HE LOSTTHE LOSTTHE L
WEDISH SWEDISH SWEDI
TRIBELOSTTRIBETHETRIBE
STTHE
LOS
SWEDISH
SWEDISH
THETRIBE
LOSTTHE LOSTTRIBE
SWEDISH SWEDISH
OSTTRIBE TRIBE
SH
Reapproaching the history
of Gammalsvenskby
in Ukraine
Edited by Piotr Wawrzeniuk
& Julia Malitska
The Lost Swedish Tribe
Reapproaching the history of Gammalsvenskby in Ukraine
Piotr Wawrzeniuk & Julia Malitska (eds.)
©The Authors
Södertörn University
SE-141 89 Huddinge
www.sh.se/publications
Cover Design: Jonathan Robson
Layout: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson
Printed by Elanders, Stockholm 2014
Research Report 2014:1
ISSN 1403-5111
ISBN 978-91-86069-85-8 (print)
ISBN 978-91-86069-86-5 (digital)
Contents
Acknowledgements
5
Approaching the “Lost Swedish Tribe” in Ukraine
PIOTR WAWRZENIUK & JULIA MALITSKA
13
The Russian State and Swedes in New Russia
(between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries)
SVITLANA BOBYLEVA
39
People in between
– Baltic islanders as colonists on the steppe
JULIA MALITSKA
61
The making of Gammalsvenskby 1881–1914
– identity, myth and imagination
PIOTR WAWRZENIUK
89
Little Red Sweden in Ukraine
– the 1930s Comintern project in Gammalsvenskby
ANDREJ KOTLJARCHUK
111
About the authors
151
List of tables
Table 1: Number of families in the Swedish colonist district (1800–1887)
List of figures
Figure 1: The population of Gammalsvenskby 1781–1929
List of documents
Document 1: The Imperial Decree of Catherine II to the Estonian governor general
board about the resettlement of the peasants of the manor of Körgessaare (Hohenholm) to New Russia province, 8 March, 1781.
Document 2: About the Swedish colonies in remote parts of Russia.
Document 3: A fragment of Emmanuel Richelieu’s letter to Samuel Contenius, 9
April, 1806.
Document 4: Samuel Contenius’s report to governor-general Emmanuel Richelieu
about the lack of bread in Molochna, the Swedish and Odessa colonies and with
regards to this paying food money to the colonists, 17 November, 1806
Document 5: About bad harvests in 1899 in the Swedish colony
Document 6: The report by the Scandinavian Ländersekretariat concerning the OldSwedish immigrants in Sweden
Document 7: Recommendation from the Politburo of the Swedish Communist
Party (Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti or SKP) to comrade Hugo Lauenstein issued by SKP, certified by Edvin Blom, 7 October, 1932
List of maps
Map 1: Tataria Minor cum Adiacentibus Kiovensi et Belgorodensi Guberniis, 1745
Map 2: Mappa Generalis Gubernii Novae Russiae in Circulos Divisi 1779 Suctore
Map 3: Der Hapsalsche Kreis, 1802
Map 4: Cherson Region, circa 1789–1805
Map 5: Spets. Karta Zap. Chasti Rossiiskoi Imperii G.L. Schuberta, 1826–1840
Map 6: Plan of Kazykermen [Kezikermen] district of Kazykermen province divided
into lots for Swedish peasants from Estonia, 1781
Map 7: Etnograficheskaia karta Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1851
Acknowledgements
Researchers and authors inevitably become indebted to many people
during the course of a project spanning over several years. The most
important agent behind the research presented in this anthology is The
Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen), the
main sponsor of our undertakings. The Swedish Institute (Svenska
institutet) contributed with additional funding for the pre-development
of the project, for stipends to individual researchers, and for a workshop.
In addition, an important contribution that facilitated the documentation process was made by Helge Ax:son Johnson’s Foundation. For all
that, we are very grateful.
The research team is also indebted to the management and staff of
the State Archives in Odessa and Kherson, and a large group of helpful
archivists and librarians from Ukraine in the south to Sweden and
Finland in the north. We would, in particular, like to thank Bertil
Olofsson at Krigsarkivet, Stockholm.
The texts in the anthology were, in various versions, put forward at
research seminars and workshops at Södertörn University, Sweden, and
in Kiev, Ukraine. Thanks to help of our colleagues, the texts were greatly
improved.
The editors dedicate this book to Professor David Gaunt, who
initiated and lead the project. Officially, David retired in fall 2011, but
has carried on breaking new ground, taking on new scientific challenges
in the field of genocide studies. As David’s former PhD students, Andrej
Kotljarchuk (one of the contributing authors) and Piotr Wawrzeniuk
(one of the editors and contributing authors) take this opportunity to
honor their Professor, who during their studies proved to be an inspiring, erudite and very patient supervisor.
5
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Notes
In this book, the Library of Congress system for the Romanization of
Cyrillic letters has been used. However, there have been a few modifications. The soft sign (‘ь’) transcription has been left out. The ligatures
in the Romanization of ‘й’, ‘ж’, ‘ц’, ‘я’, ‘ю’ and ‘є’ have not been used.
Various Russian names frequently used in the texts and footnotes are
also written in their Anglicized plural versions, for example, desiatinas,
sazhens.
In the book, the names of historical towns founded during the
imperial period are written in Russian such as Ekaterinoslav, Odessa
etc., as source material of imperial origin has been used. For instance,
the name of the colony of Khortytsia (Ukrainian) is written in the
version found in the source material – Khortitsia (Russian). However,
the names of the rivers are written in Ukrainian (Pivdennyi Buh and
Dnipro). Some generally used geographical names are used, such as
Crimea and Zaporizhian Sich. When the question comes to the administration, the ambition has been to use era-typical names.
In the references to the source material, Russian or Ukrainian names
are used depending on whether the material has been prepared and
structured in Russian or Ukrainian. This explains the differences in the
end notes of Svitlana Bobyleva who uses material from the imperial
period, and Andrej Kotljarchuk who mainly uses documents originating
from Ukrainian SSR, for instance.
The names of institutions and documents (journals, newspapers etc.)
are first written in the original language, and then followed by translation in to English in brackets.
The documents cited in this volume have been translated into English
by the respective authors, or by the editors.
6
Geographical Names
Historical name
Current name
Chernigov
Chernihiv, Chernihiv Oblast (Ukraine)
Dagö
Hiiumaa (Estonia)
Danzig
Gdańsk (Poland)
Ekaterinoslav
Dnipropetrovsk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (Ukraine)
Gammalsvenskby
(in Ukrainian: Staroshvedske; in Russian:
Staroshvedskoe; in English: Old-Swedish Village; in
German: Alt-Schwedendorf) Zmiivka, Kherson Oblast
(Ukraine)
Kakhovka
Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast (Ukraine)
Kaluga
Kaluga, Kaluga Oblast (Russian Federation)
Kazykermen
(Berislav)
Beryslav, Kherson Oblast (Ukraine)
Khortitsa
Khortytsia, Zaporizhzhia Oblast (Ukraine)
Kursk
Kursk, Kursk Oblast (Russian Federation)
Priazove
Pryazovia, Azov Sea territories (Ukraine)
Prichernomore
Prychornomoria, Black Sea territories (Ukraine)
Pridnestrove
Pridnestrove, Dniester River territories (Moldova)
Reshetilovka
Reshetylivka, Poltava Oblast (Ukraine)
Reval
Tallinn (Estonia)
Tambov
Tambov, Tambov Oblast (Russian Federation)
Tula
Tula, Tula Oblast (Russian Federation)
Åbo/Turku
Åbo/Turku (Finland)
Abbreviations
ARAB
Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek (Labour Movement Archives
and Library) Stockholm, Sweden
DADO
Derzhavnyi arkhiv Dnipropetrovskoi oblasti (State Archives of
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine
DAKhO
Derzhavnyi arkhiv Khersonskoi oblasti (State Archives of
Kherson Oblast) Kherson, Ukraine
DAOO
Derzhavnyi arkhiv Odeskoi oblasti (State Archives of Odesa
Oblast) Odesa, Ukraine
DGU
Dnipropetrovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet
(Dnipropetrovsk State University) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine
7
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
8
KhDU
Khersonskyi derzhavnyi universytet (Kherson State University)
Kherson, Ukraine
PSZRI
Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (Complete
Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire)
RA
Riksarkivet (The National Archives) Stockholm, Sweden
RGASPI
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi archiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii
(Russian State Archive for Social and Political History) Moscow,
Russia
RGIA
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii archiv (Russian State
Historical Archives) St Petersburg, Russia
TsKNM
Tsentralnyi Komitet natsionalnykh menshinstv (Central
Committee for the National Minorities) Moscow, Russia
ECCI
Executive Committee of the Comintern
SKP
Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (Swedish Communist Party)
VKP(b)
Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia (bolshevikov) (All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
TASS
Telegrafnoe agenstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza (Telegraph Agency of
the Soviet Union)
KMA
Kvinnliga Missions Arbetare (Female Missionary Workers)
GPU
Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (The State Political
Directorate)
NKVD
Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (The People’s
Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
TsK VKP
(b)
Tsentralnyi Komitet Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii
(bolshevikov) (Central Committee of All-Union Communist
Party (Bolsheviks)
RGAKFD
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kinofotodokumentov (The
Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at
Krasnogorsk)
TsDAGO
Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromadskykh obiednan Ukrainy
(Central State Archives of the Public Organizations of Ukraine)
SLS FS
Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, Folkkultursarkivet och
språkarkivet (Swedish Literature Society in Finland, Archives of
folkore and language)
SLS HLA
Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, Historiska och
litteraturhistoriska arkivet (Swedish Literature Society in Finland,
Archives of History and Literature), stored at the National
Library of Finland
Archival and bibliography terms
f.
fond (holding)
op.
opis, opys (register)
d.
delo (file)
ch.
chast/chastyna (part)
l.
list (page)
ll.
listy (pages)
sobr.
sobranie (collection)
str.
stranitsa, storinka (page)
t.
tom (volume)
spr.
sprava (file)
ark.
arkush (page)
arkk.
arkushi (pages)
vyp.
vypusk (issue)
kn.
kniga/knyga (book)
pril.
prilozhenie (appendix)
9
Map 1: Before New Russia. he territory of the future Russian province in 1745,
while a part of the Khanate of Crimea. Tataria Minor cum Adiacentibus Kiovensi et
Belgorodensi Guberniis, 1745, Krigsarkivet 0403/31/A/007h.
Previous page: Map 2: “Empty” space to be populated? New Russia in 1779, waiting
to be colonized. he Crimea to the south remained under Tatar rule for another four
years. Mappa Generalis Gubernii Novae Russiae in Circulos Divisi 1779 Suctore, Krigsarkivet 0403/33/020 1.
