The August decree was never mentioned by the Soviet mass media, the printed compendium of laws and the academic literature both during and after the War; only the scarcely available ‘News of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR’ published it. The regime could not face the disgrace of admitting that a people, despite years of ideological influence, was ‘entirely’ comprised of enemies of the Soviet Union. Obscure claims of ‘ten thousand spies and saboteurs’ among the Volga Germans also did not appear particularly believable. Numerous party and Soviet officials in the central authorities and in the places of deportation were told through official channels the ‘reason’ for the disbanding of the Volga German Republic. A ‘directive’ letter from the central committee of the communist party of Kazakhstan to the leading officials in the regions and districts, dated 4 October 1941, repeated the claims of the August decree and called on the party organization to sharpen protection of socialist property, increase vigilance and keep the newly arrived refugees under constant surveillance.46
A wide stratum of the Soviet population learned of the ‘political’ dangers of their new neighbours through word of mouth. Through indirect slander the Bolshevik rulers were able to safeguard their own history, to continue praising ‘the equal Soviet family of nations’ and to denounce the policy of ‘national suppression’ in fascist Germany.47 In addition, the extensive deprivation of rights and the defamation of Soviet citizens of German descent sent out signals which made clear that the propagation of national hate, chauvinistic remarks and every type of discrimination would not be prosecuted by the law. ‘We are allowing too much humanism to reign over these fascist scoundrels,’ said a district party secretary in the territory of north Kazakhstan, and with such an opinion of the German deportees he was not alone.48
Calls by the central committee of the VKP(b) on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the October Revolution show the remains of the slogans of international solidarity: ‘Our greetings to the German people (germanskomu), who groan under the yoke of Hitler’s national socialist mob - we wish them victory over the bloodthirsty Hitler.’49 The constantly worsening conditions on the front, however, removed the last ideological blinkers. The clearest example of this change is the order from the supervisor of the head office for political propaganda for the Red Army, L. Mekhlis, which on 10 December 1941 ordered the replacement of the slogan ‘Workers of all Countries, Unite’ with ‘Death to the German Occupiers’ in all military newspapers. He justified this change by claiming that the international proletarian slogan had disorientated many in the armed forces ‘in the face of the assignment to destroy all German occupiers’.50
The immense suffering of the civilians and the complete destruction of areas around Moscow, which became apparent upon their first recapture during the fight for Moscow, immeasurably increased Germanophobic hysteria in the mass media. On the whole, however, the destruction was the result of merciless Soviet war policy. On 17 November 1941 Stalin ordered, in command No. 0428 from the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander, the destruction of all human settlements and housing within a 40-60 km radius of the German front. The arsonist commandos, who were formed especially for this purpose, began with a systematic destruction of the basics for survival, so that the German conquerors should freeze under the open skies. On 25 November the operatives of the Fifth Soviet Army alone reported the destruction and burning of fifty-five settlements.51 The concerns of the Soviet population who fell under the German occupation were not taken into consideration: ‘The Soviet arithmetic is simple - to send one German and with him a hundred Russians to ruin is a heroic action. But if one spares the life of one German along with a hundred Russians - that is bad; that amounts to treason.’52
Molotov’s diplomatic notes of 25 November 1941, ‘On the outraging bestialities practised on Soviet prisoners of war by German authorities’, and of 6 January 1942, ‘On the general plundering, the thefts from the population and the dreadful bestialities of the German authorities in the territories under their occupation’, increased the country’s desire for pogroms. The main aim of the Soviet mass media was the propagation of hate against the enemy within - as programmatically announced by the famous author Aleksei Tolstoi in a Pravda appeal on 28 July 1941. Supporting him in this regard were a whole host of famous authors, such as Leonid Leonov, Mikhail Sholokhov, Il’ia Erenburg, Konstantin Simonov et al. Poems such as Simonov’s ‘Kill him’ or Surkov’s ‘I hate’ obviously served to raise fighting lust in the troops. Il’ia Erenburg’s pamphlets and articles even described the Englishman Alexander Werth, not particularly known for his sympathy towards the Germans, as ‘nothing short of propaganda for a race war’.53
