German Colonists of Northwest Russia in Conditions of Post-Revolutionary Reality (1918-1922)

Abstract

The focus of this publication is on the history of the German village of the North-West of the RSFSR in the first post-revolutionary years (1918—1922). The economic and political life of the German rural population is characterized, including the resolution of land issues, economic activities, requisition policies of the Bolshevik leadership towards them, as well as the formation and functioning of Soviet and party bodies in areas with high concentrations of Germans. The condition and functioning of German farms largely depended on the extraordinary revolutionary economic measures carried out by the Bolsheviks within the framework of equalizing land use and “war communism”, where the German village was considered as an easily accessible and high-performance source of agricultural resources for the Red Army and the urban population, which resulted in an excessively high economic burden on the colonies and a selective approach to accounting for national the specifics of the economic life of the Germans and their current economic opportunities. German peasants mostly negatively perceived post-revolutionary innovations, and service in Soviet and party bodies was used as a tool to protect and promote their personal economic interests and to protect them from possible repressive measures.