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German A. Ethnicity in My Life

A. German
Saratov National Research State University
Saratov, Russian Federation
ORCID 0000-0001-7571-7645
E-mail: a.a.german@mail.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. The author, a Volga German by origin, analyzes the long history of his life and its most important stages, full of diverse events and frequent and unexpected turns. This analysis is carried out both from the perspective of changes that occurred in the author’s own ethnicity under the influence of various living conditions, and taking into account the response of others to the author’s ethnicity, which, depending on specific circumstances, manifested itself in different forms: negative, positive, and neutral. The author’s birth and his residence in the Urals, Kyrgyzstan, and Siberia in the early years of his life were associated with the general discriminatory situation of the Soviet Germans in the war and post-war years, which lasted until the mid-1950s. It gave an impetus to the rapid development of assimilation processes and the loss of many ethnic components, which became especially evident in the post-war generations of the Soviet Germans and is clearly seen in the case of the author’s childhood and adolescence. In the post-Stalin period, the life of the Germans gradually normalized. Opportunities were open for obtaining high-quality education and professional advancement in business, science, and culture. Military career and prestigious professions became available to the Russian Germans. These changes and their impact on ethnicity can also be traced in the life of the author, who devoted 32 years to military service and more than 23 years to work at the university. The article also discusses the mutual influence of ethnicity and the author’s studies of the history of the Russian Germans

 

KEYWORDS: ethnicity, Germans of the USSR and Russia, Labor Army, Special Settlement, Saratov, German autonomy on the Volga, International Association of Researchers of the History and Culture of Russian Germans

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2021-2(12)-194-221
УДК 316.72

 

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