Uncountable articles in flyers and newspapers, books and magazines, radio programmes and films discriminated primarily against Germans (i. e. not against the enemy or the fascists). Violent feelings were propagated, clearly poisoning the relations between the population of all other nationalities and the Russian Germans, especially since the Soviet authorities made no effort to differentiate between Russian Germans and the attacking nation. The picture of the enemy as including the ‘domestic’ Germans was soon ‘scientifically’ supported. The administration of the central archives of the NKVD published a collection of sources on German espionage in tsarist Russia. The documentation allegedly verified that Russian citizens of German descent, including farmers, all professionals, entrepreneurs, high-ranking public officials and officers, had en masse carried out activities as German agents. Such accusations appeared repeatedly in the detailed foreword of the collection, which promptly appeared as a book in its own right.54 This reporting, naturally without any critical screening, served as the basis for the writing of further works on German espionage in Russia during the First and the Second (current) World Wars, which eventually ran into several hundred thousand copies.55
Not only the secret police but also many literary figures profited from the stirring up of resentment against their fellow German citizens. In early 1943 the literary scholar Aleksandr Dement’ev wrote the book The reactionary role of the G-mans in Russia’s history (printed in Leningrad, circulation 10,000 copies, during the siege of the city). A year later a collection appeared providing the worst possible descriptions of the ‘local’ Germans in the works of classical Russian literature, which Dement’ev had carefully selected and supplied with a disparaging commentary. Similar to the pattern of anti-Semitic propaganda, the planned publications were full of prejudices, suspicion and slander of every type.56 The well-known author Pavel Bazhov had been publishing his malicious caricatures of Tales on the Germans (Skazy o nemtsakh) in several newspapers since August 1941. These later appeared as brochures and books for mass circulation. He was helped by the use of the most primitive cliches and common stereotypes in his works, in order to underline the clear intellectual and moral superiority of the Russian masters and workers in contrast to the German administrators, miners and professionals, who had been active in considerable numbers in the iron industry in the Urals since the beginning of the eighteenth century.57
A growing antipathy and bitterness against Germany, German culture and language increased constantly as the war continued with its human and material war victims. Local NKVD authorities’ reports reflect the hopeless situation of the German Russians.
A completely irregular relationship, even antagonism, has arisen among some leading specialists in economics, the kolkhoz director, production managers, and the district party and soviet regarding the accommodation and employment of the specially resettled Germans [. . .] Instead of finding accommodation for them, the director of the salt works behaves towards them coarsely, calls them parasites and swears crudely about them [. . .]. In the district of Sharipovo the chairman of the kolkhoz ‘Proletarian Work’, Komisarenko, explained in a conversation about supplying the refugees with bread, ‘all Germans should die of hunger, I will not give them any bread [. . .]’. The female collective farmer Churilova explained to the German Schmidt, ‘Why did they bring you here to our district, it would have been better if they had killed you back there. You are traitors, you should die of hunger, or be sent out into the cold, so that you fascists can feel it’ [. . .] Of the 7,396 children only 2,403 go to school. This can be explained by the fact that the majority of children do not own shoes, warm clothes or school equipment. Children older than the age of twelve do not go to school because they must work in the industry or go into service. Also the lack of knowledge of the Russian language plays a part [. . .]. In the schools in some districts the German schoolchildren are thoroughly terrorised by their Russian peers and called ‘fascists’. That is why they stop going to school.58
Similar incidents were also recorded by the security services in other territories, to which deported Germans were sent. The responsible party and Soviet organizations did not, however, see fit to take any measures in the face of such grave disrespect of Soviet law. Indeed, expressions of discontent at the living conditions in the new location, or complaints about national discrimination, were often dismissed and punished as anti-Soviet agitation, propaganda, or as slander against the actions of the party and government.59
World History
