Forced migration, special settlements, and ethnic identities: Soviet Germans and Crimeans after World War II.

In Vynuzhdennaia migratsiia: sotsial'nye posledstviia mezhnatsional'nyh konfliktov, philosopher Valerii Lukov and sociologist Sadig Nagdaliev propose, analyze, and apply a theory of the social effects of forced migration on national minority groups. This social science theory offers explanations for short-, mid-, and long-term effects of forced migration on displaced peoples. Immediate or short term results and changes include the loss of family members and familiar surroundings; the destruction and often collapse of social status and everyday ways of life; loss of representatives of the native culture through death and separation; deformation and transformation of national spiritual and material values; destruction of social institutions like schools; the collapse of self-government or the elite power base; and finally the complete destruction of the rest of life. (1)

Among midterm effects the authors include the "brain drain" which comes about mostly because of the inability of intellectual elites to pass on their knowledge due to geographical distance and lack of educational institutions; changes in the structure of labor resources, or change in the professional qualifications of migrants as a means of survival; change, dislocation, or disappearance of political, economic, and cultural elites; demographic changes; and finally the inevitable adaptation to a new way of life. (2) Lukov and Nagdaliev argue that from a microsocial perspective, or from the perspective of forced migrants, all the immediate and mid-term hardships result in two long-term effects on the migrants and their mentality. First is a "transformation of mentality," or transformation of ethnic self-consciousness, and the second is the creation and preservation of an "image of the enemy" which had caused their travails. (3)

While this theory is most commonly used to study contemporary demographic and social changes, it can also be used effectively to analyze historic phenomena. Indeed, this theory facilitates the understanding of the experience and aftermath of the forced migration of many deported ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union in 1940s. This is illustrated by the experiences of "Soviet Germans" and peoples "from Crimea," or simply "Crimeans," in deportation and exile. Using Lukov's and Nagdaliev's theory as a framework and relying on extensive research in primary sources, this paper will demonstrate the ways in which the dramatic experience of forced displacement and special settlements altered the ethnic identity of these two groups, an alteration previously noted but still unexplained. (4)

The history of ethnicity and nationality in the Soviet history is a very complex one. Over a hundred different ethnic minorities have lived in the Soviet Union. (5) The ways in which they experienced Soviet national policies and practices often determined how the national self-identity of one or another minority group was altered or destroyed.

"Soviet Germans" and "Crimeans" were two of many ethnic groups whose national identities were transformed by forced deportation during World War II. Prior to their forced displacement, Germans residing in the USSR had never been a homogenous ethnic group. The Volga Region (the Volga River valley basin in southwestern Russia) hosted German nationals from over twenty-five different German provinces. The first German settlements in the region were established in the second half of the eighteenth century--long before the unification of Germany. Therefore, rather than regard themselves as "Germans," these twenty five groups identified themselves by the provinces from which their ancestors came. (6) At that time when Catherine II granted Germans religious freedom and the right of self-government, (7) the small German Volga settlements were clearly divided along the lines of their self-perceived ethnic identities as Schwaben, Thueringer, Hessen, etc. (8) Despite ethnic assertiveness and struggles for the preservation of segregated provincial identities, assimilation to a limited degree occurred over the decades and centuries that German settlements existed on the Volga. However, in the 1920s, German settlers in the Volga Region still saw themselves as at least four distinct peoples: as Germans from the Germany proper and Germans from Austria, Lotharingia, and Luxemburg. (9)

Outside of the Volga region, German ethnic groups were even more isolated. Germans who resided in the large Russian cities and the Baltic states prided themselves at being different from one another. Germans of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as the Eastland and Livland barons, denied any connections with the Volga Germans, even on the bases of ethnicity. There were also very distinct ethnic German communities in the Southern Russia and the Caucasus region, each with their own self-identity and ways of life. (10)

However, in 1941-1942, the entire German population of the Soviet Union, numbering over 1.4 million people, was resettled to the east, predominantly in Siberia and Kazakhstan. (11) Even though the first deportation of German families to Siberia took place as early as 1935, (12) the first mass transfer of Germans began with the resettlement of Germans from Crimea in the summer of 1941 in the immediate wake of the German invasion of the USSR. (13) But the orders for the largest dislocation of Soviet Germans were issued on August 26, 1941, when the Soviet government decided "to resettle 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." (14)

The Volga, Saratov, and Stalingrad Germans were deported for reasons other than why the Soviet government exiled the Crimean population. As most lived deep in the interior of the nation, far from the front lines, these Germans had not collaborated with the Nazi invaders. Some even joined the Red Army in a wave of Soviet patriotism as volunteers immediately after the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Hence the decree to resettle the Volga Germans, issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, stated that the exile of Germans was a preventative rather than punitive measure. The Supreme Soviet exiled the German population to prevent them from potentially collaborating with the Nazis. (15)

