History Of Germans In Russia And The Soviet Union
The German minority in Russia and the Soviet Union was created from several sources and in several waves. The 1914 census puts the number of Germans living in Russian Empire at 2,416,290. In 1989, the German population of the Soviet Union was roughly 2 million. In the 2002 Russian census, 597,212 Germans were enumerated, making Germans the fifth largest ethnic group in Russia. In 1999, there were 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan and 21,472 in Kyrgyzstan. According to the 2001 census, 33,300 Germans lived in Ukraine.
In the Russian Empire, ethnic Germans were strongly represented among royalty, aristocracy, large land owners, military officers and the upper echelons of the imperial service, engineers, scientists, artists, physicians and the bourgeoisie in general. The Germans of Russia did not necessarily speak Russian; they spoke German, while French was often the language of the high aristocracy. Now, however, the Germans in Russia usually speak only Russian and have adopted Russian culture and have a poor command of German. For this reason, Germany has recently strictly limited their immigration, and the fall of Germans in the Russian Federation has moderated as they no longer emigrate to Germany and as Kazakh Germans move to Russia instead of Germany.
Read more about History Of Germans In Russia And The Soviet Union: Germans in Russia and Ukraine, Decline of The Russian Germans, Demographics, Germans in The Baltics, Famous Russian-Germans
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“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Germans believe that, no matter where, they can get by on knowledge alone. Art, however, requires skill.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“They were right. The Soviet régime is not the embodiment of evil as you think in the West. They have laws and I broke them. I hate tea and they love tea. Who is wrong?”
—Alexander Zinoviev (b. 1922)
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—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)