History Of Germans In Russia And The Soviet Union
The German minority in Russia and the Soviet Union was created from several sources and in several waves. The 1914 census puts the number of Germans living in Russian Empire at 2,416,290. In 1989, the German population of the Soviet Union was roughly 2 million. In the 2002 Russian census, 597,212 Germans were enumerated, making Germans the fifth largest ethnic group in Russia. In 1999, there were 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan and 21,472 in Kyrgyzstan. According to the 2001 census, 33,300 Germans lived in Ukraine.
In the Russian Empire, ethnic Germans were strongly represented among royalty, aristocracy, large land owners, military officers and the upper echelons of the imperial service, engineers, scientists, artists, physicians and the bourgeoisie in general. The Germans of Russia did not necessarily speak Russian; they spoke German, while French was often the language of the high aristocracy. Now, however, the Germans in Russia usually speak only Russian and have adopted Russian culture and have a poor command of German. For this reason, Germany has recently strictly limited their immigration, and the fall of Germans in the Russian Federation has moderated as they no longer emigrate to Germany and as Kazakh Germans move to Russia instead of Germany.
Read more about History Of Germans In Russia And The Soviet Union: Germans in Russia and Ukraine, Decline of The Russian Germans, Demographics, Germans in The Baltics, Famous Russian-Germans
Famous quotes containing the words history of, soviet union, history, germans, russia, soviet and/or union:
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“The Germans believe that, no matter where, they can get by on knowledge alone. Art, however, requires skill.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“A fool may be a dangerous customer, but the fact of his having such a vulnerable top-end turns danger into a first-rate sport; and whatever defects the old administration in Russia had, it must be conceded that it possessed one outstanding virtue—a lack of brains.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“One difference between Nazi and Soviet camps was that in the latter dying was a slower process.”
—Terrence Des Pres (1939–1987)
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)