UC Berkeley

My dissertation examines the historical experience of Black Sea Germans, a rural group from Sothern Ukraine, to understand the role of ethnic minorities in the development of the Soviet Union. The first German settlers arrived in Ukraine during the reign of Catherine the Great, creating a network of agricultural villages on the coast of the Black Sea. After the Russian Revolution, the community bore the brunt of Bolshevik policies before falling under the Nazi occupation in the summer of 1941. The members of the group were evacuated to Germany in the winter of 1943/44, repatriated after the war by the victorious Red Army, and promptly exiled to Central Asia to perform forced labor. My work reconstructs the historical trajectory of Black Sea Germans to understand how the experience of prolonged dislocation shaped the group’s identity and strategies that allowed it to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. Freed in the late 1950s, the Black Germans participated in the development campaign, known as the Virgin Lands Campaign, aimed at the modernization of Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan. They took advantage of labor shortages in the region to fill critical jobs in agriculture and industries, which allowed for the economic stabilization of their community. Throughout the postwar period, the Black Sea Germans avoided most forms of political participation, focusing instead on preserving their identity and language. The development of the German press in Kazakhstan and the introduction of the German language to educational, cultural, and even religious institutions helped preserve German culture in the region. The politically passive, professionally successful, and culturally engaged character allowed the group to integrate into the social fabric of Soviet Kazakhstan and reinvent itself as the model minority of the republic.