At the end of the war, repatriated and demobilized Germans enlarged the ranks of the special settlers. Some, like the Germans living in the Ukraine and the Baltic States, had been deported to Germany by the Nazis as forced laborers during the war. Others, who might have been actual collaborators, fled with the German occupiers to the Third Reich after the Nazi invasion and received German citizenship there. Still others, German political refugees from Hitler in the Soviet Union and largely fervent Communists, were transferred to Germany before the World War II under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. (16) Once the Third Reich had fallen and the Red Army entered Central Europe, many of these former Soviet Germans were repatriated, only to become special settlers. The majority of these Germans were tricked into going back to the Soviet Union. Instead of the reunion with their families that they were promised, they were sent to labor camps or special settlements for the next twenty to twenty-five years. (17) There were also repatriated Soviet prisoners of war and demobilized Red Army soldiers of Soviet German origins among the new deportees.

Once these different groups of Germans with very different ethnic self-identities, very distinctive cultural traditions and dialects and very different experiences and even attitudes towards Germany, were forced into the GULAG and especially into the special settlements, they reemerged twenty years later as a unified and homogeneous ethnic group, that identified itself as "Soviet Germans" and later "Russian Germans." (18) Their life experiences in the 1940s and 1950s altered their self-perception of their ethnic identity.

Many ethnic groups from Crimea underwent a similar transformation. The Crimea, an outpost of Russia on the Black Sea was often a center of heated attention. Of great strategic importance for Russia and later the Soviet Union, Crimea nevertheless housed as many ethnic minorities as native Russians and sometimes even more. (19) This diverse Crimean population that consisted of twenty-two ethnic groups (20) provoked Stalin's suspicions, which intensified during World War II when the Soviet leader came to regard many ethnic minorities as potential collaborators. As a result, in 1944, "by the special decision of the [Soviet] Government, Greeks, Tartars, Bulgarians, Armenians and other [minorities] were deported from Crimea" (21) charged with collaborating with the Nazi occupiers.

Most of the groups deported from the Crimea possessed very distinct cultures and strong ethnic communities. (22) For example, Armenians from the Crimea, who proudly traced their roots back to Armenian settlers in the Crimea of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, never assimilated into the Crimean Tartar or Russian population. (23) Until 1917, Armenians in Crimea possessed national Schools (24) and published their own newspapers in their native tongue. (25) Despite many years spent in "foreign" Crimea, ethnic Armenian culture and identity "managed to pass through centuries and still retain its national attributes." (26)

However, once these various ethnic groups from Crimea reached the labor camps and special settlements, they were forced to adopt a new, artificially created national/ethnic entity, "Crimeans." (27) Even the best and most recent studies of forced migrations in the USSR overlook the ethnic diversity of peoples deported from Crimea and identify them as a homogeneous group of "Crimeans." (28) This omission is partially explained by the fact that the ethnic minorities from Crimea (other than Crimean Tatars) eventually assimilated with the Russian and Tatar populations in the Soviet Union. This assimilation was a direct result of official policies and experiences they encountered in the special settlements. As with the Soviet Germans, destruction or reconstruction of the ethnic identity of the "Crimeans" occurred during the 1940s and 1950s. Distinct groups of Greek, Bulgarian, Armenian, and other Crimeans disappeared as all these peoples came to regard themselves and be regarded by others as simply "Crimeans."

An analysis of the history of the Kostroma Special Settlement in 1946-48, which included numerous "Soviet Germans" and "Crimeans," will reveal the factors that influenced these people to alter their national identity. Only after the adoption of Lukov's and Nagdaliev's theory of social implications of forced migration it became possible to use these various factors to explain the change of identity.

The pathway to special settlements was not an easy one. At least ten percent of the deported ethnic German population died during the deportation and in the course of the first few years in the special settlements. (29) As many as twenty percent of the special settlers from Crimea died in the same period of time. (30) While the bulk of those from Crimea went to Uzbekistan and a bulk of Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan, some of them ended up in less traditional locations. One of these was a special settlement in the Kostroma region, an unusual locale for punitive settlements because of its location in central Russia, the "Heartland of Historic Russia."

Nevertheless, in the second half of 1945 shortly after WWII ended, the Kostroma Special Settlement already possessed 14,868 inhabitants or 3,807 families. One of the first postwar reports presented detailed information about the residents of the settlement. Of the entire population, 3,015 were men, 5,241 were women and 6,612 were children. Germans made up the majority of the group--2,471 families or 8,785 individuals. Next came the settlers "from Crimea", with 1,336 families or 5,636 people. The settlement also included 301 Chechens and Ingushs (the two ethnic groups were then often listed together) and 146 Karachi nationals. The latter groups had no registered family units. (31) While the Karachi and Chechen peoples constituted 6.5 percent of the Kostroma Special Settlement in the second half of 1945, later reports failed to acknowledge their presence. Since no orders to relocate these two groups from Kostroma were found, it is likely that they were not considered numerous enough to merit a separate report. Or they could have been executed.