Map 3: Dagö, the home island of the ancestors of Gammalsvenskby Swedes, 1802. Der
Hapsalsche Kreis, Krigsarkivet 0043/32/067.
Approaching the “Lost Swedish Tribe”
in Ukraine
PIOTR WAWRZENIUK & JULIA MALITSKA
Tracing the “lost tribe”
– Gammalsvenskby as a research problem
In the spring of 1782 a group of villagers of Swedish origin reached their
destination on the right bank of Dnipro River, about fifty kilometers
from the centre of Kherson Oblast in Ukraine of today. Tradition has it
that they celebrated mass, thanking the Heavens for their arrival at their
destination. The Swedes had made their way to Ukraine from the remote
island of Dagö (Hiiumaa) on the coast of the Duchy of Estonia. These
villagers were in the vanguard of the colonization of the steppes
bordering the Black Sea, an area Russia conquered in the 1770s. The
village founded on the very spot where their journey ended, became
known as “Gammalsvenskby” by its inhabitants (from the Russian
“Staroshvedskoe,” literally meaning “Old Swedish Village”). The village
remained largely intact until 1929, when a majority of the villagers
decided to leave for Sweden. This book covers the developments from
the planning of the southbound journey from Dagö in 1781 to the
aftermath of the migration to Sweden.
When the research project about Gammalsvenskby was under
development, the main question concerned what seemed to be a highly
detailed nation-building process within a small group of peasants of
Swedish origin. Living in southern Russia, and lacking the elites
frequently viewed as crucial for such a process to succeed, the inhabitants of Gammalsvenskby seemed to manage their Swedish ancestry
inexplicably well during a century and a half. However, once the project
team, consisting of researchers from Södertörn University (Sweden) and
Dnipropetrovsk National University (Ukraine), began to study various
13
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
aspects of the history of the village, it transpired that the processes that
took place in Gammalsvenskby were not as straightforward as
previously described. There were institutions and individuals that had a
tremendous impact on the course of events. To the members of the
team, the history of the village ceased to be that which it had
traditionally been depicted as – a history of a handful of people, Swedish
patriots, displaced from their original habitat by a cruel destiny, and
defending their culture against all odds in hostile surroundings. Therefore, the main intention of the project was to employ new empirical
material, put forward new questions, and by that offer new perspectives
on the history of Gammalsvenskby.
The abundance of unused source material directed our work towards
bringing its contents to the readership rather than contributing with
theoretical approaches to the fields of migration studies and social history.
The possible future directions of continued research on the subject suggest
that theoretical concepts of ethnicity, nation and nationalism, along with
comparisons with other groups who have experienced a similar fate, may
contribute to the general understanding of the processes that the population of Gammalsvenskby went through from the end of the eighteenth
century up to the start of the Second World War.1
The members of the project thus raised questions as to the character
of the migration of the Swedes, their adaptation to the physical milieu of
the steppes, and their relationship with the state administration and
various groups that populated the area. Finally, the implications of the
political context in Russia, Finland, Sweden and the USSR for the
development of the village would be studied. Earlier research has shown
that such processes and relations alter the group and self-identity,
depending on the degree of exposure to the new environment, the
cultural distance between the culture of the immigrants and that of their
new location, the immigrants’ ability to maintain contact with their
original culture, and their sentiments towards the new culture.2
1
Charlotta Hillerdal, People in Between. Ethnicity and Material Identity, a New
Approach to Deconstructed Concepts (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2009).
Unfortunately, Hillerdal fails to successfully apply the very concepts she suggests,
making her approach both unhistorical and anachronistic, and the final result
questionable.
2
Tinghög, Petter, Migration, Stress and Mental Ill Health: Postmigration Factors and
the Experiences in the Swedish Context (Linköping: Linköping University. Faculty of
Arts and Science, 2009), 14.
14
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
Although obviously devoid of miracles, the history of Gammalsvenskby
contains several interesting turns. From the beginning of the migration
in 1781 to the Stalinist repression in the 1930s, this book offers a study
of broad-reaching processes and developments by looking into the
situation of a small group of people. Conversely, the history of the
village sheds considerable light on the developments in Russia, the
Soviet Union, Sweden and Finland. Contained is a combination of micro
and macro history, where particular features prove helpful in explaining
something general, and vice versa. The processes that had great impact
on the village’s population can be summarized in two words – migration
and modernization.
It has been claimed that “to study the European history is to study
migration.”3 At least on three occasions – in 1781, 1929 and 1931 – the
entire population of the village or a considerable portion decided to seek
a better life and start over elsewhere. In 1781, the then Dagö islanders
migrated to the steppes, and the village that would become Gammalsvenskby was born. In 1929, the majority of the population moved to
Sweden following large-scale lobbying by the villagers and their backers
in Sweden. Only two years later, a group of former villagers who were
dissatisfied with the conditions offered by the Swedish authorities, and
who found it difficult adapting to Swedish society, decided to move back
to what then was the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, a step stimulated by
intense Communist campaigning among the group. As migration
studies show, a group’s reluctance to move is usually eased by earlier
experiences and memories of having migrated. A group of discontented
villagers who did not wish to move back to the USSR migrated to
Canada in 1931. Long before that, several families from Gammalsvenskby had migrated to Canada and Siberia in the 1880s and 1890s.
Most of the few remaining Dagö Swedes left the island in 1941.
Embedded in the history of the village are two grand top-down
modernization projects – the Russian one, originating in the times of
Catherine II, and the Soviet one, carried out in the early 1920s. The
former was driven from a physiocratic standpoint, where access to
arable land and its cultivation were seen as the base of wealth and
prosperity, and the conviction that an influx of migrants from Central
Europe would automatically result in the swift improvement of
3
Menz, Georg, The Political Economy of Managed Migration (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 1.
15
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
agricultural methods and yields, and the development of handicrafts and
manufacturing.4 On the most general level, the Soviet project was viewed
by its architects as addressing and mending the shortcomings and
failures of the imperial colonization and agriculture policy by creating a
new peasant class, modernized collective agriculture and finally – the
Communist society. Caught in the midst of these two projects were the
residents of Gammalsvenskby, who suffered demographic losses on both
occasions. Once in place in 1782, the villagers went through a difficult
trial-and-error learning process which is closely described in three of the
four articles of this volume. The migration to southern Russia also saw
the population of the village face and deal with the phenomena of
modernization such as improving communications and swift access to
regional and international markets.
To a lesser degree, but still very concretely so, the villagers were
subjected to Swedish influence after sustainable links with Sweden were
established in the 1880s. In frequent contact with Sweden and the
Swedophones in Finland, the villagers faced Swedish and Finnish dilemmas of cultural and political differentiation, features that, along with
several others, have been described as characteristic of modernization.5
The visitors from Scandinavia brought with them convictions that were
formed by the specific political and cultural context in the home
countries. Those convictions constituted the prism through which the
village was presented. Naturally, this way of viewing the course of events
in Gammalsvenskby did not take into account the historical development of the village, and often proved inaccurate.
Colonization of the Black Sea steppe and imperial policies in the region
Russia’s colonization and incorporation of the steppe reflected and
produced a particularly complicated kind of imperialism, one in which
empire building, state building, society building, and nation building
intertwined.6 The steppe as a whole was never described as a colony,
4
From a vast amount of literature one finds a good overview in Duran, James A Jr.,
“Catherine II, Potemkin, and Colonization Policy in Southern Russia,” Russian
Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), p. 23. For a detailed account, see the remaining
part of the same article and the texts of Bobyleva och Malitska in this volume.
5
Sejersted, Francis, Socialdemokratins tidsålder: Sverige och Norge under 1900-talet
(Lund 2005: Nya Doxa).
6
Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the
Russian Steppe. (Cornell University, 2004), 5.
16
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
presumably because it was not geographically separated from the rest of
the state, although in other respects – most obviously, the name New
Russia – the colonial status seemed clear. By the dawn of the twentieth
century, the steppe had been so profoundly transformed by Russian
imperialism that it was difficult for contemporaries to determine
whether it constituted a borderland, a colony, or Russia itself.7 The view
of colonization as a popular, natural, and mostly gentle movement that
unfolded within an empire, but was not itself imperialist, was the
product of myth, of wishful thinking by the Russian elite. There were no
natural barriers between the steppe and “Russia,” the region was rather
close to the center of the empire, there seemed to be an abundant supply
of “open” land suitable for farming or stock raising, there was no state
organization there and the indigenous population was sparse. All this
combined to make Russian migration to the south a relatively simple
undertaking which could easily be interpreted as an elemental, organic
process.8
A considerable proportion of those who colonized New Russia were
Russian and Ukrainian peasants but foreigners also contributed to
shaping the region.
The aims of the Russian government were partly economic. By
encouraging foreign settlements the government hoped to be able to
develop lands that had so far been uninhabited and thus increase
revenues, to improve the balance of trade and to ease rural overpopulation in central Russia. There were also political goals such as
improving border security, strengthening Russian authority, and populating the new territories with loyal peoples. The foreigners were
considered to be of superior virtues compared to the autochthonous
population. Thus, they were expected to carry out “cultural” and
“civilizing” missions and elevate the remaining population by example.
These tasks were connected with the economic one – the promotion of
new methods of production among other groups of the population in
the colonized territories.
In the eighteenth century, serfdom in central Russia deprived the
Russian peasantry of free movement, preventing any substantial
mobility into the territory that was being colonized. The internal
demographic potential of the Russian Empire was, therefore, insufficient
7
8
Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 89, 223.
Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 226–227.
17
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
to fulfill the government’s colonization plans. The peasants were legally
tied to territories already under cultivation. While not denying the
native population the possibility to take part in the mastering and
opening up of the new incorporated territories, Russia’s government
turned to the Central European population.
The new phase of Russia’s colonization policy on the steppe was
introduced as a result of large-scale territorial expansion in the second
half of the eighteenth century. The recently annexed, nomadic-populated or scarcely populated lands (Caucasus and Volga regions etc.),
were to be absorbed and gradually integrated into the imperial space.
The victories in the wars against Turkey in 1768–1774, 1787–1791 and
Count Grigorii Potemkin’s activities, directed part of the colonization to
the new acquisitions of the so-called Southern Russia or New Russia.9 As
a result of the strengthening of Russian influence in the Black Sea region
after the peace treaty with Turkey in 1774 and the gradual advancement
of Russia’s borders to the south, the Zaporizhian Sich had lost its main
function of being a Russian outpost against the Turks and Tatars.
