Loyal Communists among the Russian-Germans in the Labor Army at Labor Camps in the Urals

The Stalin regime persecuted ethnic Germans because they were racially German not because of any political or security reasons. Thus loyal members of the Communist Party and Komsomol found themselves deported to Kazakhstan or Siberia or forcibly ejected from the Soviet military and then conscripted into the labor army and sent to corrective labor camps in the Urals. The following data below represents their numbers as labor army conscripts in three such camps.

Bogoslovlag had 356 members of the CPSU among the 20,711 ethnic Germans working at the camp in the labor army. This works out to 1.72% of the contingent. In addition to CPSU members there were also 96 candidate members, 786 Komsomol members, and four members of foreign communist parties among the "mobilized Germans" working in the camp. In Tagillag there were 132 CPSU members among this contingent out of 6,704 labor army conscripts or 1.97% of the total. This camp also had 39 candidate members of the party, 273 Komsomol members, and nine members of foreign communist parties among its Russian-German labor army conscripts. Finally, Bakalstroi (ChMS) had 188 CPSU members out of 11,353 ethnic Germans in the labor army at this camp, 1.66%. The numbers for candidate members reached 44, the Komsomol 520, and ethnic Germans in foreign communist parties three. All together the number of communists among ethnic Germans inducted into the labor army to work at these three labor camps totaled, 2,450 people. These were people who were part of the ruling Soviet party apparatus and thus politically dedicated to the regime. Had the real reason for anti-German actions actually been political or security related rather than racial persecution then there would have been no need to condemn loyal communists to hard labor in concentration camps without any charge or trial on the basis of their ancestral ethnicity.

Source: S.L. Razinkov, "Sotsial'nyi portret trudarmeitsev, mobilizovannykh v lageria NKVD na Urale v 1941-1946 gg.", in A.A. German (ed.), Nachal'nyi period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny i deportatsiia rossiiskikh nemtsev: vzgliady i otsenki cherez 70 let (Moscow: MSNK Press, 2011), table 6, p. 677.