The numbers of settlers did not change significantly in the next three years. The exact numbers are difficult to come by since numbers in different reports often contradict each other. In a report on the general distribution of special settlers in the Soviet Union in December 1947, the Kostroma region was said to possess 12,966 settlers. (32) But a report written the same year by local Kostroma officials listed 2,034 families or 6,017 individuals from Crimea (33) and 2,108 families or 7,918 persons of German origins, (34) a total of 13,935 persons, 933 less than in late 1945 but 969 more than the figure found in the other report. While the decrease in settlement population is evident, these figures suggest that there was no significant influx of new settlers in the first two years after the war.

For the special settlers of the Kostroma region, as well as other regions, the end of World War II did not bring much needed and anticipated relief. The 1946 harvest was exceptionally meager. A severe drought and a much reduced rural labor force resulted in a decline of grain production. Grain deliveries to the government in 1946 amounted to only 17.5 million tons, compared to 20 million tons in 1945. Indeed, the 1946 harvest nationwide was the lowest in a century. Even the harvests of earlier famine years, like 1890-1891, 1921 and 1932-33, exceeded the 1946 harvest. (35) Despite the bad harvest, state procurements quotas still ran exceedingly high, leaving almost nothing for the rural population to survive on. As a result, food shortages "reduced much of the rural population to a desperate condition" and "the total number of very old and very young persons in the [collective farm] population fell, suggesting increased mortality associated with famine." (36)

Famine it was. Dramatically, Stalin for a long time did not want to acknowledge the reality of this famine. As a result, "there was hardly any mention of it in the Soviet Union." (37) However, Nikita Khrushchev, then the Party Secretary of Ukraine SSR, later maintained in his Memoirs that he was overwhelmed with "letters and official reports about deaths from starvation. Then cannibalism started. [He] received a report that a human head and the soles of feet had been found under a little bridge near Vasilkov, a town outside Kiev. Apparently the corpse had been eaten." (38)

The special settlements in Kostroma and elsewhere did not escape the hardships of the famine of 1946. The official reports on conditions in the special settlements noted that "all employed special settlers ... received [food] supplies equal to other employees." (39) Considering the overall situation in the Soviet Union of 1946, this statement might not be outright fraudulent. However, the same report presents some disturbing statistics. In many instances, workers in the special settlement could not purchase certain basic kinds of food with their ration cards because such food was not available. Beginning in late 1946, the settlers for months could not "cash in" their ration cards for fats, grains, and often even bread.40 Furthermore, as many as ten percent of those considered to be able to work were too weak to be employed because of starvation and dystrophy. (41)

Another report confirmed that this information was true only of the working, predominantly male members of the settlement. Their dependants or family members did not receive ration cards and experienced severe starvation. For example, 6,416 family members of the male settlers working for the Cellulose and Paper Industry did not have ration cards and did not receive bread or other products. As a result, many of them suffered dystrophy. Yet dependants "severely impaired" by dystrophy were not admitted to hospitals because they lacked ration cards. (42) A similar situation existed among the families of men working for other industries. The men of the Kostroma Special Settlement who worked for the Forest Industry possessed 468 dependents without ration cards. (43) This was also true of four dependants of settlers who worked for the Ministry of Defense. (44)

The problem of ration cards for dependants was never resolved because neither the industries nor settlement authorities possessed resources to provide for those without jobs. (45) The situation appears even more grim if one considers that the meager supplies of food that reached the Kostroma region settlements often did not reach the special settlers. On numerous occasions, desperate local officials and storehouse security guards stole food that was supposed to go to the settlers, consumed it, or sold it for extra cash. (46)

The desperate search for food took some special settlers a long way. A number of "common" tactics were applied to obtain food. Some families ate sprouted potatoes set aside for the next planting season. (47) By surviving the immediate famine (and it is questionable for how long), such families were doomed to starvation the following year as they had no seed potatoes to plant on their small garden plots. These plots, which failed to provide much help to the settlers in 1946 because of their small number and size, proved much more useful in 1947 and 1948, when the famine abated and harvests rose. (48) During the famine, however, some settlers resorted to selling their clothes or exchanging clothes for food. As a result of such trade-offs and exchanges, only half the working population and thirty-five percent of the children in the settlement possessed winter clothing by the famine's end. Many lacked winter boots, trousers, and coats. The rest of the settlers exchanged newer items for older clothes that were in exceptionally shabby (vetkhii) condition to buy food with the profits of such exchanges. (49) Finally, when all resources were exhausted, the only option left (if cannibalism is not an option) was to eat frozen roots and tree bark, or, if the family was farsighted, some previously gathered dried mushrooms and grasses. (50)

Those settlers who brought some money with them from their former places of residence were somewhat better off. While it seems surprising that some settlers managed to preserve money in the unstable post-war economy and during deportation, they were able to put their money to good use by purchasing livestock and/or seeds for planting. During late 1946 and the first four months of 1947, settlers "from Crimea" purchased with "personal resources" five cows, two sheep and 144 goats. (51) The Germans purchased no livestock in the same period, but a subsequent report for the second half of 1947 indicated that by then Germans owned as many as forty-two cows, seventeen sheep, and 609 goats. (52) The settlers who possessed livestock were able to live off its products and seemed very privileged in comparison to other settlers who did not possess goats and cattle. Nevertheless, there was never enough food in the settlement to provide anything but mere survival.

