The moral and psychological state of the German population of the South of Ukraine during the famine of the 20s in the XXth century

Abstract

The article offers a psychological approach to the analysis of the situation of ethnic Germans in the South of Ukraine in 1920s. It was a period when the policy of the new power intended to change the self-consciousness of the Germans. The legislative actions of the Russian state and then of the Soviet power had a negative consequences for both local economic and political-moral position of this category of population. The famine had objective reasons: history, policy, natural disaster. The author uses sources from the state region archives of Nikolaev, Kherson, Dnipro and Kiev to show her personal perceptions of the events. She tells about the policy of the Soviet government, its often criminal actions, biased attitude, manifested against German speaking population. The new approach is to identify the perception of hunger and all that was associated with it by the German population themselves. The author shows that the mobilization of the German communities was their way to overcome the tragedy and survivе. The time period of the famine has been clarified.