Considering the Sich to be a rebellious centre of aristocratic struggle,
Catherine II abolished it in 1775. The lands of the former Zaporizhian
Sich and the Cossack Hetmanate, along with the territories between the
Pivdennyi Buh and Dnipro rivers, were included in the state fund for
land distribution.10
The territorial-administrative absorption of the Azov and Black Sea
territories went hand in hand with the colonization process. In 1764, the
province of New Russia was founded and it existed until 1775. Count
Grigorii Potemkin was appointed its governor-general.11 After the
abolition of the Zaporizhian Sich in 1775, its lands were attached to the
9
Rossiia. Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie nashego otechestva, ed. Petr Semenov-TianShanskii, t.14. Novorossiia i Krym (Sankt-Petersburg: Izd-vo A. F. Devrieva, 1910),
157–161; John P. LeDonne, The Russian Empire and the World, 1700–1917: the
Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997),
43–62; Andreas Kappeler, Rossiia iak polietnichna derzhava: Vynyknennia. Istoriia.
Rozpad (Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Ukrainskogo Katolytskogo universytetu, 2005), 62–70;
Evgenii Zagorovskii, Inostrannaia kolonizatsiia Novorossii v 18 veke (Odessa: Tsentr.
Tip. S. Rozenshtraukha i N. Lemberga, 1913), 2.
10
Andreas Kappeler, Rosiia iak polietnichna derzhava, 42–45; Elena Druzhynina,
Severnoe Prichernomore v 1775–1800 (Moskva: Nauka, 1959), 52–53; Voennostatisticheskoe obozrenie Rossiiskoi imperii, t. 11, ch. 1. Khersonskaia guberniia
(Sankt-Petersburg: Tip. Departementa Gen. Shtaba, 1849), 82.
11
Natalia Shushliannikova, Rozpovidi z istorii Khersonskogo kraiu (Kherson: KhDU,
2003), 6.
18
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
New Russia and Azov provinces, which were made up of the former
New Russia Province and the lands of the Don Cossacks.12 In 1784, the
next large administrative-territorial changes took place: the New Russia
and the Azov provinces formed Ekaterinoslav viceroyalty. Additionally,
the Senate proclaimed a nominal decree founding the Tavriia region on
the territory of the former Crimean khanate.13 In 1796 the districts of
Kerch, Kinburn and Enikale, Crimea and a considerable area between
Pivdennyi Buh and Dniester rivers, together with the lands of the former
Zaporizhian Sich, formed the New Russia province which in 1803 was
divided into three provinces: Ekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tavriia.14
The colonization of the Black Sea territory was to some extent
spontaneous and to some extent organized by the Russian state. Russia
had vast territories to the east and south opened to settlement. When these
territories were opened to settlers, the Russian government could benefit
from the experience of other European countries (particularly Prussia) in
controlling, occupying and populating new territories. On 4 December
1762 Catherine II issued a Manifesto inviting foreigners to settle in
Russia.15 The purpose was twofold. The first aim was to encourage
cultivation of the vast steppes and develop mining, commerce, and
manufacturing. This was the reasoning presented in the manifesto. The
second aim was the development of land in a region where minor, but
protracted military problems were experienced along the southern
frontiers. New settlements would provide a buffer zone between the
peasant population of Russia and its nomadic neighbors. However, the
number of artisans who came to settle in the region was small, and the
manifesto was generally not considered to have achieved its goal.
Therefore, Catherine II issued a new document on 22 July 1763,
offering more attractive privileges for newcomers. Travel expenses would
12
Voenno-statisticheskoe obozrenie Rossiiskoi imperii. t. 11, ch. 1. Khersonskaia
guberniia (Sankt-Petersburg: Tip. Departementa Gen. Shtaba, 1849), 82; Elena
Druzhynina, Severnoe Prichernomore v 1775–1800, 49–53.
13
Rasporiazheniia svetleishego Grigoriia Aleksandrovicha Potemkina-Tavricheskogo
kasatelno ustroeniia Tavricheskoi oblasti s 1781 po 1786-i god, in Zapiski
imperatorskogo Odesskogo obshchestva istorii i drevnostei, t.12 (Odessa: Franko-rus. tip.
L. Danikana, 1881), 322–323; Rossiia, ed. Petr Semenov-Tian’-Shanskii, t. 14, 161–162;
Elena Druzhynina, Severnoe Prichernomore, 57; Vladimir Kabuzan, Zaselenie
Novorossii (Ekaterinoslavskoi i Khersonskoi gubernii) v 18 − pervoi polovine 19 vv.
(1719–1858) (Moskva: Nauka, 1976), 93.
14
Shushliannikova, Rozpovidi z istorii Khersonskogo krau, 8.
15
Nemtsy-kolonisty v vek Ekateriny, ed. Elena Lykova, M. Osekina (Moskva:
“Drevlekhranilishche,” 2004), 10–11.
19
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
be paid for by the Russian state for those who could not afford the
journey; free land was granted for tillage in certain areas, primarily in the
Volga River region; and religious freedom would be granted to the
incoming Christian population. The colonists were not allowed to convert
the Orthodox population, but were free to proselytize among Muslims.
The settlers on uncultivated territory would also be granted freedom from
taxes and tributes for thirty years. In addition, tradesmen who settled in
the towns would be free from taxes for a period of between five and ten
years depending on the location. The colonists would be granted free
lodging for the initial six months of settlement, and receive interest free
loans for the construction of houses and purchasing of farm equipment
and cattle. The loans would be repayable only after ten years. The
newcomers would receive the right to self-government of separately
established colonies and freedom from import duties on all goods they
brought with them. They were granted inducements for the manufacturing of goods, and freedom from military service.16 In fact, the
government passed the task of building a social and economic structure in
the colonized areas from scratch on to the newcomers.
With these new enticements in hand, Russian representatives and
government agents actively began to recruit immigrants abroad. For
various reasons, non-German populations did not respond well. Some
countries that allowed free publication of the invitation were already
enjoying relative prosperity and had their own overseas colonies. For
example, an English-speaking colony in America would be more
attractive to an Englishman than the strange and remote land of Russia.
Muslims from Turkish lands foresaw their enserfment by the Russians.
The Habsburg Empire forbade emigration after it reached high levels in
1760s, and because of their own settlement programs in the Hungarian
territory.17 Active recruitment could only take place in free cities and
states where there were no laws limiting emigration.
Several German states were unable to control migration, which
reached particularly high levels in the Kingdom of Prussia including
Silesia and Pomerania; Württemberg; Bohemia; the Grand Duchies of
Baden and Hessen; the cities of Lübeck, Danzig and Mainz on the Rhine.
The typical reasons for migration – then as now – were war, displacement caused by war, to avoid compulsory military service; dangers
16
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii: dokumenty vysshykh organov vlasti i voennogo komandovaniia,
1652–1917, ed. Viktor Diesendorf (Moskva: MFD: Materik, 2006), 23–27.
17
Zagorovskii, Inostrannaia kolonizatsiia Novorossii, 3.
20
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
posed by climatic and geographical conditions (flooding, drought);
political oppression or religious persecution; a friend or relative who was
encouraging migration; and possibilities to receive employment or
improve one’s economic situation. Among the reasons for migration,
one should also mention avoiding being drafted and the high taxes
exacted by the German states, long-term lease of men as mercenaries to
America; stern management methods; the Seven Years’ War (1756–
1763) and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815),
along with foreign occupation and other military conflicts. Political
instability, poor harvests and lean years, epidemics of plague and cholera
caused a new wave of migration from the European states in the
eighteenth century.18
The scale of migration caused radical changes in the ethnic structure
of the settlers and pushed the Russian government to search for new
“human capital”. Russian and Ukrainian peasants played a significant
role in the colonization and the economic mastering of the Azov and
Black Sea territories. New settlers came from the Central Russian
provinces, the left bank Ukraine, and Bessarabia.19 Since the second half
of the eighteenth century, people from foreign countries began to play a
considerable role in the colonization of this territory. The edict of Joseph
II from 1768, forbidding migration from the Habsburg lands, did not
stop the human flow from Europe; it only changed its source.
All ethnic groups that moved to uncultivated new lands were granted
privileges, but the conditions of colonization were unique for each
group. They determined not only the differentiation in the normative
granting of land, but also civil rights and social liberties. Russians and
Ukrainians, and Orthodox peasants in general, were given minimal
social and economic privileges compared to the foreign settlers.20
It was only natural that the government should wish to attract people
from ethnic groups that lived near the state border: Bulgarians, Poles,
Jews, Moldavians, and Germans. However, the settlement of other
18
Svetlana Bobyleva, “Prichiny migratsii nemetskogo naseleniia na Ukrainu v 18pervoi polovine 19 v.,” in Voprosy germanskoi istorii: ukrainsko-nemetskie sviazi v
novoe i noveishee vremia, ed. Sergei Plokhii (Dnipropetrovsk: DGU, 1995), 30–41.
19
Iaroslav Boiko, Nataliia Danylenko, “Formuvannia etnichnogo skladu naselennia
Pivdennoi Ukrainy (kinets 19–20st.),” Ukrainskyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 9 (1992),
54–65; Sergei Bruk, Vladimir Kabuzan, “Migratsiia naseleniia v Rossii v 18-nachale
20 vv. (chislennost, struktura, geografiia),” Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1984), 41–59.
20
Alexander Klaus, Nashi kolonii. Opyt i materialy po istorii i statistike inostrannoi
kolonizatsii v Rossii, vyp. 1 (St Petersburg: Tip. V.V. Nusval’ta, 1869), 21.
21
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
foreign groups (such as Italians and Swedes) was a result of unexpected
developments that the authorities were quick to realize. This fact
considerably determined the impact of each group on the socio-cultural
and economic development of the southern provinces of imperial
Russia. By offering land and various privileges to the foreign settlers, the
Russian government aimed to create faithful and loyal subjects, quite
unlike the unruly Zaporizhian Cossacks. Depending on time and place,
the colonization process could be hesitant or intense; “popular” or
“state-directed”; Russian, foreign, “alien”, or “sectarian.”21
The government was eager to involve as many settlers as possible,
particularly so after the Habsburg lands were closed for emigration.
The first phase of colonization was ambiguous. On the one hand, by
mastering the enormous territories of virgin lands, opening new
factories and inventing new agricultural tools, colonists had a considerable impact on the economic development of these lands. On the
other hand, if the Zaporizhian Cossacks, who were already accustomed
to the local conditions, had not been forced to leave their native lands
but had been granted the same privileges as the colonists, the results
would probably have been even more beneficial. While not denying the
positive influence of the colonists, it should be noted that many of
them were incapable of physical work, let alone grasp the proportions
of their tasks during Catherine II’s and Paul I’s colonization era. Only
after 1804, when the new Tsar, Alexander I, extended another invitation to settle in this region, did the structure of the colonists change.