The sufferings of starvation were further "enhanced" by miserable housing conditions. Even though 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 Siberia," (53) the housing available for forced migrants was dreadful. As often the case with official Soviet reports, there was a great discrepancy between the generalizations and conclusions of these reports and the description of actual conditions contained in the same documents. It was often reported that the settlers were well-housed and "live[d] in houses that neither require[d] replacement nor major repairs." (54) However, in these "satisfactory" houses, "all premises [were] in 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, "walls and ceiling 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, fifty 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." (55) But even such meager housing was not always available. Many settlers were forced to dig their own dugouts, and many spent winters in these pseudo-houses, really nothing more than holes in the ground. (56) In addition to poor quality of housing, many people had to share rooms in numbers that far outstripped the room's capacity to house them. "As a result of such accommodations, the special settlers are heavily overcrowded; every person has 1.3 to 2 square meters [13 to 20 square feet] of the living space." (57)

While housing in the settlement was very miserable or nonexistent, housing provided by various Soviet industries that employed special settlers was even more deficient. A separate report on the living conditions of special settlers who worked for the Timber Industry, stated that special settlers lived in dugouts, in which "dirt [was] falling off the walls and ceilings. The dugouts [were] located in swamps and thus there [was] fear of flooding." (58) Only two months later, in April 1947, Riasnov, the Vice-Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, wrote that "the dugouts, in which the contingent resided, were unsuitable for living" and the settlers had to be evacuated from these premises. (59) Right after the evacuation, the fears of the settlers and the authorities materialized--the dug-outs were flooded with water.

In the second half of 1947, it was reported that "living conditions improved" among the settlers. (60) However, the same document shows little if any improvement in housing conditions. By now, after a few years in the settlement, "many settlers sought permission to build their own houses" and had the manpower to do so. They were, after all, slowly but surely adapting to their new life conditions. But Moscow and local officials never gave settlers permission to build their own houses. (61) While such construction would have improved the general housing situation, bureaucratic procedures and perverted Moscow logic blocked such development.

Again, as with food purchases, those who could afford to purchase houses were somewhat better off. Already by April 1947, seventeen German families (a total of 76 individuals) had purchased their own houses, (62) and twenty more German families (78 individuals) had purchased houses six months later. (63) This, however, was seen as a "bad" sign by higher authorities, who explicitly stated this on the margins of the report. While settlers from Crimea did not own any property at the onset of 1947, three families (15 individuals) acquired their own houses in the following six months. (64) This, of course, was a sign of progress, yet improvements came very slowly.

Besides material hardships, settlers often experienced separation from their families as a part of relocation. While the numbers of female settlers were always considerably higher than male settlers, this factor might only reflect the overall tragic demographic disproportion of females to males in the Soviet Union after the war. In the country in general, as of January 1945, only 4.4 million able-bodied men worked on collective farms as compared to 17.5 million able-bodied women and 6.4 million youth. (65) Hence the nationwide male-female ratio cannot be used to determine how many settler families were separated. However, the reports did offer some statistics on separated families that showed how many men, women, and children were left alone after deportation without other family members. While the overall number of separated families was never reported, it must have been high if one judges by the number of people who were allowed to reunite with their families. In 1947 alone, 807 people left the Kostroma Special Settlement to reunite with their families in other settlements. The majority of those leaving were women and children. (66)

While hundreds of settlers were reunited with their families, many more were left to wait their turn. The major problem with reuniting families was that the majority of separated families were never considered as such. Families with male members working for different industries in other parts of Kostroma 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 supply in the settlement stated that 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. (67) As late as August 1947, the first official resolution was issued allowing working men to take their families to their places of employment. While this resolution was important because it acknowledged the existence of these separated families, it proved almost worthless to the settlers. It allowed the unification of families working in certain industries only. It also required employers to give their consent and offer housing to family members. These two conditions proved almost unattainable. (68)

As a result, many settlers with family members elsewhere, found an immediate solution to their separation problem in running away from the settlement to join their loved ones. There were many escapes from the settlements, and the officials were well aware of the reasons. Reports often stated that "the separation of family members among special settlers encourages runaways." (69)

