‘The Forgotten History’: Ethnic German Women in Soviet Exile, 1941 – 1955

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Notes

A letter from an ethnic German woman, born in 1916, published in G. A. Vol'ter, Zona polnogo pokoya: Rossiiskie nemtsy v gody voiny i posle nee (svidetel'stva ochevidtsev) (Moscow, Varyag, 1998), p. 61.

Nikolai Bugai, ‘K voprosu o deportatsiyakh narodov SSSR v 30 – 40-kh gg.’, Istoriya SSSR, 1989, 6, pp. 135 – 144; Nikolai Bugai, ‘Pogruzheny v eshelony i otpravleny k mestam poselenii… L. Beriya – I. Stalinu’, Istoriya SSSR, 1991, 1, pp. 141 – 160; Nikolai Bugai, The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York, Nova Science Publishers, 1996); Nikolai Bugai (ed.), ‘Mobilizovat’ nemtsev v rabochie kolonny… I. Stalin.’ Sbornik dokumentov (1940-e gody) (Moscow, Gotika, 1998); Svetlana Alieva (ed)., Kak eto bylo: Natsional'nye repressii v SSSR, 1919 – 1952 gody, v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 1993); G. G. Vormsbekher, ‘Nemtsy v SSSR’, Znamya, 1989, 11, pp. 193 – 203; K. Isakov, ‘1941: drugie nemtsy’, Novoe vremya, 1990, 7, pp. 36 – 39; also such works as L.B. Slavgorodskaya (ed)., Nemtsy v Rossii: Lyudi i sud'by. Kollektsiya statei (St Petersburg, Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, 1998); V. Brul’, ‘Sravnitel'nyi analiz prichin i posledstvii deportatsii rossiiskikh nemtsev, polyakov, kalmykov, litovtsev, estontsev, latyshei v Sibir’ (1935 – 1965)’, in Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional'nye osobennosti (Moscow, Gotika, 1999), pp. 321 – 346.

Vladimir Autmann & Valentina Chabotareva (eds), Istoriya rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh (1763 – 1992 gg) (Moscow, MIGUP, 1993); Arkadii German, Nemtsy SSSR v ‘trudovoi armii’ (1941 – 1945) (Moscow, Gotika, 1998).

V. Yampol'sky, ‘Nado vyselit’ s treskom’, Novoe vremya, 1994, 23, pp. 36 – 37.

G. Bel'ger, ‘Mankyrtizatsiya: istoki i posledstviya’, Prostor, 1992, 3, pp. 150 – 156.

Nakazannyi narod: po materialam konferentsii “Repressii protiv rossiiskikh nemtsev v Sovetskom Soyuze v kontekste sovetskoi natsional'noi politiki (Moscow, Zvenya, 1999); Nemtsy Rossii v kontekste otechestvennoi istorii: obshchie problemy i regional'nye osobennosti. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva 17 – 20 sentyabrya 1998 g. (Moscow, Gotika, 1999); Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri (XVI-XX vv.). Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii ‘Germaniya – Rossiya: istoricheskii opyt mezhregional'nogo vzaimodeistviya XVI-XX vv.’ (Ekaterinburg, Volot, 2001).

V. Motrevich & A. Kapustin, ‘Nemetskaya trudarmiya na Urale’, Nauka Urala, 1991, 3; Nemtsy Orenburzhiya: proshloe, nastoyashchee, budushchee (Orenburg, 1997); V. Kirillov, Istoriya repressii v Nizhnetagil'skom regione Urala. 1920-e - nachalo 1950-kh gg.: v 2-kh chastyakh (Nizhnii Tagil, 1996).

Alfred Eisfeld, Die Russlanddeutschen (Münich, Langen Müller, 1999); Die Deutschen in der UdSSR – in der Geschichte und Gegenwart (Bonn, 1995). Earlier works on the history of ‘Soviet Germans’ include: Adam Giesinger, From Catherine to Khrushchev: the Story of Russia's Germans (Batteford, Saskatchewan, Marian Press, 1974); Fred C. Koch, The Volga Germans: In Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the Present (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977); and Ingeborg Fleischhauer & Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1986).

J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937 – 1949. Contributions to the Study of World History, No. 65 (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1999); J. Otto Pohl, ‘Stalin's Genocide against the Repressed Peoples’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2, 2, June 2000, pp. 267 – 293; J. Otto Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression (Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 1997).

