Evening star., 1941-09-09
VoIquGermun Exodus

NSt4u IIt0It GAOOuS
Dictator Stalin's decree exiling to.
Siberia the large block of Germanic
population in the Volga region is a
tragic by-product of the present war
between the Soviet Union and the
Third Reich. Yet it is in character
with the declared policies of both
those totalitarian states, which shift
people as unconcernedly as they
would cattle. Russia's vast empty
spaces merely give Stain a freer
hand in such human rearrange-
ments.
The Volga Germans represent the
most successful of the colonization
projects undertaken by Russian
monarchs during the eighteenth
century. Beginning with Peter the
Great, numerous Europeans of all
classes and from many lands were
invited to settle in Russia as part of
systematic attempt to WeSternize
the country. The Empress Catherine
the Great, herself born a German
princess, was especially partial to
her fellow countrymen, and large
numbers of sturdy German peasants
were induced to settle in Eastern and
Southern Russia during her reign.
Those regions recently had been con-
quered from the Tartars and, though
fertile, were very thinly populated.
The situation was much like that of
our Prairie States after the nomadic
Indians had been subdued. Settlers
of good quality were needed, and
Czarina Catherine could think of
none better than German peasants
thrifty, hard-working, and more
advanced agriculturally than the
Russian peasantry, then sunk in
ignorance and serfdom. Indeed,
Catherine hoped the German settlers
would inspire their Russian neigh
bors by their good example.
The German colonists prospered
exceedingly and expanded in num-
berS, but they did not fuse with the
Russians. Throughout Eastern Eu-
rope, religion is an almost impossible
barrier to assimilation. Most of the
German settlers were LutheranS,
with some Roman Catholics; but
both were equally alien to the Ortho-
dox moujikS, who regarded the new
comers with suspicion, while the
Germans looked down on the Rus
slams as their interiors. Nevertheless,
those German settlers were loyal
subjects of the Cars, because in
those days Germany was a mass of
petty states with no strong national
feeling.
During the Great War of a genera
ton ago there does not seem to have
been much disloyalty among the
descendants of those Germans set
tied in Russia for over 100 years The
Bolshevik revolution bore hard on
the German colonists, not because
they were German but because they
were prosperous individual land
owners. Many were exiled or 'liqui-
dated" but the majority were spared
for accepting Communist ideas. The
biggest German colonies, settled
thickly along the middle Volga, were
even made an autonomous Soviet
Republic" following Lenin's policy
that all races in the Soviet Union
should enjoy cultural freedom in a
Communist federation founded upon
economic and social principles rather
than on language and nationality.
1t is doubtful whether the Volga
Germans, with their heritage of in
dividual thrift and enterprise, ever
sincerely accepted the Communist
way of life, and this hidden discon-
tent undoubtedly has been worked
upon by secret agents from the Reich,
quickening their dormant sense of
German nationalism and thus pre-
pairing them to be formidable fifth
column when the Wehrmacht should
near their Strategically important
positions on the middle Volga. The
Volga Germans number nearly AGO.
600, so the potential danger is con-
siderable, and the Soviet official
decree asserts that disaffection is
rife among them. To remove the en-
tire Germanic element, loyal and
disloyal alike, from their ancestral
homes and scatter them across ST.
IBERIA thus may be considered part of
Stalin's grim "scorched earth" policy.
The Diee oftor