The actual numbers of those who escaped from Kostroma Settlement were a little higher than the overall average escape rate for all settlements in the USSR. Thus, in 1946, 137 settlers "from Crimea" escaped from the Kostroma Settlement, or 2.9 percent of the settlement's 4,656 "Crimeans." Of these Crimean escapees in 1946, forty-five were men, sixty were women, and thirty-two were children of both sexes under the age of sixteen. (70) This percentage (2.9 percent) was twice as high as runaways from other settlements but is still compatible with the overall statistics. Nationwide, as many as 2,703 "Crimean" settlers were reported missing, out of a population of almost 193,000. Of these escapees, 1,789 were men, 674, women, and 240, children. Thus 1.4 percent of the total number of settlers from Crimea escaped nationwide, less than half the rate of Kostroma "Crimean" runaways. (71) A similar situation existed among the Germans. In the Kostroma region, ninety-one Germans escaped from the settlement in 1946 (thirty-nine men, thirty women, and twenty-two children). This amounted to one percent of the 8,603 Germans in the Kostroma Special Settlement. (72) Nationally, however, only 0.4 percent Germans ran away (3,114 Germans out of almost 785,000). (73) Such tendencies existed throughout the 1940s. (74) An average of 3 percent of the inhabitants of special settlements ran away and were not apprehended by the authorities. (75)

However, escape statistics can tell only a small portion of the story of self-liberation by running away. For a number of years after the war, efforts to hunt down runaways were very lax. Only in 1948, when the question of escapes had attracted considerable attention, it became known 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 arrived to their new settlements. Once this information was requested, it became instantly clear that by using this method, in 1945-1948 as many as 952 people ran away from the Kostroma Special Settlement and now could not be apprehended. (76)

The dynamics of escapes from special settlements reveal a wide range of the social and demographical problems that plagued the settlers. The breakup of families compounded the loss of familiar ethnic, social and cultural surroundings, with all the affects such losses have on one's self-identity and one's perception of life. Moreover, family separation affected the demographic patterns in the settlements, leaving many women de facto single. The breakup of families and the inevitable demographic consequences prompted a redefinition of women's roles and gender relations in general. Since many men lived apart some distance away, women learned to rely on themselves for everyday needs. They no longer had the "luxury" of being just daughters, wives, and mothers; now they often had to be breadwinners and fight for their own and their children's survival. Some were forced to resort to extreme measures like escaping, an enterprise not only risky if one was caught and punished, but also dangerous given post-war poverty and the widespread 1946-47 Famine. While not escaping the stereotypical responsibilities of their gender, women also had to assume responsibilities traditionally attributed to men.

It is also likely that as elsewhere in the country, post-war gender imbalances affected the expectations of women of younger generation. Marriage became a welcome but not immediately expected feature of women's life. Considering the organization of the special settlements and the separation of families, marriage into the same ethnic and linguistic group must have been very hard to achieve. Changes in gender relations and gender construction are not surprising even from a theoretical point of view. Joan Wallach Scott argues that when social relations and the relations of power change, they inevitable bring about a change in the gender relations. (77) Most definitely, relocation to special settlements was a change in social and power relations, and hence a change in gender relations was to be expected, even in the absence of the acutely skewered postwar Soviet gender imbalances.

Reunification of families and normalization of gender imbalances were ever more difficult to achieve because settlers were bound to their places of employment, which issued ration cards. Employment in general was a very important factor in settlers' lives. Immediately upon relocation, many settlers experienced forced occupational changes. A typical report on the Kostroma Special Settlement noted that the settlements possessed "specialists (professionals with secondary and post-secondary education) forty-eight people, of which only fourteen [were] employed according to their educational qualifications. [There were also] 131 skilled workers (tractor drivers, combiners, carpenters, etc.), of which only sixty-nine were employed according to their qualifications." (78) All these professionally and vocationally trained individuals had received their training before deportation.

Many years later, ethnic Germans who survived resettlement, remembered that a vast majority of Germans in the Soviet Union before the World War II were urban and well educated. (79) However, in the special settlements, they were employed mainly in nonprofessional and increasingly rural occupations. In 1946, the majority of Germans, or 2,990 of the able-bodied employed settlers, worked for the Cellulose and Paper Industry, where they were involved in manual labor like timber falling to provide for raw materials for the industry. Their education and skills went unused and were increasingly forgotten. A smaller number of settlers (221) worked in the Forest Industry, where they were involved in similar types of labor. Surprisingly, 142 Germans were employed in the Armament Ministry and fifty-two, in the Oil Industry, although the exact nature of their work remains obscure. (80) Similarly, settlers from Crimea worked mainly in the Cellulose and Paper Industry, which employed 1,061 of their able-bodied members, while 152 "Crimeans" worked in the Forest Industry. (81) By the end of 1947, however, documents show that the settlers' employment shifted exclusively to the Forest Industry. (82) It is not clear whether settlers worked on the local collective farm, although this is very likely. But it is clear that by late 1940s they ceased to work for other industries and ministries.

