Registan.net: “Germany and Central Asia”
Nathan Hamm of Registan.net addresses Germany’s role in Central Asia in his entry “Germany & Central Asia” of March 22nd, 2007.
I will not comment on his statements regarding the Uzbek and Turkmen governments, but I think Kazakhstan, and the German - Kazakh relationship, deserves a deeper analysis and view.
Kazakhstan’s population is estimated to be 63% ethnic Kazakhs and 23% ethnic Russians, with an amazingly rich array of other groups represented, including Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Germans, Chechens, and Uyghurs.
The German minority in Kasakhstan consists of Russian Germans and Volga Germans, the Volga Germans (German: Wolgadeutsche or Russlanddeutsche) being ethnic Germans formerly living near the Volga River in the region of southern European Russia around Saratov and to the south, maintaining German culture, who were deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin in the course of World War 2. Stalin feared that the large ethnic German population in the Volga region would sympathize and collaborate with the advancing German forces.
After the collaps of the Soviet Union large numbers of Volga Germans decided to migrate to Germany as in Kazakhstan they were considered being neither “Kazakhs” nor “Russians” but “Germans”.
When migrating to Germany, many Volga Germans faced the difficulty that the Germans didn’t consider them being fellow Germans but rather being “Kazakhs” or “Russians”.
Although the Volga Germans are hard working and humble people, intigrating them into the German society and “labour market” proved to be very difficult.
It is no secret that the German economy, although steadily recovering from the “depression” it faced in the past two decades, still has a difficult labour market and a high unemployment rate. Germany’s difficult economical situation has largely been caused by the herculean burden she had to take when integrating the former GDR (German Democratic Republik / DDR) and the tremendous costs arising from the “Aufbau Ost”.
Anyway, the Volga Germans from Kazakhstan face two major problems when migarting to Germany.
First, the language barrier, as only the older generation is somewhat fluent in the German language although speaking the Volga dialect, makes it difficult to integrate them into the German society.
Second, the problem of having their formerly Kazakh or Soviet “certificates” (regarding schooling and professional education) accepted in Germany. Germany’s professional standards in formation and education differ extensively from the requirements the Volga Germans had to live up to in Kazakhstan and the former Soviet Union.
Best explained is this by the following example.
While working in the management of a German company in the late 1990s I had to deal with quite a lot of engineers and technicians on the construction sites and production facilities. My favourite counterparts there were two Volga Germans, father and son-in-law, who worked togther as team. While “senior” was in his late 50ies and spoke German rather well (but with a heavy accent) “junior” was in his 30ies and didn’t speak a word of German (besides the cursing).
Both, father and son-in-law, where assigned to a service and maintenance team supervising the machinery park. It was fun watching them work together because they had a “hands on” mentality and a practical way of addressing technical problems.
Their “real German” collegues usually called for a service technician from the supplier of the machinery or a “technical diagnosis device” to find a problem.
My “Kazakhs” regularly applied what we used to call “Russian Engineering”, i.e. addressing a problem with a hammer, a srew driver, duct tape and a lot of cursing. Cursing in a wild mix of German, Russian, Kazakh and unidentifiable words that is. I never saw a technical manual in their hands, but usually the machinery was “fixed” rapidly and the same technical difficulty never appeared twice.
I felt like doing them something good and asked the “Personalabteilung” (Human Resources Department) to let me have a look into my “Kazakh’s” files and pay roll.
I almost fell of my chair ! “Papa” was hired on the basis of being a “Fitter “, his son-in-law on the basis of an “Untrained Labourer”. “Papa” had worked as a leading engineer of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan, “in-law” was a “agricultural machinery mechanic” and a “tractorist” before migrating to Germany.
While “Papa” had his years of studying and working as a full scale engineer “merited” by accepting his “papers” being worth granted the title of a “fitter”, “in-law’s” papers weren’t accepted at all. There was little I could do for them, except talking the HR guys in giving them a decent pay-rise.
Back to Germany’s engagment in Kazakhstan. The German authorities finally recognized that they weren’t doing anybody any good by encouraging the “Kazakhs” to migrate to Germany. The German government decided to rather invest in programs in Kazakhstan herself, providing job opportunities and careers to the Volga Germans in the country instead of having them come to Germany and have them fill the ranks of Germany’s unemployed or frustrated “labourers”. This is what “Germany’s role in Kazakhstan” is all about.
Anybody suggesting that Germany is after an “authoritarian modernization” or a “regime change” in Kazakhstan, or suggesting that Germany would be looking for “Lebensraum im Osten” or even “enforcing democracy” there, would be far off the mark. And there is nothing such as a new German “Ostpolitik”.
Germany’s motivation in Kazakhstan is uniquely “domestic”, not foreign. This should be taken into consideration when reading the entry on Registan.net.
