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The Years of Great Silence
This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressive one in the 1930s, i.e. already before the Soviet-German war. J. Otto Pohl traces the development of Soviet repression of ethnic Germans. In particular, he focuses on the years 1941 to 1955 during which this oppression reached its peak. These years became known as “the Years of Great Silence” (“die Jahre des grossen Schweigens”). In fact, until the era of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rebuilding) in the late 1980s, the events that defined these years for the Soviet Germans could not be legally researched, written about, or even publicly spoken about, within the USSR.
Constructing the Limits of Europe
This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging d...
On the Verge of History
Rural women have not had a formative role in the public histories of Central Eastern Europe. Izabella Agárdi aims to correct that by concentrating on their life stories and their connections to general histories. She investigates how Hungarian-speaking, ordinary women in rural contexts born in the 1920s and 1930s remember and talk about the twentieth century they have experienced, and how, through their stories, they articulate historical change and construct themselves as historical subjects. In her analysis, Izabella Agárdi traces the interactions between micro- and macro- narratives as well as the specific tools women of this generation appropriate to talk about personal memories of their often traumatic past. From these stories, a particular mnemonic community emerges, one that speaks from a highly precarious position 'on the verge of history'. It is up to future generations whether these women's experiences will be remembered or forgotten.
Germany and Its West African Colonies
West African history is usually seen as mainly influenced by English or French colonialism. There is a new interest in German colonialism, but most research is done in European archives and with a European point-of-view. This book explores German colonial exploits and their consequences in Ghana, Togo, and Cameroon, mostly from an African point-of-view. By means of research on sites of the colonial hinterland and the agency of entangled people, the book reveals the simmering impact of the past encounters on indigenous religious, cultural, political, and socio-economic developments in West Africa. (Series: African Studies / Afrikanische Studien - Vol. 49)
Russian Germans on Four Continents
The history of Russian Germans (Russlanddeutsche) is one of intensive mobility across space and time. Today, the descendants of eighteenth-century German-speaking settlers in the Russian Empire live on four continents: Europe, Asia, and North and South America. In this volume, authors from the fields of history, sociology, cultural studies, and sociolinguistics analyze key issues of the history and present of this globally connected diaspora group from an interdisciplinary angle. Contributions address the institutional regimes and networks that shaped—and continue to shape—the mobility of Russian Germans on a global scale, the impact of war and violence on the history of this group durin...
Inventing Majorities
The recent history of post-Soviet societies is heavily shaped by the successor nations’ efforts to geopolitically re-identify themselves and to reify certain majorities in them. As a result of these fascinating processes, various new ideologies have appeared. Some are specific to the post-Soviet space while others are comparable to ideational processes in other parts of the world. In this collected volume, an international group of contributors delves deeper into recent theoretical constructions of various post-Soviet majorities, the ideologies that justify them, and some respectively formulated policy prescriptions. The first part analyzes post-Soviet state-builders’ fixation on certain...
Rynders Family Selected Histories
Andrew Rynders was born 15 January 1798 in Dutchess County, New York. His parents were John Rynders and Margaret G. Steenburgh. He married Sarah Miner (1805-1843), daughter of Amos Miner and Phoebe Hamblin, 23 June 1822. They had ten children. He married Elizabeth Sevier in 1844 and they had one daughter. He married Arrena A. Beasley in 1849 and they had eight children. He died in 1889 in Illinois. Descendants and relatives lived mainly in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and Texas.
Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949
Between 1937 and 1949, Joseph Stalin deported more than two million people of 13 nationalities from their homelands to remote areas of the U.S.S.R. His regime perfected the crime of ethnic cleansing as an adjunct to its security policy during those decades. Based upon material recently released from Soviet archives, this study describes the mass deportation of these minorities, their conditions in exile, and their eventual release. It includes a large amount of statistical data on the number of people deported; deaths and births in exile; and the role of the exiles in developing the economy of remote areas of the Soviet Union. The first wholesale deportation involved the Soviet Koreans, relo...
Religions and Migrations in the Black Sea Region
This book focuses on the interconnections of religion and migration in the Black Sea region through case studies that explore shifting identities, community, and national boundaries, as well as social practices and networks. During the past few decades the Black Sea has been transformed from a largely closed region, due to the Cold War, to a bridge for human, economic, and cultural capital flows. As the region opened up, understandings and practices of religion were re-signified due to new and diverse mobilities and resettlements. This volume addresses and responds to the current scarcity of academic research on the repercussion of political reform, migration, and modernization in the areas surrounding the Black Sea. Contributors uncover and examine the pivotal role of religion in current cultural contestations taking place in this strategic region. Engaging with a wide range of case studies, the book offers a fresh, comparative examination of migration as it relates to different countries and religious groups in the region.
Nkrumah and the West
The developmental years of Ghana - the first state to become independent from colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa in 1957 - were marked by the United Kingdom's effort to showcase its former colony as a model of successful democracy export for the rest of Black Africa. They called it the "Ghana Experiment". Major Western powers like the United States and West Germany participated in the attempt to keep Ghana aligned with the West. As Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah embarked on a bold anti-imperialistic, pan-African policy, Britain and the United States concerted a common strategy which accelerated Nkrumah's eventual downfall in 1966 and brought Ghana back into the Western sphere of influence.