The settlers' employment patterns changed significantly in 1948 due to an official shift in Kremlin policies. In 1948, a year after the famine, Stalin sought quick solutions to the poor 1946-47 harvest and the resulting famine. He decided that the afforestation of the steppes could shelter Soviet agriculture from drought. The new policy was presented in 1948 as "Stalin's Great Program for the Transformation of Nature." Stronger emphasis was placed on agricultural production than earlier. The urban population of the country was rapidly rising and the rural populace was declining. Yet the latter with ever scarcer labor resources had to provide food for the rapidly growing cities. Even thought farmers learned after the Famine of 1946 to rely for their survival on harvests of potatoes from their own private plots rather than collectively cultivated grain, this shift of effort failed to provide sufficient grain for the city, and agricultural production remained very low even after the Famine. (83)

The emphasis on agriculture from 1948 on was especially evident in the special settlements. Many of the settlers, previously employed elsewhere, were now forced into collective farms. The settlers understood this sudden change in the terms available to them. They argued that the "Soviet government was expecting another war, and hence it wanted to put all peasants into collective farms." (84) But many of these people had already worked in other capacities than agriculture and they did not want to work on collective farms, where wages were almost nonexistent in post-war years and were paid "in kind" rather than cash. One settler, Nikolai Bausov, stated flatly that "whatever you [officials] do, I will not go into the collective farm." (85) For some, refusal to work on the collective farm was an act of desperation, since they needed to feed their families. Sergei Staroverov joined the collective farm when he was ordered to in 1947, but after months of starvation he left it (without permission or leave of absence) and started working at the local power plant. (86)

People who refused to work on collective farms or were not productive in their work were prosecuted with increased rigor after Moscow issued orders for increased supervision of collective farm work. These orders were issued on June 2, 1948, and stipulated that "people who refuse[d] to work for kolkhoz [were] to be relocated to distant regions of country." (87) Too eager to fulfill this order, local officials selected many invalids, disabled settlers, and single mothers as "loafers" (lentiai) destined for deportation. The range of ailments of those selected to be exiled to Siberia included arterial sclerosis, chronic bronchitis, spinal cord distortions and injuries, womb prolapsus, and others. (88) Overall, this order resulted in the deportation of twenty-nine men, twenty-four women, and fourteen children under the age of sixteen from the Kostroma Special Settlement. (89)

The year 1948 brought other changes into the lives of the special settlers in Kostroma who had just begun to adjust to their new habitat. In the first few months of the year, the settlers were shocked to learn of the decree of 21 February 1948, issued by the USSR Council of Ministries, which stipulated that all special settlers in the Kostroma province (as well as Ivanovo, Gorkii, and Vologda provinces) were to be sent to Siberia for permanent resettlement. (90) This order to relocate the settlers came, most likely, as a part of the "Stalin's Great Program" for restructuring and improving Soviet agricultural production. While the implementation of this order was first postponed and then nullified, (91) it inevitably caused much psychological anxiety to the settlers who still remembered vividly horrors of their initial deportation.

Psychology, however, was not something that troubled Soviet officials. They were more concerned, for example, with the political education of the settlers. On numerous occasions, there were calls to promote political education among the settlers, and at times the settlers were even herded into propaganda classes. Officials, however, reported that the political work carried out in the settlements was insufficient to enforce any politically-appropriate agenda. The main difficulty of conducting political work among special settlers was the complete isolation of the settlements from the outside world. It was often mentioned that the settlers had no access to sources of information like books, newspapers, and magazines, and even movies were not shown in the settlements. (92)

While political work in the settlements benefited from some official attention, documents from the Kostroma Special Settlement contain no data on educational institutions and social services like day care. Subsequent scholarly works, official reports, and memoirs, however, reveal that as a result of the forced migration and the life in special settlements, the majority of young ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union in the 1960s were illiterate, (93) and only 43 percent of them knew any spoken German. (94) This is surprising since literacy level of the Soviet population of the 1960s approached 100 percent, and this information suggests that education was largely unavailable to the ethnic minorities in the postwar special settlements. Many settlers were also reluctant to teach their children speak German for fear of being labeled and unofficially persecuted as "damned fascists." (95) Overall, this high level of illiteracy of settler youth is very tragic when we consider that at the time of relocation Germans and "Crimeans" were the two best-educated minorities of the wartime deportees. (96)

Using Lukov's and Nagdaliev's theory of the social effects of forced migration as a framework, we can now draw conclusions and explain why the shift in ethnic identities among the different minority groups occurred. This shift was a direct result of the deportation. Immediately during and after relocation, many "representatives of the native ethos" died due to malnutrition and related diseases. This in itself caused a significant demographic shift, which was further reinforced by the separation of families, the relocation of ethnically coherent groups to distant locations, and numerous escapes. The settlers who "made it", or who managed to survive though the crucial times of relocation and the first few months in their new homes, had to endure the complete destruction of their material and often spiritual life. The 1946 Famine is an example of its own. The miserable living conditions and constant food shortages, which persisted throughout the postwar period, are important as well. Obviously, under such harsh conditions deportee elites could not retain their status, and the complete official control of life allowed for no self-governing.

