THE PARTY-STATE NOMENCLATURE FOR THE VOLGA GERMAN REPUBLIC

Abstract

The article is a summary of the content and results of the author’s research into the party-Soviet nomenclature of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In the course of the study, the origin, education, worldview, personal qualities, and activities of a significant number of the German Autonomy party Soviet functionaries were analyzed. The study was based on a wide array of documentary sources. The author is the first to identify three types of integrated images of the nomenclature that ruled the Volga Germans in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The first type comes from the intellectuals, as a rule, with prerevolutionary experience in social democratic work and supporters of classical Marxism, although infected with it, but able to more or less adequately assess the situation in society, the mood of people, and the degree of their ability to implement communist attitudes in practice. The second type is people from the “lower classes” who got involved in revolutionary practice during the Civil War, who knew and dogmatically perceived only the basics of Marxism and were fanatically ready to do anything for “brighter future”, without thinking about the consequences of their actions. The third type is young personnel, formed in the Soviet time by the end of the 1930s. They perceived the ideas of Stalinist socialism as religion and were personally loyal to the leader. Having traced the fate of all the types of nomenclature, the author comes to the conclusion that the first type prevailed until the end of the 1920s. During the years of the “Great Turning Point” it was ousted from power by those who belonged to the second type. Almost all the nomenclature of the first and second types was destroyed in 1937-1938. They were replaced by the young nomenclature of the third type. Its administrative “destruction” took place during the deportation of the Germans from the Volga Region. Eventually, they shared the fate of their people.