Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

Russian perspectives 159
These types can be traced back to historical experiences or rather to images of
them.
1 One of these experiences were contacts with Germans living in Russia,
especially urban Germans living there as artisans and merchants (Stricker
1997). One of the formative influences on young Peter I were the Germans of
the German Quarter, the ‘Nemeckaya Sloboda’ in Moscow.
2 After the annexation of the formerly Swedish provinces of Estonia, Livonia
and Latvia by Peter I, another type of German emerged in Russian history. The
urban German populations of the Baltic towns resembled those inside Russia.
The towns of the new Baltic provinces looked like other German towns on the
coasts of the Baltic sea. They strengthened the former image of Germans as
modern artisans and merchants.
3 Quite a different impression was produced by the German aristocracy in the
new Baltic provinces. This aristocracy became an important element in the
Russian army and in state bureaucracy, an element which was loyal to
the Czars even in times of rising Russian ethnic nationalism at the end of the
nineteenth century. Unlike the Poles, the Baltic German subjects were very
loyal Russian subjects, at least until the end of the nineteenth century.
4 German idealistic philosophy was a third formative influence of the first
half of the nineteenth century. Russian students flocked in great numbers
to German universities, especially to the university of Berlin. The influence of
Hegel, Schelling, and more generally of Romanticism, was to have considerable
impact on the development of Russian thought. This accounts for the similarity
of German Romantic ideas and Slavophile thought.
5 The influence of German social democracy, which was very important at the
end of the nineteenth century, is negligible as far as the present situation is
concerned. As far as they have survived, socialist ideals have been blended with
nationalist thinking among the political left in Russia.
6 If during most of the nineteenth century Prussia was a largely dependent
ally of the Russian Empire it came into a very conflicting relationship after the
dismissal of Bismarck. Anti-German feelings ran high during the First World
War. Wherever possible, traces of German cultural presence were removed.
Understandably, anti-German hostility culminated with the ‘Great Patriotic
war of the Soviet Union’ because of the atrocities committed by the German
forces and their final defeat (Laqueur 1990: 188ff).
This variety of contacts resulted in different images of the Germans. As a consequence
of the first type, Germans acquired a reputation for being thrifty, skilful
at the trades, not completely honest but, on the whole, reliable. In general, the
image was positive. The contrasting Russian self-ascription follows out of this rather
positive reputation of the Germans: accordingly, Russians were lazy, dirty, sloppy,
ignorant, and xenophobic. The task of the Russian Czar who took the same negative
view of his Russian subjects was, then, to educate them like a stern father. He had
to gradually make them more German in order to make his own empire prosperous
and powerful. The idea of a Russian people consisting of a mass of Calibans