However, because of the shortage of available lands his invitation was
made more specific and selective than Catherine’s. He sought people
who were particularly skilled in agriculture and handicrafts – well-todo farmers with skills in viticulture, management and the breeding of
livestock. While they received some financial and logistic assistance
with their relocation, they were also expected to bring with them
significant quantities of cash and goods. Since the introduction of
explicit rules for the reception and the settling down of colonists in
February 1804, colonist status could be attained only by settlers with
families, who possessed a certain amount of capital, were well-behaved
and could be considered useful to the country such as farmers cattlebreeders, gardeners, wine-makers, and artisans.22
21
22
Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 223.
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 144–147.
22
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
As more and more of the steppe was absorbed, as the ambitions of the
government increased, the bureaucratic machinery also grew.23 In 1763,
the Office for Foreigners’ Guardianship (Kantseliariia opekunstva
inostrannykh) was established in St Petersburg under the management
of Catherine II’s favorite Grigorii Orlov. It had the same powers as a
State Board and an annual budget of 20,000 rubles. In 1782 after the
formation of the provinces, that office was abolished and the management of the colonists and state peasants was brought under the
supervision of Direktora domovodstva. Despite the large sums spent by
the state to attract foreigners and to settle them, there were colonies
which suffered extreme decline and many general complaints came from
the settlers. For that reason, a new board was set up in 1797 to manage
the colonies: the Board of State Economy, Guardianship of Foreigners
and Rural Husbandry (Ekspeditsiia gosudarstvennogo khoziaistva
opekunstva inostrannykh i selskogo domovodstva, from now on referred
to as “the Board.” In 1802 it was attached to the Ministry of Internal
Affairs but was abolished shortly after.
The Board introduced auditing inspections in order to get a clear
picture of the settlers’ living conditions and the reasons for the
unsatisfactory development of the colonies. Officials were sent to the
colonies all over the country and obliged to acquaint themselves with
the colonists’ lives and agricultural activities. Thus, Court Adviser
Samuel Contenius (1749–1830), an official of the Geographical
department, was sent to New Russia to inspect the foreign settlements
in 1798–1800. He was ordered to personally investigate the settlers’
economic activities in detail, identify their shortcomings, and submit
an account of his findings.
Having conducted this inspection, Contenius blamed the government for the deplorable economic situation of the New Russia
colonists.24 In his report to the Senate, he listed the following obstacles:
insufficient development of animal husbandry because of drought,
poor harvests, and parasites; shortage of agricultural tools; permanent
cattle disease; poor mastering of the crafts, mainly during winter times;
the colonists disobeyed the orders of the local government.25 To
23
Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 97–136.
Alexander Velitsyn, Nemtsy v Rossii. Ocherki nemetskoi kolonizatsii na Iuge i
Vostoke Rossii (Sankt-Petersburg: “Obshchestvennaia polza,” 1893), 93.
25
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius ob inostrannoi kolonizatsii Iuzhnoi Rossii, sbornik
dokumentov 1801–1829, ed. Olga Eisfeld (Odessa: Astroprint, 2003), 42–45.
24
23
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
alleviate this, he suggested the government write off the debts and allot
more land to the colonists.26
The establishment in 1800 of the Guardianship Office for New Russia
Foreign Settlers of Southern Russia (Kontora opekunstva Novorossiiskikh
inostrannykh poselentsev Iuzhnogo kraia Rossii)27 headed by Samuel
Contenius and the subsequent restructuring of the management of the
colonies was a powerful step towards more efficient governmental
support and supervision of the foreign colonists.28
In 1818 the management of the foreign colonies was reorganized
again as the number of colonists had increased considerably. An
imperial decree introduced the Trustees Committee for Foreign Settlers
in Southern Russia (Popechitelnyi komitet inostrannykh poselentsev
Iuzhnogo kraia Rossii)29 consisting of the Ekaterinoslav, Odessa and
Bessarabia Guardianship Offices.30 Its abolishment in 1833 marked the
end of the period of foreign colonists’ settlement and their migration
into the Russian Empire. Consequently, in 1837 the colonists were
placed under the supervision of the Ministry of State Property and there
was no longer a separate administration for the colonists.31 Moreover,
starting from the 1830s, government policy took a new turn. A new
ideology came into being involving the encouragement of an “official
nationality” based on the principles of Orthodoxy, autocracy,
Nationality and Slavdom. This ideology itself was a call for “constructing” an identity that would exclude non-Orthodox or culturally nonconformist elements.32 Eventually, foreign colonists were perceived as a
potential threat to Russian national identity, unless they converted to
Orthodox Christianity.
The unique legal status of the colonists in Russian society prevented their
rapid assimilation with the rest of the population. Expectations of the
Russian government that the colonists not only would colonize the
unsettled lands, but also, in a certain way, stimulate a long-lasting develop26
DADO, f. 134, op.1, spr. 28, 33.
Abbreviated as: the Guardianship Office.
28
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 81–95.
29
Abbreviated as: the Trustees Committee.
30
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 190–194.
31
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov Iuga Ukrainy (konets 18– pervaia polovina 19
vekov), ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Art-press, 1999), 58–59.
32
Sergei I. Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical
Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830–1917 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press,
2004), 35; James Urry, “Mennonites, Nationalism and the State in Imperial Russia,”
in Journal of Mennonite Studies, vol.12 (1994), 69–71.
27
24
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
ment of agriculture and modernization of southern Russia were not fully
realized. During almost all of the nineteenth century, the effect the colonists
had on the economy differed only slightly from that of Russian peasant
households. However, the colonists constantly improved agricultural tools
and introduced new agricultural machines and crops. Still, foreign settlers
did not make a deep impact on their next-door neighbors due to the
isolation of the colonist societies, their legal separation from the rest of the
rural population, and the cultural, and mental distance between the Russian
and Ukrainian peasants and the colonists. Moreover, the improved agricultural tools remained unattainable for the Ukrainian and Russian
peasants, because of their relative poverty.33 Owing to their lack of knowledge of Russian, their economic self-sufficiency and self-governance, their
religious creed and ethos, the colonists remained separated from their
Ukrainian and Russian neighbors.
The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid socioeconomic development in Russia. A number of so-called “bourgeois”
reforms (land, administrative, judicial, educational and military reforms)
were introduced and with them came profound changes in the
governmental attitude and official discourse towards the foreign colonists.
Alexander ΙΙ’s decree of 4 July 1871 embodied “great changes” for the
colonists. The decree abolished the privileges of the colonists, i.e. colonist
status and the special management of the colonies. Foreign colonists were
put under common Russian governmental rule and received the status of
landowner-settler (sobstvennik-poselianin) with rights and duties equivalent to the state peasants after the emancipation in 1861.34 Further
foundation of colonies, after 1872 – the settlements of settler-owners,
could take place on state lands, but also on other land purchased by
colonists. The introduction of general military service in 1874 extended to
the colonists as well. This was one of the main reasons for Mennonite
emigration to Canada and the USA. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, a series of “questions” occupied a prominent place in the Russian
political lexicon. While some questions concerned political and social
issues across the empire as a whole, others, such as the Jewish question,
33
Elvira Plesskaia, “Problemy sokhraneniia natsionalnoi kultury v usloviiakh
sushchestvovaniia i vzaimodeistviia s kulturoi titulnoi natsii,” in Kliuchevye problemy
istorii rossiiskikh nemtsev (Moskva: MSNK-press, 2004), 194–197; L. G. Friesen.
“Bukkers, Plows and Lobogreikas: Peasant Acquisition of Agricultural Implements in
Russia before 1900,” in Russian Review, vol. 53, no. 3 (1994), 399–418.
34
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, ed. Diesendorf, 507–516.
25
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
the Ukrainian question, and the Baltic question pertained only to nonRussian subjects of the empire.35 Moreover, by the 1870s the “German
element” as a whole had become problematic enough to be labeled a
“question” – the so-called “German question”. Purchases of land by
German colonist were in turn perceived as a “threat”.36 Gradually, formal
Russification and informal Russianisation took place all over the foreign
settlements of the Russian Empire.37
The end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century saw a crisis
of agriculture throughout the country. Ex-colonists lost land and, as a
result, emigration grew. Because of Prime Minister Peter Stolypin’s
agrarian reforms 1907–1914, most of the ex-colonists became private
owners of their land.38 However, many landless peasants or peasants who
had had insufficient land migrated to Siberia. In October 1914, the
Minister for Internal Affairs sent a secret circular in which he urgently
recommended that settlements and districts with German names instead
be given Russian names.39 It was soon implemented.
A central aspect of Russia’s participation in the First World War was a
sweeping campaign against so-called “enemy aliens” in order to mobilize
better for war. Not only ethnic Germans but also Jews, Muslims, Czechs,
Poles, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs were included among the
“enemy subjects.” The popular campaign quickly expanded well beyond
enemy subjects to affect large numbers of naturalized immigrants and
Russian citizens whose loyalty was questioned because of their ethnicity,
religion, or former citizenship.40 A similar campaign, but with a more
paranoid touch and hundreds of thousands of victims, was conducted
under Stalin in the second half of 1930s. It was directed against several
minority groups primarily in the western borderlands. Poles and Germans
turned out to be the campaign’s main targets, but it also reached the
Swedes in Gammalsvenskby.41
35
Elena Campbell, Russian Empire: Space, People, Power 1700–1930, p. 320.
Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 189.
37
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 551–552, 555–556; James Urry, “Mennonites,
Nationalism and the State in Imperial Russia,” in Journal of Mennonite Studies,
vol.12 (1994), 65–88.
38
Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens
during World War Ι (Harvard University Press, 2003), 90–91.
39
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 558–560.
40
Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, 1–9, 109-111,166–173.
41
See Kotljarchuk’s article in this volume.
36
26
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
However, wartime hostility focused predominantly on people of
“German origin” as they had grown into a population of over two
million by the 1897 census.42 According to the “liquidation laws” 1914–
1917 German meetings, along with the use of, and teaching in, the
German language were forbidden. Restrictions on German ownership of
land and land tenure were introduced; first in the western borderlands,
then all over the country.43 Germans were moved from the proximity of
the war-front territory. Finally, a special committee for the fight against
German dominance was established.44
The campaign resulted in the forced migration of roughly one million
civilians, nationalization of a substantial portion of the economy, and
the transfer of extensive land holdings and rural properties from the
targeted minorities to groups favored by the state.45 Such a campaign
had a direct impact on the multinational society of New Russia as its aim
was the creation of a homogenous nation state and the leveling of the
legal and cultural differences between the socioeconomic and ethnic
groups of the population.
