“We are not so Fuzzy to Build Riots and Rebellion...”: Attempt of Massive Exemption of German Population from the USSR to Canada in 1929.

Abstract

The mass exodus of German peasants to Moscow in 1929 attracted international attention to the plight of Soviet Germans. The unexpectedly stubborn resistance of the German rural population to the policy of socialist transformations, his desire to leave the USSR for Canada, accompanied by appropriate calls for the West, reinforced the regime’s distrust of “disloyal” nationalities. As relations between the USSR and Germany worsened, prejudice grew in Moscow against the Germans as an extremely reactionary group of people that discredited the Soviet system in the eyes of the world community. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) paid great attention to the “emigrants” not only because the periphery was unable to cope with this problem, but also because it was a question of Western national minorities. Moreover, this group, which in an organized manner opposed the policy of the Soviet regime, did not fit into the “class” scheme, since among the German peasants who decided to emigrate from the USSR, there were mainly middle peasants and poor people. The opposition to the Soviet system was not a social, but a national group. The regime resolved this contradiction by ceasing to consider the German peasants engulfed by the “American fever” “neutral” and collectively transferring them to the category of “class enemies”. Against the background of forced collectivization, the Kremlin regarded the mass movement of Germans for leaving the USSR as direct support for the “right deviators”, which gave this movement an “anti-Soviet character”. The belonging of the fugitives and their many supporters to the Western minority prompted the organs of the OGPU to look for the organizers of the emigration movement on the other side of the border. Peaceful emigration of Germans from the USSR turned out to be a specific, but very effective way of protesting collectivization. Its avalanche-like character, as well as the appeal for help to Germany as a “historical homeland” was considered a manifestation of disloyalty to the USSR of the entire German population of the country. Germany’s protectorate policy aimed at protecting the life, property and fundamental rights of its “diaspora” was expressed both in diplomatic pressure on the Kremlin and in specific acts of assistance to Soviet Germans. Such patronage of the Germans in the USSR inevitably aroused fears among the Kremlin leadership that they, especially in the atmosphere of impending war, pose a threat to the security of the state.