In April and May 1976 about 600 Germans living in Kazakhstan and Kirgizia declared in writing their renunciation of Soviet citizenship and appealed for support in the matter of their repatriation to Chancellor Schmidt of the Federal Republic of Germany.
After this about 200 people handed in their passports to local police stations. In the town of Issyk, Fridrich Schnarr (CCE 32.8) and V. A. Klink (CCE 34.10), who had recently been released from camp, and the latter’s father, Artur Klink, did this. The Klinks were called to the town soviet executive committee with the aim of persuading them to take their passports back. Among those taking part in the conversation on the side of the authorities there were also Germans. An argument flared up, and during it the Klinks called one of them a ‘Judas’ and a ‘fool’. The Klinks were sentenced to 10 days’ detention ‘for petty hooliganism’.
In 1975 in Chuisky district, Dzhambul Region, two families received permission to emigrate; about 30 families had applied for it.
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On 1 June 1976 a search was conducted in the flat of Genrikh Davidovich Reimer in the town of Issyk (Alma-Ata Region).
After the search he was arrested and a charge was brought against him under Article 170-1 (Criminal Code of the Kazakh SSR = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code). Officially the search was carried out in connection with a case brought in autumn 1975: Reimer, working as a superintendent, had at the request of a neighbour brought him some mortar from a building-site. In view of the insignificant amount of the loss (about 30 roubles) they had decided to close the case.
Reimer was suspected of organizing around him the Germans who wish to emigrate. He himself has already applied many times to emigrate to his relatives in West Germany. [See also CCEs 42,44.]
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Konstantin Fridrikhovich Vukkert, who lives in Novotroitskoye village (Dzhambul Region), has appealed in a letter to Brezhnev, Honecker and Schmidt. ‘It is my deep conviction,’ he writes, ‘that history has laid obligation and responsibility regarding the Germans of the USSR on the governments of three countries, the USSR, the GDR and the FRG.’ Vukkert disputes the official Soviet view that the problem of the Soviet Germans is an internal matter of the USSR. He refers to precedents of states displaying concern for citizens of ‘their’ nationality living in another country, and, in particular, to the Soviet-Yugoslav pact
Appealing to Brezhnev, Vukkert writes:
‘I am convinced that not a single honest, thinking Soviet German can consider as a genuine homeland a country which for more than three decades has so stubbornly refused to notice the problems of its German citizens, refused to defend them against insults and humiliation, refused to help them preserve their national distinctiveness.’
Vukkert thinks that, having refused to restore the Germans’ autonomous republic, the Soviet government should extend them the right of emigration to the GDR or the FRG. This would also improve in a fundamental way the position of those Germans who wished to remain: it would lessen hostility and prejudice towards them among the population, and it would force the authorities to treat the Germans more sensitively; now they are regarded only as a reliable work force. Vukkert quotes the words of Mikoyan at a reception for a German delegation in 1965: ‘Without the Germans it would be impossible to practise agriculture in the virgin lands.’ [note 58]
‘It turns out that the positive qualities of the Germans’ national character have turned into a curse for them. If the government of the USSR considers that the Germans must work in reparation for the last war, why must they do so for ever? The Decree of 26 November 1948 states that the Germans are deported in perpetuity, in other words, only the Soviet Germans, who, as the Decree of 29 August 1964 admits, bear no responsibility for the last war, must endure this punishment. If payment must be made for the costs of the war, then it is you, Comrade Erich Honecker and Mr Schmidt, who must pay.’
Appealing to Brezhnev, K. Vukkert expresses the assumption that his addressee will not want this letter to become the cause of its author perishing ‘from the excessive efforts of agents of State Security’, who have already threatened him with criminal prosecution.
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