Notes to Pages 127–128 227
they had suffered as young children at the time when they had lost a parent (or both par-
ents) to the Terror. Their laments sounded eerily similar to those of a child who now feels
helpless or lost in the world; this was the “young child” speaking. Then they would follow
up their lament by saying, “This was all a long, long time ago and I am old now and have put
this to rest.” Thus, multiple identities and voices, all in the pres ent.
- From 1930 to 1933, 2.2 million peasants would be deported as “kulaks” to vari ous
parts of the Soviet Union such as Siberia and Central Asia. Germans and Poles were re-
pressed as kulaks at rates much higher than the national (All- Union) average; Werth, “The
Mechanism of a Mass Crime, 219. In the Western borderlands, 57.3 percent of the kulak
deportees were Poles and/or Germans. See Martin, “Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,”
- Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 321.
- GARF, f. 3316, op. 64, d. 760, ll. 76, 78. Page 76 states: “But, further, not all
organ izations in places of activity have yet put into practice the existing directives of the
Central Committee of the Party and leadership on the question of strengthening economic
assistance to landless agricultural workers and poor peasants among German and Polish
districts and eco nom ically strengthen existing and new or ga ni za tion of German, Polish,
and Greek kolkhozes.”
- In the case of the Poles, their classification as ideological enemies was predomi-
nantly due to Poland and Poles representing cap i tal ist imperialist ideologies and a state
antithetical to the USSR. That is, the ethnic cleansing of the Poles and Germans, “national
in form,” was simply a mask for an ideological battle with states against Soviet socialism,
according to the Martin’s theory of “Soviet xenophobia.” He states: “More decisive here
was the combined effect of the Shumskyi affair, Pilsudski’s rise to power in Poland, the
1927 war scare.... As cross- border ethnic ties were increasingly seen as an impor tant
conduit for the penetration of foreign cap i tal ist influence, Soviet xenophobia became ethni-
cized”; see Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 325. The implication was that Pilsudski
(Poland) was turning the Ukraine into a Polish sphere of active espionage, fifth columnists,
and a reversal of the Piedmont princi ple. Also see Martin, “Origins of Soviet Ethnic
Cleansing,” 829, regarding his definition of “Soviet xenophobia.”
- This period begins from 1922 to collectivization (1930).
- Brown, A Biography of No Place, 4. German knights first conquered several re-
gions near the Baltic Sea in the thirteenth century. By the fourteenth century, Germans
made up the majority of the residents in the early Baltic towns; See Lieven, The Baltic Revo-
lution, 43–57, 133–138. Regarding the Polish nobles, see Subitelny, Ukraine: A History,
69–104. Some segments of the “German” community, such as the Mennonites, were
extremely conscientious in following the orders to collectivize. As an example, in an ObKom
(Oblast Committee) report, one Mennonite leader stated: “If the state orders us to go to the
kolkhoz, we will do it because, as the Bible says, ‘Carry out the orders of the authorities.’ ”
See GARF, f. 3316, op. 64, d. 760, l. 77.
- Regarding the Germans in the Baltics, see Thaden et al., Russification in the Baltic
Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914, 3, 15, and passim. Note that the Baltics were first incor-
porated into the Rus sian Empire in 1710 but were not a part of the Soviet Union during
collectivization. Nonetheless, German colonists (not nobles) in the Ukraine were large
landowners who hired out peasants to work their lands, but they did not have serfs, as the
Germans were not a part of the Rus sian nobility. See J. Otto Pohl, “Volk auf dem Weg:
Transnational Migration of the Russian- Germans from 1763 to the Pres ent Day,” Studies in
Ethnicity and Nationality 9, no. 2 (2009): 267–286.
