CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Kinville, Patrick James |
|---|---|
| Title | Interwar Soviet Nationalities Policy: The Case of the Volga Germans |
| Summary | Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholarship on the interwar period of Soviet history has been augmented significantly by its newfound focus on the national dimension of Soviet policies. Such policies, which had previously been explained as political manipulation via the processes of Russification and attempted elimination of non-Russian national identifications are now understood as an intentional promotion and exploitation of minority nationalities by the Soviet regime. Using the Volga Germans as a case study of a Soviet diasporic nationality in the interwar period, this thesis demonstrates the Bolshevik regime’s systematic efforts to construct a Volga German national identification among the region’s inhabitants, with the aim of modeling the republic after a modern nation state. While previous works have suggested that repression of the Volga Germans was based on nationally determined criteria throughout the interwar era, this thesis demonstrates that prior to the mid-1930s, such repression was enacted because of the socioeconomic status of the Soviet Germans, a practice that stood in line with the Soviet regime’s war against class enemies. However, by the end of the decade, the Volga Germans were subject to the categorization of “enemy nation,” and thus can be used as a case study to demonstrate a larger transformation throughout the Soviet Union; a paradigm shift from class-based to nation-based repression. Paradoxically, however, the nation-building efforts of the Soviet regime continued in regards to the Volga Germans until the population was forcibly deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan in 1941, revealing that even national repression against the Volga Germans must be understood as more than a simple project of elimination. |
| Supervisor | Pap, Andras; Miller, Alexei |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/kinville_patrick.pdf |
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