As for the midterm effects, the "brain drain" had a key impact on German and "Crimean" ethnic identity. The destruction of ethnic educational institutions and the loss to death of many intellectuals resulted in the loss of the invaluable hereditary knowledge and the sense of small, separate ethnic groups unrelated to one another. It was difficult to preserve the cultural traditions of Eastland barons, Thueringen ancestors, or Crimean Armenians if the majority of the youth did not speak the language of their ancestors and were outright illiterate. Even intellectuals who survived deportation had no institutional support to pass on their knowledge to the younger generation. Moreover, intellectuals who were previously perceived as elites in their small home communities were now forced to adopt different occupations in the harsh conditions of the special settlements. In fact, occupational change affected most settlers who ended up abandoning their former professions and occupations to survive as unskilled collective farmers. "Soviet Germans" and "Crimeans" inevitably adapted to their new ways of life, often at the cost of abandoning their former culture, identity and entire mentality.

In a long run, however, the cost of all these changes was by far more dear than could have been predicted. A shift of ethnic identity occurred among these minority groups, just as Lukov and Nagdaliev predicted in their theory of the social implications of forced migration. Diverse ethnic minorities merged into two groups: "Crimeans" and "Soviet Germans," inevitably losing their former, more complex and narrowly defined ethnic identities. The preservation of localized identities proved impossible under the harsh reality of special settlements. It must be noted that a shared strategy of survival and the development of a refugee mentality also promoted unification into larger groups in the name of survival under inhumane conditions, which fostered the creation of the alternative broader identities of "Crimeans" and "Soviet Germans."

The second major effect of the deportations was the creation and long-term preservation of the image of the enemy, meaning, of course, the Soviet government that had destroyed the settlers' previous lives. The fact that these "Crimeans" and "Soviet Germans" never forgot who their enemy was became evident after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The "Crimeans," who had returned to their homeland under Khrushchev, broke away from Russia, while the majority of ethnic Germans in Russia and the former USSR immigrated to their historic motherland, Germany, abandoned centuries earlier. This immigration was not merely immigration for economic reasons, as often implied. The experience of the special settlements left its mark on the mentality of these and other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union.

Historian Nikolai Bougai concluded that "the living conditions in [special settlements] were so harsh that even the organized and punctual German nation could not withstand the dominating regime of their new place of residence. As a result, many of them "broke down," unable to pass the test of hunger." These people abandoned earlier ethnic identities they might have had and assimilated into the surrounding society for the sake of survival. (97) This statement can be applied equally to the ethnic minorities deported from the Crimea in 1944.

An analysis of ethnic identity uncovers new perspectives on the deportation of the peoples in the postwar Soviet Union. Changes of identity are often overshadowed by the statistical and day-to-day accounts of the immense tragedy of the forced migration. This analysis also shows that social science theories can be very useful to historians and that in this particular case, the theory of the social implications of the forced migration provides a useful framework for analysis and facilitates and confirms the process of tracing such an allusive historical change as a change of individual and group identities.

(1.) V.A. Lukov and S. S. Nagdaliev, Vynuzhdennaia migratsiia: sotsial'nye posledstviia mezhnatsional'nyh konfliktov (Moskva: Sotsium, 2000), 38-43.

(2.) Ibid., 43-47.

(3.) Ibid., 49.

(4.) R. Pleve, "K voprosu o klassifikatsii grupp nemetskogo naseleniia Rossii (istoricheskii aspect)," in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional'nye osobennosti (Moskva: "Gotika", 1999), 204.

(5.) John A. Armstrong, "The Ethnic Scene in the Soviet Union: The View of the Dictatorship," in Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union, ed. Erich Goldhagen (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 3.

(6.) S. V. Smirnitskaia, "Issledovania nemetskih dialektov povolzhia," in Nemtsy v Rossii: Lyudi i sud'by (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia Akademia Nauk, 1998), 37.

(7.) John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 81, 329.

(8.) Vadimir Bauer and Tatiana Ilarionova, Rossiiskie Nemtsy--pravo na nadejdu (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo "Respublika," 1995), 6.

(9.) Smirnitskaia, 36-37.

(10.) Bauer, 6.

(11.) J. Otto Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror, 1930-1953 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), 73.

(12.) V. Brul', "Sravnitel'nyi analiz prichin i posledstvii deportatsii rossiiskih nemtsev, poliakov, kalmykov, litovtsev, estontsev, latyshei v Sibir' (1935-1965)," in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional'nye osobennosti (Moskva: "Gotika", 1999), 324.

(13.) Ibid., 74.

(14.) TsSKhD, fond 3, op. 58, del. 178, 1-5, as published in N.F. Bugai, ed., "Mobilizovat' nemtsev v rabochii kolonny ... I. Stalin": Sbornik dokumentov, 1940.e gody (Moskva: "Gotika", 1998), 19-22.

(15.) Pohl, 74-75.

(16.) 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 Publishers, 1985), 132.

(17.) Bauer, 20.

(18.) Ibid., 201-40, 280-333.

(19.) Hakan Kirimli, National Movements and National Identity Among the Crimean Tatars (1905-1916) (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), 12.

(20.) Ibid, 6.

