RESETTLEMENT MOVEMENT AMONG THE GERMAN POPULATION OF THE SOUTHERN REGIONS OF THE UKRAINIAN SSR IN THE 1920S
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24919/2519-058X.24.264746Abstract
The aim of the research is to elucidate poorly analyzed issue – the process of relocation of the German landless and smallholders from the Polissian and forest-steppe districts of the Ukrainian SSR to the free lands of the southern region of the Republic during the 1920s. The author used general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, system, method of generalization and the historical, historical and systemic methods to study this problem. The scientific novelty of the article is that, based on archival sources, the little-studied problem of resettlement of the German population in the southern regions of the Republic during the 1920s has been analyzed. The research is based on the documents from the Central State Archives of Higher Authorities and Administration of Ukraine. The following conclusions have been made: at the beginning of the 1920s, in the agrarian sector of the Ukrainian SSR, in the Polissia zone and the forest-steppe of the Republic the “agrarian overpopulation” arose. There were several reasons for this phenomenon, and one of the main ones is the sharp increase in the population in these traditionally agricultural zones of Ukraine. Already in the first half of the 1920s, 68 000 German peasants (12.8 thousand yards) appeared in landless villages of Volhynia, Podillia, and partly in Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. Altogether 110 thousand people needed to improve their agricultural situation and resettlement to the free lands of the southern part of republic, or the All-Union Resettlement Land Fund (free lands in all Soviet Union). During the first half of the 1920s, 30 700 Germans and in the second half of the 1920s – at the beginning of the 1930s – 30 800 Germans moved to the southern regions of the Republic. It should be noted that the desirable condition for resettlement was the creation of collectivized resettlement farms. For settlers in the south of the republic not only enough land and pastures for productive farming and livestock was provided, as well as allocated state financial assistance for housing, purchase of agricultural inventory, the purchase of domestic animals, etc. But process of repression against German national minority was staged by the Soviet authorities during the 1930s – the 1940s. It led to the destruction of national settlements and death of representatives of the German nationality.
Key words: agrarian overpopulation, landless peasants, resettlement, German population, Ukrainian SSR.
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