«Cоветские люди»? – The Russian Germans and Other Minorities in the Soviet Union after 1956

A research project by Helene Henze

My dissertation project, «Cоветские люди»? – The Russian Germans and Other Minorities in the Soviet Union after 1956, examines the normalization processes within the once-repressed national minorities of the Soviet Union after 1956. Thereby, I focus, for one, on Soviet state politics, and explore how economic demands in the wake of the economic surge of the late 1950s and the Virgin Lands campaign changed attitudes towards those who were formerly subjected to the komendantura regime. Equally, I study individual strategies of adaptation within a gradually changing Soviet society. Taking into account different generational cohorts, I examine commitment to Soviet work ethics, participation in propaganda activities, interpersonal networks, the role of city versus country life, and the adoption of the state-propagated „Soviet way of life“. In accordance with the title of my dissertation, a quote from Brezhnev’s nationalities speech of 1974, I seek to gain a deeper understanding of the Late Socialist Sovietization processes in Soviet Central Asia. My methodology involves both, the work with archival sources as well as biographical interviews with witnesses of history. Due to the war in Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions, my project underwent significant changes, one of them being a stronger focus on the regions.