The Years of Great Silence

Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-3-8382-1630-0
Verlag: ibidem-Verlag

Buch, Englisch, Band 238, 298 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 388 g

Reihe: Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressive one in the 1930s, i.e. already before the Soviet-German war.

J. Otto Pohl traces the development of Soviet repression of ethnic Germans. In particular, he focuses on the years 1941 to 1955 during which this oppression reached its peak. These years became known as “the Years of Great Silence” (“die Jahre des grossen Schweigens”). In fact, until the era of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rebuilding) in the late 1980s, the events that defined these years for the Soviet Germans could not be legally researched, written about, or even publicly spoken about, within the USSR.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pohl, Jonathan Otto

Umland, Andreas

Weitere Mitwirkende

Umland, Andreas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Historische Migrationsforschung
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Genozid und ethnische Säuberung
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen

Über Autor(innen)

The author:

Dr. J. Otto Pohl received his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught at the American University Iraq Sulaimani, University of Ghana, and American University of Central Asia. He is the author of Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 (Greenwood, 1999) and The Stalinist Penal System (McFarland & Co., 1997). His articles have appeared in, among other journals, The Russian Review, Journal of Genocide Research, Human Rights Review, and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism.