Sociologists and political scientists often use a theory of social implications of forced
migration to explain demographical and political changes and predict the consequences of the world-scale forced displacement of peoples in the last two decades. This theory
implies that the immediate results of the forced migrations are the loss of familiar
surroundings ...
(Show more)Sociologists and political scientists often use a theory of social implications of forced
migration to explain demographical and political changes and predict the consequences of the world-scale forced displacement of peoples in the last two decades. This theory
implies that the immediate results of the forced migrations are the loss of familiar
surroundings and the loss of representatives of the native ethos through the death and
separation, deformation and transformation of the national spiritual and material values:
and destruction of social institutions like daycares and schools. More importantly, the
theory states that in a long run, the forced migration results in the transformation of
mentality, or ethnic self?consciousness, and in the creation and preservation of the image of the "enemy" on individual and group levels.
This theory can prove very useful if applied to the study of historical phenomena.
My research indicates that the affects that the forced displacement of the 1940s had on
ethnic Germans residing in the Soviet Union, fit perfectly into the above theory's
conclusions. Prior to the forced displacement, Germans in the Soviet territory refused to
perceive themselves as one ethnic entity and were very segregated. Thus, the Germans of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Baltic States, Southern Russia, and Caucasus prided themselves
at being different from one another and from Volga Germans. Even the latter believed to be at least four distinct peoples, and some even attempted to preserve the cultural and
dialectical differences of their Swabian, Hessen, and other ancestors.
However, the experience of the forced migration to special settlements with its immediate affects, which included numerous deaths, starvation, and unbearable living conditions, had altered the ethnic self-identity of Germans in the Soviet Union. These once very distinct groups of Germans reemerged in the 1960s with a homogenous pan-
German self-consciousness of "Soviet Germans." Moreover, the strong and uniform image of the "enemy" was preserved for decades and resulted in mass immigration of Soviet Germans to their ethnic motherland after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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