(21.) "Memorandum to All Chiefs of the Town and Region UMVD of Crimea," 23 February 1948, GARF, fond R-9479, op. 1, del. 404, 28.

(22.) Kirimli, 7-20.

(23.) V.A. Mikaelian, Na Krymskoi zemle: Istoriia armianskih poselenii v Krymu (Erevan: Ayastan, 1974), 3.

(24.) Ibid., 192.

(25.) Ibid., 198.

(26.) Ibid., 111.

(27.) In all official correspondence, special settlers from Crimea are called "Crimeans" (GARF, fond R-9479, op. 1, del. 300-404).

(28.) Pohl, especially 112-118; Nikolai Bougai, The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1996).

(29.) Ibid., 84-85.

(30.) Ibid., 116-117.

(31.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 320, 89-92.

(32.) "Spravka o kolichestve spetspereselentsev na territorii respublik, kraiev i oblastei SSSR", GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 364, 290-91.

(33.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 365, 53.

(34.) Ibid., 90.

(35.) Zhores Medvedev, Soviet Agriculture (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 132.

(36.) Fitzpatrick, 146.

(37.) Medvedev, 133.

(38.) Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 234.

(39.) "Doklad", July 19, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 93; italics are mine.

(40.) Ibid., 84.

(41.) "Doklad", July 19, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 79-80.

(42.) "Memorandum", March 4, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 325, 19.

(43.) Ibid., 46.

(44.) Ibid., 37.

(45.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 325, 1.39; same, del. 326, 51-56.

(46.) "Spetssoobschenie," GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 362, 64-66.

(47.) "Doklad", July 19, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 83 and 94.

(48.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 69-71.

(49.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 85.

(50.) Medvedev, 135. Medvedev adds that the starving people, surprisingly, had the energy to joke about the dishes cooked from these "products," calling them toshnotiki and pishchiki.

(51.) "Doklad", July 19, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 86.

(52.) "Doklad," GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 72.

(53.) Pohl, 79-80.

(54.) "Doklad o hozhiaistvenno-trudovom ustroistve spetpereselentsev iz Kryma, rasselennih na territorii Kostromskoi oblasti," GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 82-83.

(55.) "Doklad o hozhiaistvenno-trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev repartiirovannih nemtsev, rasselennih na territorii Kostromskoi oblasti," GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 92-93.

(56.) V. A. Diatlova, "Nemtsy Krasnoiarskogo kraia: istoricheskii aspect," in Nemtsy v Rossii: Lyudi I sud'by (St. Petersburg, Rossiiskaia Akademia Nauk, 1998), 43.

(57.) Ibid.

(58.) "Spetssoobschenie", February 26, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 362, 64.

(59) "April 22, 1947, note to Chief of Kostroma Region MVD Comrade Nemorivskii M.D.", GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 325, 108.

(60.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 68-70, also GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 78-79.

(61.) "Doklad o hozhiaistvenno-trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev repartiirovannih nemtsev, rasselennih na territorii Kostromskoi oblasti", GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 93

(62.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 345, 91.

(63.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 68.

(64.) Ibid., 77.

(65.) 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), 217.

(66.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 82; GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 86.

(67.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 325, 19.

(68.) "Resolution," 17/VIII, 1947, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 327, 231.

(69.) "Razroznennost' chlenov semei spetsposelentsev v znachitel'noi stepeni sposobstvuet pobegam." "Note N AK-8968c", 2/VII 1948, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 373, 19.

(70.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 363, 48.

(71.) Ibid., 51.

(72.) Ibid., 81.

(73.) Ibid., 89.

(74.) Ibid., 277.

(75.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 366, 317.

(76.) "Doklad", 10 June 1948, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 386, 104-106.

(77.) Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 42-43.

(78.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 355, 89.

(79.) Diatlova, 43.

(80.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 363, 112; GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 364, 124.

(81.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 364, 68.

(82.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 365, 89 and 124.

(83.) Medvedev, 135-146.

(84.) GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 381, 240.

(85.) Ibid.

(86.) Ibid., 234.

(87.) Ibid., 232.

(88.) Ibid., 236.

(89.) Ibid., 242.

(90.) "Memorandum," 1948, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 371, 1.

(91.) "Memorandum", 12 October 1949, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 370, 4.

(92.) See, for example, GARF, fond r-9479, op. 1, del. 358, 72-73.

(93.) Bauer, 15.

(94.) "Study of Ethnic Groups," NUPI--Center for Russian Studies Database, <http:// www.nupi.no/cgi-win/Russland/etnisk_b.exe?German> (7 January 2003).

(95.) Brul', 339.

(96.) Pohl, 86-87.

(97.) "Mobilizovat' nemtsev", 7.

PRIMARY SOURCES

GARF, Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State. Fond r-9479, "4th Special Department of Ministry of Internal Affairs USSR: Documents." Cambridge, England: State Archival Service of Russia and Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in association with Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 199?. Opis 1. Forced migrants and special settlements, 1930-1959.

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IRINA MUKHINA

Boston College