CPSU referring to a draft of the decree issued by the CPSU and SNK on 26 August 1941. The sudden decision to deport them thus took the Volga Germans by surprise. Despite the claims by the Soviet government that the Volga Germans were harboring "tens of thousands of diversionists and spies", the NKVD had only managed to find two spies among the entire population in the months between the Nazi invasion of the USSR and 10 August 1941. Ukaz 21-160 was published in both German and Russian on 30 August 1941. The deportation of the Volga Germans and the subsequent liquidation of the Volga German ASSR on 7 September 1941 clearly violated the 1936 USSR, 1937 RSFSR, and of course the 1937 Volga German ASSR constitutions. The actual deportation of the Volga Germans took place between 3 September 1941 and 20 September 1941 and was extremely brutal. It was followed up by the subsequent deportation of ethnic German communities throughout western regions of the USSR to Kazakhstan and Siberia. The 28th of August is observed throughout the world by people of Russian German heritage as the day to commemorate the deportations and later repressions inflicted upon them by the Stalin regime during World War II.

5 comments:

Nah Esu said...

What happened in the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast region after the Volga Germans were removed in 1941?

J. Otto Pohl said...

The Soviet government eliminated the Volga German ASSR and divided up its cantons between the Saratov and Stalingrad oblasts. Go to the link below for more.

http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2013/09/7-september-1941.html

Nah Esu said...

...how was the area repopulated. Would the people living there now likely be same people or descendants of the people who moved in after the Germans were removed? From the satellite images I see a village still where my grandfather came to the USA from in 1907.

J. Otto Pohl said...

They settled mostly Russians and some Ukrainians evacuated from further west in the region. Most of the people living there now are Russians. I am not sure how many are descendants of those that came in the early 1940s and how many are from families that arrived in the Volga later.

kassandra said...

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/08/window-on-eurasia-after-crimea-russian.html

From Paul Goble's blog.