Bonn Urges Russia to Restore Land for Its Ethnic Germans
By JOHN TAGLIABUE,
Published: January 11, 1992
BERLIN, Jan. 10— Germany is pressing Russia for the restoration of an autonomous republic for two million ethnic Germans in an apparent effort to forestall any migration to Germany by descendants of people who first came to Russia more than 200 years ago.
German officials said a joint Russian-German commission would meet in Moscow this month, after Bonn demanded that restoration of the republic in the "traditional settlement regions of the Germans" be "brought forward at an accelerated pace."
A strongly worded statement was issued late last month after meetings in Bonn of German officials and representatives of the so-called Volga Germans. It calls on President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia to honor a pledge he gave Chancellor Helmut Kohl, on a visit to Bonn in December, to lay down the republic's boundaries by presidential decree. Germans Debating Options
These developments, whose details were described by German officials in recent days, are unfolding at a time when Germany is debating its foreign policy options toward the old Soviet republics. Moreover, they pressure Mr. Yeltsin at a time of deep economic woes, and threaten to revive anti-German sentiment in Russia.
In the Soviet Union, the 1989 census numbered roughly two million people who claimed German nationality. Under German law, they have an automatic right to citizenship, though fewer than half have mastered the German language.
The idea in Bonn is that restoration of the old Volga republic with guaranteed rights for Germans will deter many of their number from migrating to Germany. The Government's concern is rooted in the case of ethnic Germans from the Transylvania region of Romania, most of whom fled to Germany after the collapse of Communism two years ago.
The statement issued last month, by the Interior Ministry official responsible for the Volga Germans, Horst Waffenschmidt, and Heinrich Groth, the chairman of a Moscow-based organization that represents them, pledges economic aid to rebuild German villages and small businesses to restore traditional German services. Such initiatives, the statement says, will serve "not only the Germans, but also their non-German neighbors." Historical Influence
Of all foreigners, the Germans through history have had the most influence in Russia. From the time of Peter the Great, the Russians have looked to the Germans for technology and organization, and hundreds of thousands of Germans migrated east to serve in the army and economy of the Russian empire.
In a measure of their lingering influence, the ethnic Germans are often referred to as Volga Germans for an autonomous Volga republic that was set up in 1924. More than half its population was descended from German colonists who settled the banks of the Volga near Saratov in the 1760's.
"Mostly they were farmers and craftsmen," said Hans Frick, a historian of the Volga Germans who is a spokesman for the Association of Germans Abroad, an organization channeling aid to them. "The Russians valued their industriousness and reliability."
The republic was abolished by a decree of Stalin in 1941 after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and roughly 400,000 of the German inhabitants were deported to Siberia.
A Foreign Ministry official in Bonn said agreement to restore the republic was anchored in the treaty of cooperation signed last year by Moscow and Bonn, though he conceded problems existed over the exact boundaries. While the Volga Germans want their old territories back, Mr. Yeltsin is encountering stiff resistance among the Russians who were transplanted there after the deportation of the Germans. Change in Policy
In a sense the developments represent a departure from a repatriation policy that has seen hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans return to Germany from Eastern Europe in recent years.
Still, Bonn appropriated the equivalent of $130 million for 1991 and 1992 to help the Germans by establishing hospitals and schools and financing small businesses in regions they now inhabit, mainly in northern Kazakhstan around cities like Omsk, Karaganda and Semipalatinsk. Mr. Kohl has pledged far larger amounts if Mr. Yeltsin comes through.
Russian leaders like Mr. Yeltsin appear keen to hold on to the Germans, whose collective farms and industrial enterprises are generally considered a cut above the Russian average in productivity. Russian diplomats compare their potential loss with the exodus of the Jewish population to Israel. Moreover, their presence is seen as a potential magnet for German capital at a time of dire Russian need.
The organization Mr. Groth leads was legalized in 1989 by Mikhail S. Gorbachev after years of underground activity, and now acts as a link between the Germans in the old Soviet republics and Bonn. Mr. Gorbachev and other Communist leaders originally sought an association that would be merely cultural in scope, but with the party's collapse and the Soviet President's fall Mr. Groth, a popular fisheries engineer from southern Ukraine who strongly favors the autonomous republic, emerged as uncontested leader.
In an interview published in the fall, Mr. Groth warned that failure to restore the German lands would spark "massive emigration." Some officials note that about 200,000 ethnic Germans have already obtained German consular authorizations to emigrate to Germany.
German officials say Mr. Yeltsin's problem involves making the return of the Germans palatable to the Russians who now inhabit their lands.
On a trip through the region this week Mr. Yeltsin encountered protesters opposed to the return of the Germans. Mr. Yeltsin said he would agree to an autonomous republic, but only in an area where ethnic Germans made up more than 90 percent of the population and where land was available.
The old republic occupied an area of roughly 11,000 square miles, slightly larger than the state of Maryland, straddling the Volga near the cities of Saratov and Engels. In an initial proposal, the German Foreign Ministry said, Mr. Yeltsin promised the Germans about 1,200 square miles of land southeast of Saratov, to which he later added 720 square miles from a former missile firing range in the region. The Germans, however, with Bonn's backing, rejected the offer as inadequate.
In the December statement, the Government objected that a "splintering of the German settlement areas should be avoided," in order not to endanger the "togetherness and identity" of the German settlers.
Before the revolution, Germans were important in business and professional communities in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The commercial classes were largely German in broad areas of the Baltic republics and Ukraine, and in port cities like Riga and Odessa, where large German communities resided. After the 1918 treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which established a separate peace between Berlin and Moscow in World War I, Germany obtained enormous influence in the separate anti-Bolshevik republic that arose in the Ukraine and in areas of Poland and Byelorussia that had belonged to the old Russian empire.
But with the end of World War II and the defeat of Germany, the German influence all but disappeared. Indeed, great battles like the terrible struggle for Stalingrad -- today Volgograd -- south of Saratov on the Volga, left strong feelings of resentment in the region toward the old German settlers who were now no more.
Map of Eastern Europe showing location of former Volga Republic.