Eric J. Schmaltz, ‘Reform, ‘Rebirth’ and Regret: The Rise and Decline of the Ethnic-German Nationalist Wiedergeburt Movement in the USSR and CIS, 1987 – 1993’, Nationalities Papers, 26, 2, June 1998, pp. 215 – 247; Eric J. Schmaltz & Samuel D. Skinner, ‘ “You Will Die under Ruins and Snow”: the Soviet Repression of Russian Germans as a Case Study of Successful Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, 4, 3, 2002, pp. 327 – 356; Samuel D. Skinner, The Open Wound: the Genocide of German Ethnic Minorities in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1915 – 1949 and Beyond (Fargo, ND, North Dakota State University Libraries, 2000); Samuel D. Skinner, Letters from Hell: An Index to Volga-German Famine Letters Published in Die Welt-Post, 1920 – 25; 1930 – 34 (Lincoln, NE, AHSGR Press, 2000). For a further review of recent scholarship on the ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union see Eric J. Schmaltz, An Expanded Bibliography and Reference Guide for the Former USSR's Ethnic Germans: Issues of Ethnic Autonomy, Group Repression, Cultural Assimilation, and Mass Emigration in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (North Dakota, Fargo, 2003).

Schmaltz, Expanded Bibliography, p. 40.

To conduct interviews, I utilised traditional methods of oral history and borrowed some methods from the social sciences. For example, when conducting free-flowing interviews with former special settlers, I used a standardised ‘I’ test on them. Interviewees were asked to complete ten sentences each starting with the word ‘I’. Then the results were analysed based on such criteria as self-oriented answers (e.g. ‘I am kind’); outward-oriented answers (e.g. ‘I have a granddaughter who plays the piano well’); and straight-forward thematically-organised answers which touched upon identity, religion and other personal identifiers (e.g. ‘I am German’, “I am Lutheran’, etc.). Similarly, interviewees were asked to answer questions in a large, chronologically-structured questionnaire, which was then analysed according to a variety of criteria. For a basic guide to doing oral history see Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003).

Vol'ter, Zona polnogo pokoya: Rossiiskie nemtsy v gody voiny i posle nee (svidetel'stva ochevidtsev); K.V. Matis, ‘ “Trudarmiya” v vospominanyah uchastnikov’, in Istoriya i kul'tura nemtsev Altaya (Barnaul; Izdatel'stvo Altaiskogo gosuniversiteta, 1999); T. Ilarionova (ed.), Sud'by rossiiskikh nemtsev: Kollektivnaya ispoved’ v pis'makh (Moscow, Gotika, 1993); A. Fitz, Bol’ v nasledstvo. Sovetskie Nemtsy: istoriya cherez sud'by (Tashkent, 1990); V. G. Fuks (ed.), Rokovye dorogi povolzhskikh nemtsev, 1763 – 1993 (Krasnoyarsk, 1993); T. Tigonen & V. Vidert (eds), Uroki gneva i lyubvi: sbornik vospominanii o godakh repressii (20-e - 80-e gg) (St Petersburg, 1993); V. E. Gergert, Mechta i greshnaya zemlya: Dokumental'noe povestvovanie (Perm’, 1994); V. M. Kirilova, (ed.), Kniga pamyati (Ekaterinburg, 1994); G. Berner (ed.), My, deti rossiiskikh nemtsev (vospominaniya i dokumenty) (St Petersburg, Petro-RIF, 1995); P.A. Berg, ‘Vospominaniya o davno prozhitom’, in V. M. Kirillov (ed.), Zhertvy repressii. Nizhnii Tagil 1920 – 1980-e gody (Ekaterinburg; Izdatel'stvo UGTU, 1999); B. S. Burkov & V. A. Myakushkov (eds), Bol’ i pamyat’: Sbornik vospominanii (Moscow, MSNR, 1993); Ida Bender, The Dark Abyss of Exile: A Story of Survival, Translation from German to English by Laurel Anderson and William Wiest, with Carl Anderson (North Dakota, North Dakota University Press, 1998); Elvera Ziebart Reuer, A Distant Promise: A New Beginning (Aberdeen, SD, Quality Quick Print, Inc., 1998); Ervin Schumacher, Dreams Can Come True: An Autobiography (Goodhue, MN, Black Hat Press, 1997); Nelly Däs, edited and translated by Nancy Bernhardt Holland, Gone Without A Trace: Russian Women in Exile (Lincoln, NE, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001); Berta Bachmann, Memories of Kazakhstan: A Report on the Life Experience of a German Woman in Russia, (Lincoln, NE, AHSGR, 1983); Peter Hilkes, Germans from the Former Soviet Union Interviewed by Professor Timothy J. Kloberdanz (Bismarck, ND, North Dakota Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1994); Adam Giesinger, The Way It Was: A Family History and Autobiography (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Hignell Printing Ltd, 1992); Eva-Maria Hermann, We Ate the Salt of Russia: Stories of People Forgotten at Home (Bismark, ND, Germans from Russia Heritage Society, 1994); Georg Hildebrandt, Why Are You Still Alive?: A German in the Gulag (North Dakota, North Dakota State University Press, 2001); Astrid Sics (ed.), We Sang Through Tears: Stories of Survival in Siberia (Riga, Janis Roze Publishers, 2002); Maria Kreiser, Though My Soul More Bent: Memoir of a Soviet German (Bismark, ND, Germans from Russia Heritage Society, 2003); unpublished personal files of Yu. Ugryumova and O. Ugryumov; my own collection of numerous interviews collected during my research trips.

