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Abstract
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Siberia once again became a “melting pot” that brought together representatives of diverse ethnic groups. The reasons for migration beyond the Urals were predominantly economic. This article examines how various social events in the first third of the 20th century affected the lives of Siberian Germans. Amid the agrarian crisis, Russian Germans engaged in agriculture were compelled to seek ways to survive within Russia. The modernization of the state resettlement policy in the early 20th century and the expansion of rail transport created favorable conditions for labor migration, as a result of which, by the mid-1910s, Siberia had become one of the most rapidly developing agrarian regions. German settlers played no small part in this process by establishing capitalist family-farm enterprises that served as models for Russian old-settlers and other migrants.
The events of 1914–1922 disrupted the established rhythms of German rural life. The economic policies of the Bolsheviks who came to power precipitated famine in the first half of the 1920s. The German population suffered as well, which fueled growing emigration sentiment. Even so, the New Economic Policy (NEP) and the revival of cooperatives enabled a rapid recovery of small-scale commodity production. The All-Russian Mennonite Agricultural Union played an important role in this process. The gradual rollback of the NEP and the shift to a command-administrative economic model brought increasing pressure to bear on the German population, among which conservative-clerical sentiments predominated. By the late 1920s, this would trigger a new round of confrontation between Russian Germans and the Soviet state.
This article will interest readers concerned with the history of ethnic minorities (Russian Germans) and nationalities policy in the 20th century.
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