CARROT AND STICK METHOD

The first German colonists - subjects of the Kingdom of Wцrttemberg in Germany (birthplace of the great Schiller, now the territory of the former kingdom is part of the state of Baden-Wцrttemberg with its capital in Stuttgart) arrived in the Caucasus at the end of the first decade of the 19th century. The first group decided to settle near Tiflis, and a few families from the second group moved on in search of fortune and chose a spot for settlement near Yelizavetpol, now Ganca. That was in 1818. What prompted about 500 families to leave their homes at the beginning of the 19th century and move to hitherto unknown lands in another state? Apparently, it was a land reform, in which many farmers of the kingdom lost their land and, therefore, their source of livelihood. There may have been other reasons, including those of political and religious nature.

A single body

Whatever it was, a hundred years after moving to the territory of present Azerbaijan, the Germans settled in eight colonies: Helenendorf (now Goygol) Annenfeld (Samkir), Traubenfeld (Tovuz), Jelisawetinka (Yelizavetinka, Agstafa), Georgsfeld (the village of Cinarli in Samkir District), Alexejewka (Alekseyevka, the village of Hasan-Su in Agstafa District), Grцnfeld (the village of Vurgun in Agstafa District) and Eichenfeld (the village of Irimasli in Shamkir District). The main activity of the Germans was, of course, farming or more specifically, viticulture and winemaking. However, they were no strangers to various crafts. The colonies stood out for their tidiness, cleanliness and neatness. According to the researcher of the life, working and living conditions of Azerbaijani Germans, N. A. Ibrahimov, "the colony lived and worked as a reasonably planned single organism".

Thanks to the support of Azerbaijanis, the German colony survived and was not subjected to deportation during World War I, when Russia, of which the colonists were citizens, and Germany, the historic homeland of the colonists, clashed on the battlefields for the right of hegemony in Europe. Supreme power in Russia decided not to apply to the Azerbaijani Germans the tsarist decree to deprive them, Russian nationals, of their property and expel them into the interior of the country, i.e., Siberia from areas of military operations, to which the Caucasus belonged.

On 28 May 1918, the independent Azerbaijan Republic was proclaimed. The parliament of the new state envisaged the representation of all the nationalities living in the republic. Based on this principle, the Azerbaijani Germans were allocated one seat in the legislative assembly of the Azerbaijan Republic. Perhaps for the first time in the 100 years of living in the Caucasus, the Azerbaijani Germans became full citizens of the state. By the way, in June 1919 they celebrated the centenary of their moving to Azerbaijan. On this occasion, the parliament sent a greeting telegram to the German colonists. By April 1920, the German colonists had a firmly established and well-developed agricultural economy, the main place in which, of course, was occupied by viticulture and winemaking. Realizing the benefits of collective farming and small and medium-sized farms, the colonists organized a number of cooperatives in the early 20th century, and the most famous of them was the Concordia cooperative. The rise of Bolsheviks to power radically changed the position of the German colonists in Azerbaijan. In the eyes of the new government, many of them looked like "exploiters of the common people" and had to be finished off once and for all. All more or less large wineries were nationalized, and on their basis, state farms, which were a part of the Azervino public trust, were established. Strange but true: in all of these troubles with the change of ownership forms, only the Concordia cooperative survived. It was joined by farms that were previously part of disbanded companies. However, as it turned out after a few years, the authorities had left Concordia alone only for the time being. According to the researcher S. Zeynalova, in 1926, the cooperative united 96.1 per cent of the population of the eight German colonies of Azerbaijan, i.e., almost an absolute majority of the colonists. Perhaps, this limited a major punitive campaign against the Germans in Azerbaijan.

