German autonomous Republic in Kazakhstan 1979

Kasakhstan had a relatively high population of people with German roots. Until today there are living around 170000-180000 Kazakh citizens with German roots. They usually have German surenames. In 1979 the Soviets planned to establish a autonomous German Republic within the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic around modern day Astana, but it didn´t happen oviously . This idea was highly unpopular among ethnic Kazakhs and Russians. Many Kazakh Germans then immigrated to West Germany in the 1980es,1990es and 2000es and became German citizens.

What if a German Republic ideed was established in 1979 ? What would its fate be after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 given things played out similiar as OTL ? Would the status of an autonomous Republic have been revoked by independent Kazakhstan or could the Republic habe become even independent and becoming a "German" state in central Asia ?
 
Hard to avoid the economic pull of Western Germany and getting people to stay to face an uncertain future.
 
Hard to avoid the economic pull of Western Germany and getting people to stay to face an uncertain future.
True. And it also lumps people who might be persecuted in to a single area .

Yeah.. That's a time to move moment.

Just a bad idea. Let me people do what they do best where they live. I do t think the Volga Germans were clamoring for nation or ssr hood up in da hood. They just wanted to be left alone.

Like.. Hey I have an idea comrade Stalin. Let's create a Jewish republic! . In Siberia . Along the Chinese border .
 
In 1979 the Soviets planned to establish a autonomous German Republic within the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic

Actually, an autonomous oblast. To quote an old post of mine:

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Apparently Yuri Andropov at least considered the idea:

"During the 1970s, Soviet authorities began to confront growing dissident demands through a combination of repression and accommodation, what scholar Hanya Shiro describes as the “carrot and stick” approach to general protest activities and especially the nationalities problem. KGB chief Yuri Andropov in particular followed this policy course in the waning days of the Leonid Brezhnev regime. Besides cracking down on dissidents, Andropov oversaw plans for a German autonomous oblast near Tselinograd (now Astana), Kazakhstan, from 1976 to 1980. The regime considered it necessary to respond to the ethnic group’s emerging national protest movement, West Germany’s mounting diplomatic pressures, and the wider international community’s growing demands to protect emigration, human and minority rights. The USSR remained committed to the long-term integration and acculturation of its almost two million Germans, some of its most prized Soviet citizen-workers, with nearly half living in the Kazakh SSR. It sought to address domestic and foreign criticisms about the “German question” by formulating this new, but rather modest, nationality solution. The plan collapsed after June 1979, however, amid public demonstrations in the Kazakh SSR. Kazakh opposition at all levels revealed the complicated and troubling nature of Soviet nationality affairs and the limits of central authority over the periphery. The aborted plan’s legacy was the ethnic Germans’ continued lack of a national-territorial “container” when the USSR disintegrated in 1991. The proposal represented the regime’s first serious consideration of German autonomy since the group lost its remaining national districts and the Volga German ASSR between 1938 and 1941. Though it remains conjectural, the oblast could have established an embryonic national centre for Germans, from which they would have found themselves in a better political bargaining position during the dramatic Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras. It also could have helped reduce the dramatic mass migration of Germans from the former USSR to united Germany after 1990." http://eurasiahistory.files.wordpre...a-studies-soc-journal-vol-3-no1-jan-20141.pdf

I really very much doubt the last point. Even if they have an autonomous oblast, the Germans of Kazakhstan are hardly likely to prefer remaining there to emigrating to a far more prosperous united Germany. Before their deportation, Germans in the Volga area or Crimea could at least feel that these were areas that their ancestors had lived in since the eighteenth century, and where the German presence was the result of voluntary settlement. For Germans in Kazakhstan, the place was just a dumping ground that had been forced on them. And it will be less friendly to them than ever after Kazakhstan's independence. (And it's not like Germans have been the only people to flee post-independence Kazakhstan; there has been a massive Russian flight as well.)

In fact, the only somewhat important result I could see if such a plan were implemented would be to accelerate the growth of Kazakh nationalism.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/autonomy-for-ethnic-germans-in-kazakhstan.341087/
 
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