From the second half of the eighteenth century until the First World
War, Russia’s colonization policy in the Azov and Black Sea region and
official attitudes towards the colonists went through a far-ranging
evolution.46 From the utopian expectations of the modernizing
“mission” of the colonists, the attitude changed into deep suspicion with
dystopian undertones. The modernizing goals that encompassed the
large-scale economic and social reshaping of the southern outskirts of
the empire were not realized, not least because of the complexity of the
task, shortcomings in planning, and insufficient support from the
authorities. In addition, the ideology of Official Nationality and the
further advancement of Russian nationalism increasingly alienated large
groups of former European subjects, particularly the Germans.
Sudden turn of destiny or forced resettlement?
The first time the Swedes on Dagö appeared in an official document was
in 1470 when the Master of the Teutonic Order released them from the
duty of daily labor in exchange for an annual fee of twenty Riga marks
42
Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, 4.
Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, 84–120.
44
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 555–591.
45
Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, 1.
46
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 558–562.
43
27
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
per district. These farmers were provided with a charter from the Master
of the Order according to which they were allowed to live freely on the
island, make a living as anglers, cultivate land and sell the products from
their lands and forests. The Swedish settlements were mainly found in
two districts on the northern part of the island. Swedes made up about a
seventh of the total population of Dagö. The earliest duties of the
Estonian Swedes were piloting ships, assisting in the salvaging of shipwrecks and providing the church with fish.
In 1561 when the rule of the Teutonic Order collapsed, the region
was taken over by Sweden and new tax rules were introduced. The island
remained under Swedish rule until 1710, when Russia invaded the Baltic
region. The tax collectors of the Swedish Crown and their clerks made a
list of all taxable farmers, Swedish as well as Estonian.
In the beginning, the tax collectors of the Swedish Crown respected
the privileges of the Swedish farmers, granted by feudal law. Swedish
monarchs issued new charters stipulating protection. The wars against
Denmark, Poland and Muscovy, in which Sweden had been victorious,
had for the most part been waged with borrowed means. The Swedish
Crown was indebted to many military commanders. All that back pay
was now to be cashed in and this was done mostly through selling
conquered land or through awarding land to noblemen in Swedish
service. In contrast to the Estonians, who had been enserfed after 1343,
the Estonian Swedes had until that time managed to keep their personal
freedom. In the years between 1590 and 1630, the free Swedish farmers
living on Dagö came under the rule of feudal landlords who had no
interest in respecting their privileges.
Count Jakob De la Gardie was given Dagö as an enfeoffment in 1620.
King Gustavus II Adolphus then sold him the island in 1624 to keep in
perpetuity as a fief. The situation of the Dagö-Swedes worsened even
more when Axel-Julius De la Gardie inherited Dagö from his father. In
1659 the new landlord forbade the Dagö Swedes to trade freely with lime
and cattle.
After many quarrels, Karl XI appointed a commission in Reval. The
commission was to take a closer look at the complaints of the Swedish
farmers in Estonia and ascertain their legal substance. The lawsuit ended
with a compromise. Axel-Julius De la Gardie managed to divide the
Swedish farmers into two groups. The Charters of the Grand Master of
the German Order were deemed to be valid for the Swedes living in the
villages of Röicks and Kertells. It is stated in a resolution from 7 October
28
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
1685 that the people living in the main villages were covered by the
Charters but not the farmers in the neighboring villages. The remainder
(approximately a third of the Dagö Swedes) was set on an equal footing
with the Estonian serfs, unless they moved to Sweden.
In 1721 after the Nystad peace treaty, the Dagö Swedes requested that
Peter Ι confirm their old privileges. Having received no reply, they
repeated their request and the matter was given to the Restitution
Commission that was founded by Catherine I. While waiting to hear
from a descendant of Axel-Julius De la Gardie, the commission declined
to make any decisions. By that time, Dagö belonged to the Russian
Crown, which leased the island for shorter periods to officers and
noblemen. The new possessors respected the exceptional position of the
Swedes regarding their personal freedom, but demanded a workload and
taxes equal to that of most Estonians.
In 1740, the Russian Senate made an important statement when the
Estonian peasants were declared the personal property of their landlords. In 1755, the Russian Crown returned the estates on Dagö to the
family of De La Gardie-Stenbock.
In the summer of 1779, the Swedish peasants on Dagö initiated legal
action for their full freedom. On 17 January 1780, a temporary agreement
was reached between Count Stenbock and his subjects. Stenbock
recognized the freedom of the Swedes and the peasants were given the
right to stay on their farms until March 1781, after which the matter
would be re-examined – these were the key points of the agreement. Soon
the situation was tense again between Count Stenbock and the Swedes.
Consequently, Karl Magnus Stenbock sold his properties on Dagö to
Baron Otto Reinhold Ludwig von Ungern-Sternberg.
The State Collegium of Justice in St Petersburg demanded that the
new landowner should stick to the agreement of 17 January 1780 and
give the peasants a six-month notice period. The peasants immediately
sent a delegation to Baron Ungern-Sternberg and asked for permission
to stay. On 9 March 1780 Baron Ungern-Sternberg agreed to grant this
permission.
According to one version47 Count Karl Magnus Stenbock, who knew
Grigorii Potemkin personally, was the one who suggested that the
47
For more about this development, see Jörgen Hedman, “När och varifrån kom den
svenska befolkningen till Dagö?” in Svenskbyborna 60 år i Sverige 1929–1989 (Visby:
Bokförlaget Hanseproduktion, 1989) 20–34; Jörgen Hedman, Lars Åhlander, Historien
om Gammalsvenskby och svenskarna i Ukraina (Stockholm: Dialogos, 2003); Jörgen
29
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Swedish peasants could become a part of Russia’s colonization policy.
He, by chance, made an offer to Potemkin to resettle hard-working and
capable Swedish peasants of Dagö Island in return for the liquidation of
his debts. Stenbock intended to settle Estonian peasants in place of the
Swedes who had brought him so much trouble. Potemkin, who was
responsible for the colonization of the Azov and Black Sea territories,
was having problems recruiting migrants and was very much interested
in potential colonists. He encouraged Catherine II to proclaim a decree
which would give the Dagö Swedes the chance to move to New Russia. A
decree was issued on 8 March 1781, on the eve of the agreement between
Baron Ungern-Sternberg and the Swedes.
Document 1: The Imperial Decree of Catherine II to the Estonia general-governor
Board about the resettlement of the peasants of the manor of Körgessaare (Hohenholm) to New Russia province. 8 March 1781.
Deigning the resettlement of the Swedish peasants of the manor
of Hohenholm to New Russia province, who received the
freedom from the former Master of the Teutonic Order and
privileges and resolutions from the Swedish monarchs, confirmed by their present landowner Count Steinbock. He adds
that the term of his engagement of the peasants lapsed after
February of the present year. Thus, they must leave his lands.
We are ruling to resettle these Swedish peasants, in total around
1000 persons female and male, to New Russia province in order
accept them as state peasants*48 of the local establishment.**49
Therefore, the Reval general-gubernatorskaia kantseliariia is
obliged to announce this will to all peasants, to compile their
census and support them in the resettlement. Prince Potemkin,
the governor-general of New Russia, Azov and Astrakhan, will
be responsible for the fulfillment of the resettlement, for setting
and allotting favorable state lands, for settling them and for
their supplying.
Catherine
Hedman, Gammalsvenskby: the true story of the Swedish settlement in the Ukraine,
accessed October 20, 2010, http://www.svenskbyborna.com/Historia/Historiska%20
dokument/Hedman%20Zmiivka%20history%20eng%20vers.htm.
*State peasants were considered free, but their movement was restricted. They were
also bound to the land.
**The Kazykermen district of the New Russia province.
30
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
Source: Antifeodalnaia borba volnykh shvedskikh krestian Estliandii 18–19 vv.,
sbornik dokumentov, ed. Julius Madisson (Tallinn: Eesti raamat, 1978), 134–135.
A small group of Estonian Swedes was hardly central to the colonization
of New Russia. However, having become accidentally involved with the
colonization project in the recently expanded southern fringes of Russia,
the Dagö Swedes were facing the possibility of ending their centurieslong judicial dispute with the landowners.
Such a solution to the conflict was also favorable for Potemkin. He
was obliged to colonize the Azov and Black Sea territories and have
them populated as soon as possible. Consequently, the decision satisfied
Potemkin and Ungern-Sternberg, but it signified the beginning of a new
ordeal for the Swedes. Potemkin persuaded Catherine II to issue a
Decree on 8 March 1781 regarding the resettlement of approximately
one thousand Swedish peasants from Hohenholm manor on the island
of Dagö to the Kherson district near to the town of Kazikermen in the
New Russia province.
Potemkin believed that the peasants would agree to move, if they
were granted favorable conditions and some special privileges. He sent
his representative, Colonel Ivan Sinelnikov, to Dagö, where he arrived
on 10 July 1781. Sinelnikov gathered the Swedish peasants and explained
the conditions for the settlement in the Black Sea territory. After some
debate, the Swedes agreed to move. On 20 August 1781, a group of
Swedes left their native island of Dagö forever.
Unlike German colonists, for instance, the Estonian Swedes were
involved in the colonization of the recently acquired territory only by
accident. Russia’s government had never planned to set up large Swedish
colonies in the Black Sea territory, as it had for Germans. Therefore, it is
impossible to compare the place and role of Swedes and Germans in the
mastering of the region. Potemkin’s personal initiative to resettle the
Swedes definitely influenced their destiny beyond this. Although actually
being Russian subjects, the Swedes were granted the privileged status of
colonists – just as foreign subjects from German states had been.50
50
Antifeodalnaia borba volnykh shvedskikh krestian Estliandii 18–19 vv., sbornik
dokumentov, ed. Julius Madisson (Tallinn: Eesti raamat, 1978), 31–34, 39–40, 52–53,
129–135, 141–142, 198–206, 325–326, 332–333, 350 pril.; Jörgen Hedman, “När och
varifrån kom den svenska befolkningen till Dagö?” in Svenskbyborna 60 år i Sverige
1929–1989 (Visby: Bokförlaget Hanseproduktion,1989) 20–34; Jörgen Hedman, Lars
Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskby och svenskarna i Ukraina (Stockholm:
Dialogos, 2003); Hedman, Gammalsvenskby: the true story; Julia Malitska, Estonski
31
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
The migration of the Estonian Swedes from Dagö to the South seems to
have been due to two main factors: the failed struggle to maintain their
free judicial states and their old customs, and the concurrent promotion
of large-scale colonization in the annexed Azov and Black Sea regions.
While there was a general feeling of fatigue and hopelessness concerning
the former, the latter opened a window of opportunity that a majority of
the Swedish population of Dagö decided to take advantage of.
The contributions
By compiling the material from several archives and authors, Svitlana
Bobyleva pursues the myth of the Gammalsvenskby Swedes’ supposed
bad treatment by the Russian state authorities. She argues that the
trauma and massive loss of life during the migration and the initial years
in southern Russia has cast a blurring shadow over the course of events.