Beginning of defeat

At the beginning of 1926, the activity of Concordia was checked by the Ministry of Workers and Peasants Inspections. The indictment was forwarded to the court. The case was heard in the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan from 25 July to 3 August 1926. The materials of the court show that charges of committing crimes under various articles of the Criminal Code were brought against members of the main board of the cooperative, Georg Georgiyevich Beck, Gottlieb Ivanovich Hummel, Lorenz Kuhn (former member of the Azerbaijani parliament who represented the German colonists - author), Ernst Hummel, Adolf Kuhn, members and staff of the same cooperative Zeiser Otto, Robert Ongemach, Frederick Reitenbach, members of the Georgiyev village council, Wilhelm Beck, Werner Wackengert and Edward Breisch. Their main guilt was that a resident of the Helenendorf colony, Theodor Hummel, who was living in Berlin, was invited as a representative of Concordia abroad for the sale of cognac alcohol sent by Concordia to the Hermes society abroad through Vneshtorg and for the purchase of medical materials, production tools and other items for the needs of the cooperative. And for the implementation of various instructions, Hummel was paid in foreign currency through the Moscow and Tiflis representative offices on behalf of the Main Board. However, transfers to Hummel were made not through banks but through diplomatic couriers of the German embassy in Moscow and the consulate in Tbilisi. Correspondence to Germany was also sent through couriers. This was the case until 1924. The affairs of the Main Board were managed by its permanent chairman Georg Beck, as well as by Gottlieb Hummel and Lorenz Kuhn. The investigation also revealed that from 1921 to 1923, to ensure the smooth export of products, the Concordia board gave bribes to public and railway departments in the form of wine, cognac and money. The documents described these costs as "lubricants".

During the trial, several counts of the charges were not confirmed while in some episodes, the court found no corpus delicti. Nevertheless, Beck and Hummel were sentenced to 10 and Kuhn - to 8 years in prison. However, the court amnestied and halved the sentence. Hummel got 6 years in prison and the other defendants - lesser sentences while two were acquitted altogether. Thus, repression against the German colonists was launched...

Soon the authorities began to eliminate private property in agriculture and to that end, initiated a process called collectivization in the village.

Meanwhile, the headless Concordia cooperative sharply reduced the rate of economic activity, but the colonists still did not want to join a collective farm. However, collectivization was carried out in the German colonies in the early 1930s. The collective farms were given German names. For example, two of the collective farms were given the names of German communists - Thalmann and Clara Zetkin. One more farm was named after International. Until that, the colonies had already been given Soviet-style names: Yelizavetinka became Marksovkaya, Georgiyevsk - Lenin-feld and Eichenfeld - Engelsfeld. The village of Helenendorf was renamed Xanlar and Annenfeld - Samxor.

The stick method

Azerbaijani Bolsheviks headed by Mir Cafar Bagirov did not want to tolerate the willfulness and independence of German colonists. The 19 November 1934 meeting of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the ACP (B) considered the issue of German villages. The report was made by the second secretary of the Central Committee, Agrba. The meeting stated that "among the German population living in the ASSR, anti-Soviet kulak elements, who often lead open counter-revolutionary activities, have become especially active in the recent period". The resolution that was adopted noted the intolerance of Soviet power towards anti-Soviet actions on the part of the German population and issued a warning "that these actions will be punished to the full extent of revolutionary law". The population was invited to completely sever ties with foreign countries, stop receiving money, parcels, etc. The same meeting decided to liquidate the Concordia cooperative as an organization that "does not correspond to the tasks of socialist construction in the village and brakes the collectivization of the German population, which has become a centre of anti-Soviet and kulak elements". All the property of the cooperative was handed over to Azsovkhoztrest. Upon liquidation, the bank account of the cooperative had 4m roubles, which were converted to state revenue. Party and government authorities were urged to purge the collective farms with a German population, as well as all Soviet, public and business organizations and cultural institutions of districts from "kulak, anti-Soviet, alien and hostile elements". They recognized "the need to deport in administrative order 87 families (not just Germans - author) of kulaks, malicious anti-Soviet elements, who owned large capitalist farms in the past, to concentration camps with confiscation of property...". And on 14 December 1934, the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR, "on the basis of available materials about abuses in the system of the Concordia cooperative and violations committed by the Board of Concordia in the field of financial laws and the work of the cooperative", decided to establish a government commission "for a comprehensive survey of the activities of the board and the entire system of the Concordia cooperative".

The initiative of the Azerbaijani leadership with respect to the expulsion of "anti-Soviet elements", including the Germans, from the republic was received with "understanding" in Moscow. On 25 December 1934, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), by interviewing members of the Politburo, i.e. the question was not discussed at a meeting, decided on "The expulsion of anti-Soviet elements from Azerbaijan", satisfied the request of the Central Committee of the ACP (B) and suggested that the NKVD "authorize the expulsion of the above persons from Azerbaijan in administrative order to concentration camps with confiscation of property". This decision concerned the German colonists too. Thus, according to the Secret-Political Department of the NKVD (the SPD was a subdivision of the OGPU - the United State Political Directorate - the predecessor of the KGB, which was part of the NKVD - author). "6/IV-35, from eight German colonies of Narimanov (now Goygol District - author) Samxor (Samkir), Qazax and Tovuz districts of Azerbaijan, 72 families of kulaks and malicious anti-Soviet elements - 273 Germans - were evicted and sent to special settlements of Belbal-tkombinat". The White Sea-Baltic plant was established for the construction of a canal with the same name and surrounding regions, including for the operation of the canal, maintenance of ships, construction of a hydropower plant on the dams of the canal, construction of roads, the development of forests and so on.

