Ekaterina the Tsarina
A German Woman’s Command of Russia
A German princess named Sophie Augusta Fredericka, born on April 21, 1729 in Settin, Pomerania, would eventually become Catherine the Great. In 1744, Russian Tsarina Elizabeth selected Sophie to be the wife of her nephew and indented heir Peter. Later, after accepting the Russian Orthodox faith, Sophie changed her name to "Catherine" (Ekaterina or Yekaterina).
In 1762, Peter succeeded to the throne as Peter III of Russia. Grigori Orlov, who was Catherine's paramour at the time, masterminded a conspiracy proclaiming Catherine the ruler. Peter III was then murdered less than six months after taking the throne on July 17, 1762. Though Catherine has never been definitively liked to the murder, there has been considerable speculation to that effect throughout its history.
As the tsarina, Catherine the Great instituted several drastic reforms within the Russian society. For example, she established the Free Economic Society in 1765 to encourage modernization of agriculture and industry. Catherine relaxed the censorship law and encouraged education for the nobles and middle class. Also, she encouraged foreign investment in economically underdeveloped areas.
Germans in Eastern Europe
Catherine decided it was necessary to settle the underutilized farmlands of the southern Volga region. Russia had controlled this region since it captured the Muslim Tatar capital at Kazan in 1552 and controlled the entire course of the Volga river by 1556. This area was formerly a central part of the Mongolian Khanate of the Golden Horde long before 1265.
The new phase of Russian territorial expansion begun in 1783 had, by 1812, ended the centuries-long Muslim domination of the Black Sea and strengthened Russian control over lands previously ruled and inhabited by Turks, Tatars, and other Muslim peoples. To achieve her development goals, Catherine encouraged German immigration. Catherine offered Germans incentives including paid travel expenses, free land, subsidized housing, freedom of religion, low taxes, and a promise never be drafted into the Russian army.
Accepting her offer, thousands Germans immigrated to Russia in the 18th Century. Their numbers generally centered in two primary areas. The ethnic German concentration of expatriates allowed them to maintain most of their cultural traditions and language, evidenced by German architectural style found there today.
One such area included “southern Russia” (present day Ukraine where Wilhelm Lessing was born) and the Volga reigon. In the 18th century, there were more than 100 colonies established in the Volga region. Upon arrival, Germans prospered and totaled roughly 1.6 million people by 1914. In the Soviet era, from 1924 to 1941, an autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans existed within the Russian Federation.
Another area surrounded the Kaliningrad region of present-day Russia. The Kaliningrad region is currently a separate piece of the Russian Federation, lying in the Baltic shore between Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad, known as Königsberg before World War II, was the capital of the German province of East Prussia (Ostpreussen). Before that, Königsberg was the capital of the Teutonic Order State of Prussia. Königsberg was also the birthpalce of Immanuel Kant in April 22, 1724 who was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment and as one of history's most influential thinkers.
Soviet Re-engineering of Society
The ethnic Germans were eventually oppressed during the Soviet era and the USSR banned German language during World War II. The Republic of Volga was abolished and all Germans were deported when, in 1941, the Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union in violation the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact of 1939. After the redrafting of Germany’s boarders following the war, Eastern Prussia’s land and people were divided between Poland and Russia.
During his four-decades in power, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin’s successor, scattered millions of lives in a brutal re-engineering of Soviet society. Stalin mandated the eastern displacement of ethnic Germans into Siberia and Central Asia. Once uprooted, he did not allow their return. There is general agreement that considering state terrorism (deportations and communist political purges), famines, and prison and labour camp mortality, Stalin and those under his command are responsible for directly or indirectly killing roughly 8 to 20 million people.
In February 1956, Stalin’s deportations were condemned by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as violationing Leninism. Yet, the Tatars, Meskhs, and Volga Germans were not freely allowed to return to their homelands until as late as 1991. The deportations profoundly effected many ethnic groups within the Soviet Union. This impact manifested itself during the separatist movements occurring in the Baltic republics, Tatarstan, and Chechnya.
Ethnic Germans, Russian Ghettos
Since the late 1980’s, more than two million ethnic Germans have left Russia and settled in Germany when permitted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. By winter of 2004 many Germans wanted to stop the influx, concerned that the new arrivals live in self-created ghettoes and, like many Turkish immigrants, remain unassimilated. For instance, in Berlin’s Marzahn district, reported as having 13,000 Russian-Germans in December, 2004, a visitor is more likely to hear Russian spoken than German. Assimilation into a new culture can be slow, and such powerful associations to a previous homeland are not unlike their forefather’s “German” settlements in land recently conquered by Russia or communities formed by immigrants all over the world.