The Swedes were not forced to migrate, but accepted an offer that at the
time seemed very generous given their distressed and unclear legal
situation in Estonia. The inability of the authorities to support the
Swedes, during the initial years of the settlement in southern Russia, was
due to the lack of knowledge of the territory where the settlement was
taking place and the fragmentary character of the regional administration. Once efficient administrators who were aware of the local
conditions began to act, conditions for the Swedes improved greatly;
they were even officially granted the colonist status they had so far
enjoyed de facto. Bobyleva also punctuates the myth about the broken
promises concerning the acreage of land provided to the Swedes,
showing that the land was redistributed in 1804 due to the significantly
reduced number of Swedish families as compared to 1781. The 34
families that had survived required much less land than the 200 families
that originally left Dagö, according to the authorities’ calculations. The
redistribution also took place at a time when the abundance of land
available in the late eighteenth century had turned into a growing
scarcity of land for distribution among the colonists who were arriving
in droves.
shvedy na Pivdni Rosiiskoi imperii: mihratsiia, adaptatsiia ta aculturatsiia pereselentsivcolonistiv (1781–1871) [The Estonian Swedes in the South of the Russian Empire:
Migration, Adaptation and Acculturation of the Migrants-Colonists (1781–1871)].
Manuscript of the Candidate thesis (Dnipropetrovsk, 2010), 61–77.
32
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
Julia Malitska’s chapter illuminates the process of acculturation of the
villagers of Gammalsvenskby from the migration from Dagö to the
withdrawal of their colonist status in 1871. The term “acculturation”
allows the studying of the processes of adaptation to the new milieu as
in-making and partial, rather than as a straightforward way towards
assimilation. Malitska finds that after the initial shocks caused by the
hardships of the migration, and different climatic and geographical
conditions of the new settlement that resulted in drastic initial
demographic losses, the village began to successfully integrate into the
ever changeable milieu of the southern fringes of the Russian Empire.
New methods of agricultural production were adopted and new
complementary sources of income were found. The Swedes did this in
interaction with the authorities, and their Russian, Ukrainian and
German neighbors, but without giving up the basic features of their
native culture. It may be argued that their knowledge of German and
Russian made it easier for them to keep their old customs and hold on to
their traditional religion. The mastering of both languages gave fruitful
neighborly interaction, good commercial relationships and allowed good
contacts with the colonist authorities, something that the Swedes’
German neighbors frequently lacked. Due to their ability to communicate with basically everyone, the villagers of Gammalsvenskby were
more or less free to safeguard their customs. Nevertheless, not merely
the material, but the spiritual culture of the villagers was slowly
changing, becoming vulnerable to stronger assimilation currents in the
decades after 1871.
Piotr Wawrzeniuk studies the creation of the village as it was
understood in Sweden and Finland during the three decades preceding
the First World War. The author suggests that the villagers preserved
their Swedish identity due to their relative isolation from the surrounding society and to the fact that they could therefore retain
characteristics which are usually considered typical of peasants in the
early modern period. The visit by Finnish-Swedophone linguist Herman
Vendell to the village marked the start of a period when Gammalsvenskby was integrated into an all-Swedish context, where nationalistic
and romantic views of common ancestry as a tool of identification and
unification were dominant. Although several visitors to the village
noticed that the villagers had been affected by a century of living in
southern Russia, a way of reasoning prevailed where the population was
automatically included in the Swedish nation. The visitors to the village
33
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
from Sweden and Finland mirrored the advent of modernity in these
countries. The cultural differentiation within both countries proved
influential for the future development of Gammalsvenskby. The author
brings forward the examples of Herman Vendell and the Swedish
missionary Emma Skarstedt. They were influenced by the very specific
cultural and political contexts of Finland and Sweden respectively. Their
beliefs, shaped in the home countries, functioned as a prism through
which the situation in the village was seen. The romantic and nationalistic view presented by Vendell would dominate the image of the
village prior to the migration of most of the villagers to Sweden in 1929.
Following that, it became obvious that the Gammalsvenskby inhabitants
were influenced as much by their Swedish roots as by living for 147 years
in the specific milieu of southern Russia.
Andrej Kotljarchuk’s chapter explores virtually unknown aspects of
the development during the 1930s. The author shows how a disillusioned group of 265 former Gammalsvenskby villagers who returned
to the USSR in 1930–31 became a piece in a propaganda game orchestrated from the USSR. After the split within the Swedish Communist
Party (SKP), the branch loyal to the Comintern took the opportunity to
flex its muscles politically in Sweden on the one hand, and prove it to be
an efficient part of the Comintern, on the other. The Comintern
considered that SKP had neglected the rural question; now the time was
ripe to correct this mistake in great style by bringing about the remigration of the dissenting group of villagers. Kotljarchuk uses the
concept of techniques of forced normalization, and proceeds with a
closer study of the configuration of new boundaries, one of the aspects
of forced normalization. He unveils the creation of a new vision of
history and future. This included a new image of the oppressed and the
oppressors, the introduction of a collective farm (kolkhoz) as a way of
proceeding towards the bright Communist future, new administrative
boundaries and new linguistic practices (the name Gammalsvenskby
was changed to “Röda Svenskby,” Red Swedish Village), along with a
number of other novelties. A new hierarchy was also created for Swedish
and Finno-Swedish Communists, and new cadres were drilled in the
local Komsomol, replacing the (absent) traditional elite of successful
farmers and the moral authority of the (absent) local priest. However,
the project was abruptly ended by the Holodomor, the man-made famine
that raged across Soviet Ukraine 1932–33 reaching Röda Svenskby in the
fall of 1932. Faced with new problems and abandoned by the Swedish
34
APPROACHING THE “LOST SWEDISH TRIBE” – WAWRZENIUK & MALITSKA
Communists, the farmers petitioned the authorities just as their forefathers sent supplications to lords and royalties. There were also calls for
Sweden to help. The author finds these acts to be ones of fading collective resistance that ceased due to the Stalinist terror in 1937–38, when
twenty-three villagers were taken away and secretly executed.
35
Previous pages: Map 4: Probably the irst appearance of Gammalsvenskby
(“Schwedszkaja Kolonija”) on a map. Kezikermen, the nearest hamlet, was renamed
Berislav (“Beriszlaw”) circa 1789-1805, Krigsarkivet 0403/31/A/037 18a.
Map 5: Swedes and their neighbours. “Old Swedish” [colony] is now accompanied
by the villages of Mühlhausendorf and Klosterdorf to the south, and along the road
Berislav. Special map of the western part of the Russian Empire (“Spets. Karta Zap.
Chasti Rossiiskoi Imperii G.L. Schuberta”), 1826-1840, Krigsarkivet, 0403/31/32/LI
The Russian State and Swedes in New Russia
(between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries)
SVITLANA BOBYLEVA
In the literature on Gammalsvenskby it is often said that the Dagö
Swedes were forced to move to the South of the Russian Empire. This
belief has old roots, and is based on the inscription on the cross erected
near the church of Gammalsvenskby in the nineteenth century. In contemporary Ukraine, this historiography has unfortunately been turned
into mythologization. This chapter will identify the most common
myths and then, in their place, give an account of the course of events
based on documents.
In 1995 professor Hanna Chumachenko called upon scholars to look
into the reasons and character of the interaction of different cultures in
Zmiivka. Using old residents’ accounts and a few historical documents
Chumachenko confidently stated that Catherine II expelled the Swedes
from the Baltic island of Dagö in 1782.1 This statement might have
passed unnoticed, particularly as the Chumachenko is a philologist, and
not a professional historian, but Chumachenko returned to the subject
in 1997, claiming that force was used against the Estonian Swedes when
they were deported. In addition, she suggested that by accusing the
whole ethnic group of plundering, Catherine II stirred feelings of collective guilt among the Swedish settlers.2
The term “deportation” appears three times on two pages in
Chumachenko’s article. She also defined the settlement of Swedish
prisoners-of-war in Gammalsvenskby in 1790 as deportation. Moreover,
1
Hanna Chumachenko, “Kulturnyi prostir pivdnia,” Naddniprianska Ukraina, January
31, 1995.
2
Hanna Chumachenko, “Shvedske poselennia na Pivdni Ukrainy,” Narodna tvorchist
ta etnografiia, no. 2–3 (1997), 105.
39
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
she claimed the Swedes took the risky decision to resettle because there
was an imminent threat of enserfment; and that Catherine II granted the
Swedes colonist status only during a visit to the region, when she was
accompanied by foreigners and wished to conceal the very difficult
situation of the Swedes.3 Among related interpretations of the nature of
the Swedes’ movement to the South of the Russian Empire one finds
Anatolii Kusheverski, who described it as “free-will deportation,”4 and
Alexander Loit who characterized it as ‘administrative removal.”5
Document 2: About the Swedish colony in the remote places of Russia.
/…/ Swedes who under unheard repression had long lived a
miserable life on Dagö, where they uncountable times begged
the Russian government for permission to move away /…/
Source: “En svensk koloni i djupa Ryssland,” Helsingfors Aftonblad, 1893.06.20,
no.25.
Myths and reality
The turns of fortune of the “Swedes” before the eighteenth century are
well known. They used to help ship-wreck survivors, provide clergymen
and parishioners with fish, and they were personally free. But then
things happened which explain why they left Dagö.
When Count Jakob De la Gardie in 1624 attempted to enserf the
Swedish peasants, he encountered firm resistance. The Swedes defended
their personal freedom on the whole successfully but the year 1721
marked a turning point. The territory and its population passed to Russia,
and the threats to the personal freedom of the Swedes increased. In their
struggle, they chose the method of requesting and petitioning, a defense
very different to the spontaneous riots of the Russians, or the violent
3
Hanna Chumachenko, “Fenomen “kulturnogo shoku” na Pivdni Ukrainy ta iogo
literaturni retsenzii,” in Zaselennia Pivdnia Ukrainy: problemy natsionalnogo ta
kulturnoho rozvytku:naukovi rozpovidi Mizhnarodnoi naukovo-metodychnoi
konferentsii (21–24 travnia 1997), ch. 2 (Kherson, 1997), 211–215; “Shvedy pod
Khersonom. Pod Poltavoi shvedy byli bity. A pod Khersonom – prizhylis,” Khersonskyi
visnyk, no.4/21(1993), 5.
4
Anatolii Kusheverskii, “K voprosu o perspektivakh issledovaniia shvedskikh obshchin v
Rossii v 19 veke v fondakh RGIA,” in Materialy konferentsii “Sankt-Peterburg i strany
Severnoi Evropy,” accessed February 10, 2009, http://www.rchgi.spb.ru/spb/conference
_1/kusheversky.htm.