The carrot method

Thus, destroying one of the best, if not the best, agricultural enterprises, arresting its leaders, expelling unwanted persons from the country and establishing dysfunctional collective farms on the ruins of the cooperative, the Bolshevik leadership of Azerbaijan began taking measures aimed, in their opinion, at involving the German colonists, mostly young people, in socialist construction.

On 17 February 1936, the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the Thalmann collective farm, Robert Krieger, was invited to the Central Committee of the party for a conversation with the first secretary Mir Cafar Bagirov. Few people had such an honour at that time. The Central Committee, as a rule, invited the heads of districts, ministries and major organizations to give them a dressing-down for failure to fulfill some decisions of the party or the government. And now there is such a thing - the formidable head of the republic himself will speak heart to heart with a young man, a representative of the German colonists. So what did the heads of the republic and a collective farm youth organization talks about?

The conversation was started by Krieger, who complained that the republican meeting of the German youth, promised 18 months ago, had not been held. According to him, during this period the farm was visited by many responsible comrades, but there was no progress: "During this time, we intensively prepared for the meeting." He said that the farm had organized "a decent jazz band which had 14 people, members of the Komsomol". Krieger also informed Bagirov about the initiative to build a Youth House in the Helenendorf. "Last year Comrade Sahbazov (People's Commissar of Education - author) promised us a library worth 5,000 roubles, but he has not fulfilled his promise yet, so we have no books," he added. "We have no promised stadium, parachute tower, club and driving courses, and the newspaper in German is weak," he continued. At the same time, Krieger said that the colonists welcomed the eviction of kulaks and earn more at the collective farm than in Concordia. Of course, the head of the republic liked this. Asked by Bagirov about cultural and educational work among the adult population, Krieger said: "It's even worse there." From this answer Bagirov came to the conclusion that "there was no change in the sense of improving work among the German population". At the end, Bagirov assured Krieger that all the issues raised by them will be solved.

In April 1936, the Central Committee discussed the work among the German collective farm youth and developed appropriate proposals. They reflected the issues raised by Krieger during the conversation with Bagirov. Specifically, instructions were given regarding the organization of the House of Youth, the reorganization of Lenins-Weg (Lenin's way) newspaper into a national publication and the relocation of its office from Narimanov District to Baku, allocation of 45,000 roubles for subsidies, re-equipment of clubs in Helenendorf and Gr?nfeld, the delivery of books, installation of radio sets in collective farms, etc. In August, a 4-day meeting of the German youth was held in Baku. All participants were presented with a gramophone and plates. In September, two German collective farms were given one lorry each.

The final stick method

However, the German youth did not enjoy the pleasures of a socialist society for long. On 8 October 1941, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria appealed to the State Defence Committee and Stalin: "In the Georgian, Azerbaijan and Armenian SSR, there is a German population of 48,375 people, including a rural population of 29,609 people, 372 members and candidates of the CPSU (b) and 1,077 Komsomol members. Some 1,842 people are on the NKVD records as anti-Soviet and doubtful elements. In order to prevent anti-Soviet work on the part of Germans living in the Georgian, Azerbaijan and Armenian SSR, the NKVD considers it appropriate to arrest those on the record as anti-Soviet and doubtful elements and resettle the rest of the German population numbering 46,533 people to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic." The "go-ahead" of the State Defence Committee was received on the same day: "To resettle the German population from the Georgian SSR - 23,580 people, the Azerbaijan SSR - 22,741 people and the Armenian SSR - 212 people." An NKVD note on the eviction of Germans from September 1941 to 1 January 1942 states that during this period, 799,459 people were resettled, including 23,593 from Azerbaijan. It should be noted that, according to the 17 January 1939 census, 23,133 persons of German nationality lived in Azerbaijan. As can be seen from these figures, the entire German population of the republic was deported.