The 1939 census has 1,423,534 ethnic Germans residing in the Soviet Union (Vsesyouzanaya perepis' naseleniya 1939 goda. Osnovnye itogi (Moscow, 1992), pp. 59 – 65). This number can also be found in GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 372, l. 205. However, approximately 949,829 (the exact numbers are contradictory in various documents) were deported in 1941, and this number swelled to a little over 1.2 million in the next few years; see Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System, p. 73. Other sources demonstrate that in the second half of 1947 only 905,184 Germans were listed in the records of special settlements, of whom there were 199,522 men, 351,008 women and 354,654 children (GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 98, l. 364, 2nd half of 1947).

Brul’, ‘Sravnitel'nyi analiz prichin i posledstvii deportatsii rossiiskih nemtsev, polyakov, kalmykov, litovtsev, estontsev, latyshei v Sibir’ (1935 – 1965)’ p. 324.

Ibid., p. 74.

TsSKhD, f. 3, op. 58, d. 178, ll. 1 – 5, as published in Bugai (ed.), “Mobilizovat’ nemtsev v rabochii kolonny…I. Stalin”: Sbornik dokumentov, 1940-e gody, pp. 19 – 22.

The order concerned the resettlement of Finns and Germans together and gave only combined statistics for the number of deportees at 132,000 people. Hence it is impossible to determine the exact number of Germans affected by this decree. (GARF, f. 9401, op. 12, d. 35, ll. 239 – 240).

This decree was issued in early September but the exact date is unclear.

GARF, f. 9401, op. 1, d. 35.

RTsKhIDNI, f. 644, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 171 – 172.

Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System, pp. 74 – 75.

Richard H. Walth, Flotsam of World History: The Germans from Russia between Stalin and Hitler (Essen, Klartext, 1996), p. 103.

GARF, f. 9401, op. 1, d. 35, l. 235.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 85, ll. 24 – 26.

GANO, f. r-1020, op. 5, d. 46, ll. 150 – 155; d. 66, l. 20; Aleksandr Shadt, ‘Spetspereselentsy v Sibiri’, kandidatskaya dissertatsiya, unpublished, no pagination.

Ibid.

V. N. Zemskov, ‘Massovoe osvobozhdenie spetsposelentsev i ssyl'nykh (1954 – 1960gg)’, Sotsis, 1991, 1, p. 10.

Official document from GARF, as published in Bugai (ed.), Mobilizovat’…, pp. 28 – 29.

Schadt, ‘Spetspereselentsy v Sibiri’, fn. 448.

NKVD document for ASSR NP, as printed in Vol'ter, Zona polnogo pokoya, p. 55.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 85, ll. 12 – 16; GARF, f. 9579, op. 1, d. 83, l. 45.

For such orders see, for example, a GARF document published in Bugai(ed.), Mobilizovat'…, p. 29.

Vol'ter, Zona polnogo pokoya pp. 62 – 63.

For the number of repatriated Germans see the Appendix.