5
Alexander Loit, “Pereselenie shvedov iz Estonii na Ukrainu v kontse 18 veka,” in
Skandinavskii zbornik, no.32 (Tallinn: Eesti paamat, 1988), 105.
40
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
protests of the free Zaporizhian Cossacks. From the 1770s, their opponent
in this legal struggle was Count Stenbock, the husband of Count De la
Gardie’s granddaughter. They hired a lawyer and organized a delegation
to the Court of Justice of Reval province.
The chronology of the events that occurred is as follows: on 18 July
1779, Count Stenbock replied to the Court that he gave the Swedes back
their freedom and on 5 September 1779, he demanded that within a sixmonth term they should leave his land. In December 1779, the Court in
Reval confirmed the lawfulness of these actions. The Swedes responded
by taking their case to the State Collegium of Justice in St Petersburg.
Weary of lawsuits and not sure that the verdict of St Petersburg lawyers
would be in his favor, Stenbock sold his property on Dagö to Baron Otto
Reinhold Ludwig von Ungern-Sternberg.6
Meanwhile other events were taking place in Russia. Following its
victory over Turkey in the 1768–1774 war, Russia started developing the
Black Sea territory and populating the so-called Wild Field. In view of
the existing conflict, the Swedes were given the opportunity (the
Imperial Decree of 8 March 1781) to settle in New Russia on quite
favorable terms.
Almost simultaneously, 9 March 1781, Ungern-Sternberg permitted
the Swedes, those who had been most active in resisting him, to stay on
his island. Thus, the Swedes were facing the dilemma of whether to stay
on the baron’s land (not their own land), which several of them would
be forced to leave anyway, or move to the new lands with the promise of
good prospects.
If one compares what would be left of the Swedish ownership of
land, and what they were promised, migration seems to be the rational
step. On Dagö, the average farmer had 13.8 desiatinas7 of arable land,
one horse, two oxen, and one cow. The Swedes were promised sixty
desiatinas of arable land per household for use in perpetuity, combined
with various financial and tax privileges. This must surely be the
explanation for why the Swedes chose to move. Alexander Loit estimates that the fate of the Swedes was impossible to avert once Catherine
II’s order had been issued.8 However, we know that 75 Swedish
peasants refused to resettle and moved to Reval. Moreover, if the
6
Marquis de Kustin wrote about Karl Ungern-Sternberg.
Desiatina (Russian: десятина) Old Russian unit of land area. The desiatina
originally measured 1,092 hectares.
8
Loit, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 105.
7
41
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
peasants were simply forced to obey the order, and act against their
own will, there would have been no reason for Colonel Ivan
Sinelnikov’s propagandist mission. Yet it started on 10 July 1781, and
its results are well known.
In historical literature, there are several estimates as to the number of
the Swedes who left Dagö. The exact number of those who left in 1781 is
important to determine; the higher the original number of migrants, the
higher the human losses suffered during the initial period, and vice versa.
The number on the list created by the officials of Reval Governorate
Chancellery was 935 individuals.9 However, by that time 75 people who
did not wish to resettle, notwithstanding the promises made to them, had
already left the island. Yet the number of resettlers on the list before the
departure was 960 persons. Andrej Kotljarchuk writes about 1,000
resettlers,10 while Alexander Loit gives the figure 1,200.11 One of the
Kherson editions mentioned 880 Swedes from Dagö.12 The figure given in
the Senate report from the year 1800 is 904 persons. Jörgen Hedman
writes about 1,207 people who wished to resettle. The resettlers and the
vicar from the neighboring island provided the same numbers.13 However,
one should remember that the accounts of ordinary people – the first
resettlers – constitute part of their reaction to the extraordinary and
traumatic events. The accounts have then been passed on from one
generation to the next, becoming a virtual canon of local memory.
As various official documents differ on the matter, I suggest making
use of the financial document – the rough-copy list of the departing
Swedes, available at the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast archive. It was drawn up
on 26 August 1781. The character of the material suggests it is authentic.
The list contains the number of the departing Swedes, of their belongings, and of the travel expenses granted to them for the two-and-a-half
9
Julia Malitska, “Shvedske naselennia Pivdnia Rosiiskoi imperii: peredumovy,
prychyny na khid migratsii,” in Visnyk Chernihivskoho derzhavnoho pedahohichnogo
universytetu, vyp. 52, seriia: Istorychni nauky, no.5 (Chernihiv: Chernihivskyi
Derzhavnyi pedahohichnyi universytet, 2008), 23.
10
Andrej Kotjarchuk, “Nemtsy Ukrainy v sudbakh shvedskoi kolonii na Dnepre, 1805–
2007” in Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Porogi,
2007), 28.
11
Loit, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 106.
12
Zabuttiu ne pidliahae. Narysy. Spogady. Opovidannia, ed. Eduard Dubovyk
(Kherson: “Reabilitovani istorieiu,” 1994), 224.
13
Jörgen Hedman, Gammalsvenskby - the true story of the Swedish settlement in the
Ukraine, accessed 22 April 2010, http://www.svenskbyborna.com/Historia/Historiska
%20dokument/Hedman%20Zmiivka%20history%20eng%20vers.htm
42
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
month journey. The document also provides a full picture of the sexand-age structure of the resettlers.14
The Dnipropetrovsk list numbers 482 men and 485 women, giving a
total of 967 individuals. Nevertheless, the nominal list – with all the names
given – runs to 965 persons. Proceeding from the above-mentioned, we
can say that the number of Swedes who left for New Russia was 965.
As to the date the colony was founded, there also exists a certain
discrepancy: the Senate report from the year 1800 mentions 1787.15 This
date appears also in the work by Alexander Klaus16 and in the materials
of the journal Severnyi archiv.17 Andrej Kotljarchuk18 and Vasilii
Kabuzan19 refer to 1781 as the foundation date. Ivan Kulinich,20 Hanna
Chumachenko,21 Alexander Loit22 and Jörgen Hedman23 write about
1782. We know that the Swedes left Dagö on 20 August 1781. On 26
November 1781, they reached the village of Reshetilovka located 25
kilometers from Poltava. The village was assigned to be their winter
quarters. On 16 April 1782, the group was to pick up the journey to the
place of settlement, as the time was ripe to start spring-field works.24 In
other words, the Swedes settled on the territory of the colony in the
spring of 1782. As to the year 1781, in the context of the foundation of
Gammalsvenskby, it might be related to the dating of Catherine II’s
Decree regarding the resettlement of the Swedes, and not to the date that
the colony was founded.
Another misconception in the history of Gammalsvenskby is the
supposedly broken promise from the side of the Russian state. No
houses had been built for the Swedes and no fields had been sown before
their arrival. Below, I intend to clarify what happened and look for a
possible explanation. The resettlement terms delimit the obligations of
14
DAOO, f.134, op. 1, spr. 1, arkk. 2–3.
PSZRI, sobr. 1, t. 26, str. 119.
16
Alexander Klaus, Nashi kolonii. Opyt i materialy po istorii i statistike inostrannoi
kolonizatsii v Rossii, vyp.1(Sankt-Peterburg: Tip. V.V. Nusvalta, 1869), 568.
17
Severnyi archive: Zhurnal istorii, statistiki i puteshestvii, no.8, April, 1824, 64.
18
Kotjarchuk, “Nemtsy Ukrainy v sudbakh shvedskoi kolonii na Dnepre,” 28.
19
Vasilii Kabuzan, Zaselenie Novorossii v 18 i pervoi polovine 19 vv. (Moskva: Nauka,
1976), 176.
20
Ivan Kulinich, “Iak i koly ziavylysia shvedski kolonii v Pivdennii Ukraini,”
Ukrainskyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no.1 (1995), 120.
21
Chumachenko, “Shvedske poselennia na Pivdni Ukrainy,” 102.
22
Loit, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 106.
23
Hedman, Gammalsvenskby - the true story.
24
Grirorii Pisarevskii, “Pereselenie shvedov s ostrova Dago v Novorossiiskii krai (Po
dokumentam Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva),” Russkii vestnik, kn. 3 (Moskva, 1899), 250.
15
43
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
the state. According to the terms, the resettlers would be given a
sufficient lot of fertile land in the New Russia province, sixty desiatinas
per household. During the four initial years they would be granted
preferential duties, but with further commitment to pay the State
Treasury the same amount as other state settlers – five dengas25 per
desiatina for a year – after the initial period expired. On the other hand,
they would no longer pay the poll tax. The settlers would be given a writ
and a payment of twelve rubles per household for building and setting
up a house. They would be provided with seeds for sowing and food
supplies for a year. In new places they would be settled in “special
colonies”, i.e. separate from settlers of other nationalities, and would
have their own church and priest. On their way to the places of
settlement they would be rendered all possible assistance.26 Thus, there is
no mention of either houses to be erected or fields sown before the
settlers’ arrival. However, while the Swedes were on their way to new
places Grigorii Potemkin ordered the governor of the New Russia
province Nikolai Iazykov to apportion sixty desiatinas of land along the
bank of the Dnipro up to the town of Kazykermen to the Swedish
settlers. A portion of the woodlands on the nearby islands would be
reserved for the Swedes’ common use. The governor was also instructed
to buy seeds for sowing at the province’s expense, to gather oxen and
ploughs from Zaporizhian zymnyks,27 and to plough and sow twelve
chetveriks28 of grain per household by the fall of 1781. As the Swedes had
planned to reach their colony in the late fall, the governor should
“choose well-disposed settling areas and place the Swedes there for the
winter period providing them with free food supplies.”
In addition, Potemkin gave orders to Iazykov that the houses should
be built under the supervision of carpenters brought from Kurland, so
that the type of building would be familiar to the resettlers.29 This part of
Potemkin’s order30 illustrates that he was not well informed about the
physical character of the resettlement area. The document mentions
25
Denga (Russian: деньга) was a Russian monetary unit with a value latterly equal to
½ kopeck (100 kopecks = 1 Russian Ruble).
26
Pisarevskii, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 247.
27
Zymnyk (Ukrainian: зимник) was a name for the Zaporizhian Cossaks’ winter
camps, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
28
Chetverik (Russian: четверик) Old Russian unit of volume, 1 chetverik was equal
to 26, 24 liters. The word “chetverik” means “one fourth” or “one quarter.”
29
Pisarevskii, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 250.
30
“Order” – this was the name of the document.
