Russian-German Special Relations in the Twentieth Century: A Closed Chapter? (German Historical Perspectives)
Karl Schlögel
Language: English
Pages: 235
ISBN: 2:00105008
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Twentieth-century Europe, especially Central Eastern Europe, has been largely defined by Russia and Germany. In this century, cultural and economic exchanges between the two countries were as active as the fires of hatred intense. The smaller states in between, with their unstable borders and internal minorities, suffered from the powers' alliances and their antagonisms. This volume of new research in political and cultural history examines the two powers' turbulent relationship, including the pre-1914 era of exchange and cooperation; the projects of modernity in post-revolutionary Russia and Weimar Germany; the struggle for dominance over Central Europe in World War II; and mutual views of Germans and Russians after 1945. In the wake of the crucial events of 1989 and the transformation of German-Russian relations, it asks whether the configuration of Russian-German relations that once dominated twentiehth-century Europe has now dissolved, leaving us to find new ways of cooperation between 'New Russia' and 'New Europe'.
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Moscow, made up the central committee. They could immediately reactivate the strong ties to the German Social Democrats that had been made before 1914, and up to 1933 constituted a sort of brains trust guiding the clearly anti-Bolshevik Russian policies of the SPD. From 1921 to 1933 the Mensheviks published a weekly newspaper in Russian, with a German edition, the Organ of Russian Social Democracy, appearing simultaneously. The activities of the Mensheviks seem to have been focussed on Germany,
‘Malenkie liudi’ i ‘bol’shaia istoriia’. Inostrantsy moskovskogo Elektrozavoda v sovetskom obshchestve 1920-ch – 1930-ch gg (Moscow, 2000). (German translation under the title ‘Ich bitte um Arbeit in der Sowjetunion.’ Das Schicksal deutscher Facharbeiter im Moskau der 30er Jahre, Berlin, 2003). Hedda Zinner, Selbstbefragung (Berlin: Der Morgen, 1989), p. 12. On the ‘difficulties with the truth’ of German writers who lived in Soviet exile, cf. Anne Hartmann, Traum und Trauma Sowjetunion: Deutsche
it should allow us the necessary arms.’18 The second, only shortly after, reads: ‘Only a firm union with Great Russia will allow Germany to regain its world hegemony. Even if the powers of the Entente fight this with all available means, our mutual interests will eventually bring about German-Russian unification by natural force.’19 Further development took the path of, in Radek’s terminology, the ‘counterrevolutionary’ variant of the German-Russian alliance, i.e. it was based on opposite political
workers in Ivdel’lag lost her position and was expelled from the communist youth organization. A female doctor had to tolerate public denunciation because on a few occasions she met one of the German forced labourers in her own flat, and that ‘was contrary to the strict regulations of the building authority of Cheliabinsk iron and steel combine’, which forbade ‘relationships of any sort between personnel and the mobilised German workforce’.68 In addition to military supervision, Soviet secret
Viktor Krieger V. Kherdt (Victor Herdt), ‘Etno-demograficheskie protsessy v Saratovskoi oblasti v 1940-e gody’, in Rossiiskie nemtsy na Donu, pp. 211–22, here p. 215. The text of this instruction is printed in Deportatsiia narodov SSSR, pp. 94–105. Viktor Bruhl, Die Deutschen in Sibirien, vol. 2 (Nürnberg, 2003), p. 28– 44. Kherdt, ‘Etno-demograficheskie protsessy’, pp. 215–19; O. Skuchaeva, ‘“Novye raiony” Saratovskoi oblasti v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: migratsionnyi aspekt’, in Nemtsy