Paradoxically, the study of repatriated ethnic Germans who were citizens of the Soviet Union has only begun and needs serious expansion to deepen our knowledge of Germans who ended up in special settlements in 1945. For first and only marginal attempts to study repatriation of the Germans in the Soviet Union see V. N. Zemskov, ‘K voprosu o repatriatsii sovetskikh grazhdan, 1944 – 1951 gody’, Istoriya SSSR, 1990, 4, pp. 26 – 41; V. N. Zemskov, ‘Prinuditel'nye migratsii iz Pribaltiki v 1940 – 1950-kh godakh’, Otechestvennye arkhivy, 1993, 1, pp. 4 – 20; V. N. Zemskov, ‘Repatriatsiya sovetskikh grazhdan i ikh sud'by’, Sotsis, 1995, pp. 5 – 6; P.J. Polyan, ‘OSTy – zhertvy dvuk diktatur’, Rodina, 1994, 2, pp. 51 – 57; P. J. Polyan, Zhertvy dvukh diktatur: Voennoplennye i ostartbaitery v Tret'em reikhe i ih repatriatsiya (Moscow, 1996); T. S. Ilarionova, ‘Zhelaniya i vozmozhnosti: problema vyezda nemtsev iz SSSR v kontekste poslevoennykh sovetsko-zapadnogermanskikh otnoshenii (1955 – 1964)’, in Migratsionnye protsessy sredi rossiiskikh nemtsev: istoricheskii aspekt (Moscow, Gotika, 1998), pp. 367 – 384. Various general histories of the Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union do not even refer to the repatriated Germans or do so only superficially. For example, one of the most acclaimed works by Walth, Flotsam of World History, only briefly mentions the deportation of 1941 and prefers not to deal with post-deportation consequences regardless of its title, which implies a study of Germans under Stalin. Another acclaimed monograph, Giesinger, From Catherine to Khrushchev: The Story of Russia's Germans, dedicates only three pages to Germans in the Baltic States and only in the context of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1939; furthermore, it relies exclusively on secondary literature to evaluate the deportations, such as Robert Conquest, The Nation Killers. The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (New York, MacMillan., 1970). Skinner, The Open Wound, has only three pages of superficial statistics on the deportations of 1941, not even mentioning repatriations. Moreover, Skinner chooses to concentrate on the theory of genocide and the discussion of whether the deportation was genocide of Germans (simultaneously discussing various theoretical works on how genocide can be identified) rather than on the social, political or identity consequences of the deportations.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Postwar Soviet Society: The ‘Return to Normalcy’, 1945 – 1953’, in Susan J. Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (New Jersey, Rowman & Allanheld Publishers, 1985), p.132.

Carol Mather, Aftermath of War: Everyone Must Go Home (London, Brassey's Ltd, 1992), p. 20.

Top Secret report of the British Control Commissioner for Germany at Lubbecke (sic) dated 11 August 1945, as published in Mather, Aftermath of War, pp. 20 – 21.

Vladimir Bauer & Tat'yana Ilarionova, Rossiiskie nemtsy: Pravo na nadezhdu (Moscow, Respublika, 1995), p. 20; also various memoirs.

Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2001), p. 65.

Däs, Gone Without a Trace, p. 5.

In my sample, seven out of 22 young women who escaped repatriation mentioned help from a Russian soldier as a reason for their success. However, this number might not be representative.

Interview with Berta Bernadett, conducted on 20 May 2004.

GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1157, ll. 149 – 150.

The exact number is 928,299 (GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 364, l. 305).

Bugai, The Deportation of peoples, pp. 84 – 85. Statistics presented by Pohl appear to be entirely inaccurate. He cites that between 1945 and 1950 there were 60,655 deaths and 85,763 births among ethnic Germans. However, it is now an established fact that the German population in the Soviet Union had significantly declined during the deportation. Moreover, various local documents, like the ones listed above, mention abnormal mortality rates for these years and especially for the famine years of 1946 – 47. Furthermore, all personal accounts deliver a sense of enormous loss of life and only an insignificant number of them mention births in their families. Finally, physiological changes mentioned in numerous accounts and by numerous medical personnel in settlements (to be discussed in detail later) could not have allowed the normal birth rate to persist among settlers. In a word, it is highly improbable that ‘the Germans [had] coped with the hardships of exile much more successfully than the other deported nationalities' (Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System, p. 84).

Unpublished interview with O. Hubiev.

Vol'ter, Zona Polnogo Pokoya, p. 55.

Walth, Flotsam of World History, pp. 104 – 105.

Karl Stumpp, Auslandsdeutschtum in Osteuropa (DAI, Stuttgart, no date), p. 93.

For various accounts of women in the Soviet Union see, for example, S. Bridger, Women in the Soviet Countryside (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989); L. Edmondson, Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; 1991), G. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1974); L. N. Denisova, Zhenshchiny russkikh selenii. Trudovye budni (Moscow, Izdatel'skii dom “Mir istorii”, 2003).

John Barber & Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front, 1941 – 1945; A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II (New York, Longman, 1991) pp. 216 – 217.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 98, l. 364, 2nd half of 1947.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 89, ll. 364, 1/IV, 1947.

GANO, f. 1020, op. 5, d. 39, l. 20, as cited in Shadt, ‘Spetsperelentsy v Sibiri’, fn. 279.

Archive of Upravlenie MVD po Novosibirskoi oblasti, f. 5, op. 9, por. 1, d. 9, ll. 108 – 110, tom 2, ll. 182 – 183, as printed in Nakazannyi narod, pp. 176 – 180.

Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System, pp. 79 – 80.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 355, ll. 82 – 83.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 355, ll. 92 – 93.

V. A. Dyatlova, ‘Nemtsy Krasnoyarskogo kraya: istoricheskii aspekt’, in Nemtsy v Rossii: Lyudi i sud'by (St Petersburg, Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, 1998), p. 43.

Ibid.

Vospominaniya N.A. Pozdnyakovoi; this interview (conducted previously, date unknown) was shared with the author by Pozdnyakova..

‘Spetssoobshchenie’, 26 February 1947, GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 362, l. 64.

April 1947, ‘Soobshchenie nachal'niku Upravlenya MVD po Kostromskoi oblasti tovarishchu Nemorivskomu M.D’., GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 325, l. 108.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 358, ll. 68 – 70, also GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 358, ll. 78 – 79.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 355, l. 93

‘Razroznennost’ chlenov semei spetsposelentsev v znachitel'noi stepeni sposobstvuet pobegam’, ‘Spravka N AK – 8968c’, 2/VII 1948, GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 373, l.19. It should be noted that another document mentions 5,132 runaways among Germans (GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 364, l. 305).

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 363, l. 89.

Ibid., l. 277.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 366, l. 317.

Most probably, this number was overestimated. The overall statistics for these years do not demonstrate a sufficient decline in settlement population to support such a high figure, although the numbers were still probably relatively high.

‘Doklad’, 10 June 1948, GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 386, ll. 104 – 106.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 325, l. 19.

‘Rezolyutisya’, 17/VIII, 1947, GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 327, l. 231.

V. Kriger, ‘Svideteli prestuplenii: pis'ma rossiiskikh nemtsev’, in Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri, p. 234.

General information on the origins of the ‘trudarmee’ is based on G.A. Goncharov, ‘Trudovaya armiya perioda Velikoi Otechstvennoi Voiny’, Ekonomicheskaya Istoriya. Obozrenie, 2001, 7, pp. 154 – 162

See for example S. V. Cheshko, ‘Vremya stirat’ “belye pyatna” ’, Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1988, 6, p. 12.

See for example O.A. Gerber, ‘Istochniki izucheniya problemy ispol'zovaniya prinuditel'nogo truda mobilizovannykh nemtsev v ugol'noi promyshlennosti Kuzbassa v 1940-e gody’, in Rossiiskie Nemtsy: problemy istorii, yazyka i sovremennogo polozheniya, pp. 97 – 116.

Although prevalent in German and Russian-language historiography, the term ‘trudarmee’ is also used in English-language accounts. For works that do not directly address this topic, the term is often translated as ‘labour army’ to refer to forced labour conscription in the Soviet Union. However, the fact that this term is anachronistic in the particular Soviet context should be recognised regardless of whether a historian uses a transliteration or translation of the term.

RTsKhIDNI, f. 644, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 49 – 50.

RTsKhIDNI, f. 644, op. 1, d. 36, l. 175, as published in Istoriya rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh (1763 – 1992 gg) (Moscow, 1993), pp. 172 – 173.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 112, l.68

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 146, ll. 102 – 106.

Ibid., also d. 147, ll. 84 – 89; GARF, f. 9401, op. 1a, d. 172, ll. 107 – 111; d. 184, l. 62 – 65; d. 179, ll. 80 – 81.

A. A. German & A. N. Kurochkin, Nemtsy SSSR v ‘trudovoi armii’ (1941 – 1945) (Moscow, Gotika, 1998), p. 120; N. Paletskikh, Sotsial'naya politika na Urale v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Chelyabinsk, 1995), p. 20.

Kriger, ‘Svideteli prestuplenii: pis'ma rossiiskikh nemtsev’, in Nemtsy na Urale i v Sibiri, p. 234.

GARF, f. 9479, op.1, d.135, ll. 2 – 128.

The concept of social vulnerability as used by women was studied in depth by M. Schrover, University of Amsterdam; her latest research paper, ‘Differences that Make All the Difference’, was presented at the Fifth European Social History Conference, Berlin, 24 – 27 March 2004.

Various memoirs of German women.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, dd. 111 – 150.

A. A. German, Istoryia respubliki nemtsev povolzh'ya v dokumentakh (Moscow, Gotika, 1996), p. 143.

Archive of Upravlenie MVD po Novosibirskoi oblasti, f. 5, op. 9, por. 1, d. 9, ll. 108 – 110, tom 2, ll. 182 – 183, as printed in Nakazannyi narod, pp. 176 – 180.

Order from 31 August 1942; GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1157, l. 119.

GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 355, l. 89; similar statistics reappear for various settlements in various locations throughout f. 9479, op. 1, dd. 315 – 367.

A majority of interviewers and memoir writers remembered that their mothers took care of their homes and never officially worked. For upper class Germans, domestic affairs included the supervision of servants and occasionally small things around family business. For others, domestic labour usually implied a wide variety of work from cleaning to garden planting and harvesting, yet always within the framework of domesticity. As for many village women, the usual source of extra income for peasant Germans was the sale of eggs and other similar activities.

A. A. Zinoviev, Kommunizm kak real'nost’: Krizis kommunizma (Moscow, 1994), pp. 259 – 260.

TsDNIChO (Tsentr dokumentatsii noveishei istorii Chelyabinskoi oblasti), f. 288, op. 8., d. 303, ll. 10 – 11, as printed in Nakazannyi narod, p. 137.

Terry Martin, ‘The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, Journal of Modern History, 70, 4, December 1998, pp. 813 – 861, at p. 859.

Elizabeth Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the “Linguistic Turn” ’, Church History, 67, 1, 1998, pp. 1 – 31.

Däs, Gone Without a Trace, p. 70.

I can estimate the number of women who stopped menstruating at somewhere between 60% and 80%. Unfortunately, because of the intimacy of these matters and the death of many women, it is impossible at the moment to calculate a more precise number.

E. Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Boston, Beacon Press, 1992).

N. Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p. 95. See also J Elson, ‘Am I still a woman?’: An analysis of gynecological surgery and gender identity’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 2000; P. Shuttle & P. Redgrove, The Wise Wound: Myths, Realities, and Meanings of Menstruation (New York, Bantam Books, 1978).

Berta Bachman, Memories of Kazakhstan: A Report on theLife Experience of a German Woman in Russia (Lincoln, NE, AHSGR, 1983), p. 79.

Vol'ter, Zona Polnogo Pokoya, p. 201.

L. P. Belkovets, ‘Spetsposelenie nemtsev v Zapadnoi Sibiri (1941 – 1955)’, in Nakazannyi narod, p. 161.

Denisova, Zhenshchiny russkikh selenii.

Judging from the rising number of births in the late 1940s-early 1950s and from personal accounts.

GARF, f. 7523, op. 72, d. 576, l. 79.

Even though many ethnic Germans shared a common hatred towards the Soviet Union, only about 40,000 of them were allowed to emigrate to Germany and other countries in 1955 – 1989 (L.N. Shanshieva, ‘Emigratsiya nemtsev iz SSSR i Rossii: istoricheskaya spravka’, Rossiya i sovremennyi mir, 1993, 1, pp. 97 – 111). In 1989 – 96, however, over a million Germans moved to their historical motherland, taking advantage of German laws which stipulated the restoration of full citizenship to Volksdeutsche of the (former) Soviet territories, and many more moved thereafter. In 1993 the German government issued a Kriegsfolgenbereinigungsgesetz which set a quota for ethnic German immigration from Eastern Europe (mostly fulfilled by ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union) at 225,000 a year, although it was reduced to 100,000 a year in 2000 (Barbara Dietz, ‘East West Migration Patterns in an Enlarging Europe: The German Case’, The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 2, 1, September 2002, pp. 29 – 40, at pp. 30 – 31.) The director of the German House in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Mr Dederer, mentioned in conversation with the author that in 2004, out of 300,000 ethnic Germans residing in Kazakhstan, over 150,000 had already shown an intention to move to Germany and other countries.