44
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
“woodland places on the islands,” but there was no timber there, there
was only “firewood.”31 There was a shortage of timber in the Azov and
Black Sea territories.32
The people who undertook the work of planning, populating the area
and developing it economically, were, as it turned out, unaware of the
real conditions in the locality to which they sent the first settlers. In the
case of the Swedes, they were really the first to settle in the area. The
administration responsible for their accommodation simply had no
experience, but developed methods of organizing the settlers’ everyday
life. This situation was typical of the system of power from the top to the
bottom. Proof of this can be found even in Catherine II’s manifesto of
1763, in the part that concerns lands. They are described as free and
suitable for populating, in particular so the Barabin Steppe with its
forests, rivers, fisheries and fertile land.33 However, the Barabin Steppe
bears its name exactly because it is a steppe. Consequently, there are no
forests there – only small groups of birch trees, vast swamps, feathergrass steppes, snowdrifts and frosts.
The documents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries concerning
the region frequently mention its lack of timber. This problem urged
Samuel Contenius, the head of the colonist administration, to pay special
attention to forest planting. However, at the same time he understood that
the colonists could not start until 1815, as production of the “daily bread”
on a sufficient scale had to be achieved first.34
The shortage of timber, its high cost, problems of delivering it to its
destination, and the repeated efforts of the colonist administration to
solve the timber problem – constitute the subject of numerous
documents and are worthy of a special investigation.35 But all of them
belong to the beginning of the nineteenth century whereas the events
concerning “our” Swedes are dated from the early 1780s. The scarcity of
timber in the area where the Swedish village was founded and an overall
shortage in the region made the materialization of Potemkin’s aspirations to build houses for the colonists unrealistic. Of course, people tried
to find alternatives. The governor Iazykov thought that natural stone,
31
Severnyi archiv, s. 66.
Pisarevskii, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 250.
33
PSZRI, sobr. 1, t. 26, str. 315–316.
34
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 969, ark. 108.
35
RGIA, f. 383, op. 29, l. 3-b; DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 54, arkk. 57–58; DADO, f.
134, op.1, spr.72, ark.133; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr.138, arkk. 216, 653–671.
32
45
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
which was available “near the area allotted to resettlers,” would provide a
durable and cheap building material for colonist houses. Yet originally,
the first Swedish settlers had to erect earth-shelters and live in them
until regular houses were built.36 Apparently, those earth-shelters proved
to be strong and durable; in 1804 they functioned as temporary shelter
for German colonists who were settled as neighbors of the Swedes.37
The situation with winter sowing was also far from safe. If it was
possible to plough the virgin Wild Field and sow seeds, as Potemkin’s
order implied, there would have been no need to call upon the colonists.
In this particular case (with no fields sown beforehand), what really
mattered was the “human factor” and the shortage of agricultural tools.38
In other words, it was the result of incompetent Russian governance,
caused by a lack of knowledge of the local conditions and/or fragmentary administration.
The land issue
1804 marks a turning point in the life of the Swedish colony. During that
year, German colonists were settled on its land. The settlement reduced
the acreage of available land. The withdrawal of land from the population of Gammalsvenskby has generally been interpreted as yet another
aggravation against the Swedish orchestrated by the Russian state. I shall
argue that this action was a part of general state policy, and followed the
regulations as to how the land was to be distributed.
Initially it was believed that 200 families of Estonian Swedes would
migrate to New Russia. Every family would be allotted sixty desiatinas of
land. Hence, the total of the land allotted to the Swedish settlers made
12,000 desiatinas. However, only 127 families left Dagö. Correspondingly,
the land required should then be 7,620 desiatinas. Thus, the acreage
allotted to each Swedish family considerably exceeded the area that was
originally intended.
That would not have been entirely unreasonable if the population of the
village had grown fast in the ensuing years, or if there had at least been a
prospect of fast growth. However, the demographic situation in the
36
Pisarevskii, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 250.
Severnyi archiv, 67. In 1924, “Severnyi archiv” (The Northern Archive) wrote that
the Swedish houses were wooden, but the Germans had dugout houses covered with
straw.
38
In 1811, the density of local population was 5.4 persons per versta (1 versta=1,068
kilometers).
37
46
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
course of migration and at the initial stage of settlement and adaptation
was depressing. Several factors led to just over half of the Swedes
reaching their destination. The choice of season for the movement was
erroneous – it was fall with rains, early frosts and winds, affecting the
Swedes’ health adversely. The route was long and hard. Another important factor was the age composition of the settlers; 36 per cent of the
settlers who set off to the south were children under the age of sixteen.
Out of these children, 13 per cent were aged between six months to five
years; eight babies at the time of movement were not even six months.39
The children suffered more than others as they were more vulnerable to
the cold and infectious diseases. Along the way, in Belarus, the Swedes
became infected with small-pox, resulting in several deaths. When they
stopped for the winter in Poltava province, they numbered no more than
880 individuals, down from 965.
In January 1782, Iazykov reported that thirty adults and fifty-six
children had died. Living conditions after the settlement appear to have
been even harder. Between July 1782 and March 1783, 336 people died.
By the spring of 1783, only 148 Swedes were alive. The causes were
mainly the terrible conditions on the way, infectious diseases typical of
that time, and a lack of medical assistance. In addition, the dwellings in
which the Swedes had made their homes were unfit for permanent
habitation (earth-shelters that were both damp and cold). As they were
not accustomed to the climatic conditions, they fell prey to malaria and
typhus. There was a lack of fresh water. The settlers were “to be in the
habit of enduring those hardships, so that right at the beginning not to
lose their energy and feel sorrow for the native land they had left,” wrote
Dmitrii Bagalei.40 The situation in the colony made the government look
for an immediate solution. In 1790 another thirty-one Swedes – former
prisoners-of-war, who wished to become Russian citizens – were settled
there. However, living conditions in the colony obviously did not suit
the newcomers; the large majority of them left and only between five41
and nine individuals remained.42
On 8 November 1796 Catherine II died. The Catherinean age was
marked by an active colonization policy. The new Emperor, Paul I, was
39
Malitska, “Shvedske naselennia Pivdnia Rosiiskoi imperii,” 24.
Dmitrii Bagalei, Kolonizatsiia Novorossiiskogo kraia i pervye shagi ego po puti
kultury (Kiev: Tip. G. T. Korchak-Novitskogo, 1889), 100.
41
Kotjarchuk, “Nemtsy Ukrainy v sudbakh shvedskoi kolonii na Dnepre,” 29.
42
Bagalei, Kolonizatsiia Novorossiiskogo kraia, 91.
40
47
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
difficult to understand as a political figure. After inheriting the throne,
he changed political course entirely from that of his mother.43 Still, as far
as colonization was concerned it seems as if he wished to continue his
mother’s policy. Moreover, his energetic measures to improve the
situation in the colonies could have helped to reinvigorate the colonists.
However, in 1801 he was assassinated. His successor Alexander I chose
to follow the Catherinean settlement policy, but also to make use of the
results of Paul I’s policy. He took further steps to colonize the Azov and
Black Sea territories. At that time settlement practice was dominated by
the German population, as Alexander I was strongly influenced by the
pro-German circles in the Court. The years 1803–1811 constituted the
peak of German colonization; in the Kherson province alone, 33
German agricultural colonies were founded.44
The great influx of colonists meant that more land was needed for
distribution. Unexpectedly, a shortage of available land became apparent. After Zaporizhian Sich had been ruined in 1775, the Russian
authorities started a redistribution process of its lands to private
persons, officials, military officers, landowners, and foreigners. They
also received land in newly conquered territories. Only smallholders,
peasants and landowners’ serfs were excluded from the land distribution.45 The size of land lots varied from 1,500 to 12,000 desiatinas, but
some people obtained up to tens of thousands of desiatinas. The terms
were quite generous: populating the lot and putting the land into
agricultural use. The people who obtained the land were exempt from all
taxes and duties for a period of ten years. If the terms were observed, the
land could then be turned into the user’s private property. However, at
the turn of the nineteenth century it became clear that the process of
economic development of the southern territories was slowing down.
The land distribution did not generate the effect the authorities had
expected. By 1792, the new territories still remained sparsely populated,
and the government decided to grant landholders another four years to
populate their lots. Those who did not fill the quota fixed in their
contract had to return the extra land to the State Treasury. In compen43
Fedor Golovkin, Dvor i tsarstvovanie Pavla I (Moskva, 1912); Nikolai Shylder,
Imperator Alexander I: ego zhizn i tsarstvovanie, t. 1–2 (Sankt-Peterburg: Izdanie
A.S. Suvorina, 1904); Alexander Vallotton, Alexander I (Moskva: Progress, 1991).
44
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov Iuga Ukrainy (konets 18–19 pervaia polovina
19 vekov), ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Art-press, 1999), 42.
45
Bagalei, Kolonizatsiia Novorossiiskogo kraia, 70.
48
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
sation they were paid eighty kopecks per desiatina. The withdrawn land
could be then allotted to colonists or sold to private individuals at the
same price, eighty kopecks per desiatina.46 The Swedish colony was also
affected by this process.
Starting in 1803, the authorities actively searched for new land for
settlement. Decisions were taken to withdraw land from officers and
generals47 who did not adhere to the terms of obtaining the land.48 Part
of the lands owned by landlords was sequestered by the State Treasury in
order to be used by colonists.49 Lands were bought from state officials50
and were repossessed from landlords for non-payment of land tax.51 Lots
of land was cut off from state settlements.52 Land-surveyors inspected the
region, searching for vacant land.53
Amidst this search, the Guardianship Office for Foreign Settlers
could not leave unnoticed the lands of the Swedish colony, where 34
families were in possession of land originally allotted to 200 families
(12,000 desiatinas). The land belonging to the Swedes should only have
totalled 2,040 desiatinas.54 For a variety of reasons, they did not even use
that acreage to the full. Cultivating crops did not suffice for their needs
at the time (due to drought, a shortage of agricultural implements and
the presence of vermin). Fishing was their major occupation. The 1802
report from the caretaker (smotritel) of the Swedish colony Ivan
Pavlowski to Kontora opekunstva stated: “The Swedish colonists do not
work hard to sow spring crops and show no diligence to till the soil.”55
Taking into account this situation, it was decided on 9 July 1804 to settle
German colonists on the surplus lands of the Swedish colony. Afterwards those German settlers founded three colonies – Klosterdorf,
Mühlhausendorf and Schlangendorf.56
46
Bagalei, Kolonizatsiia Novorossiiskogo kraia, 75.
Zapiski Odesskogo obschestva istorii i drevnostei, t. 24 (Odessa: Ekonomichaskaia
tipografiia i litografiia, 1902) 36–37.
48
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, d.72, ll. 9–10.
49
RGIA, f. 383, op. 29, d. 217, ll. 18–22; Pisma gertsoga Amana Emmanuel De
Richelieu Samueliu Khristianovichu Conteniusu. 1803–1814, ed. Olga Konovalova
(Odessa: OKFA ”TES,” 1999), 212–213.
50
RGIA, f. 383, op. 29, d. 217, ll. 18–22.
51
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, d. 72, ll. 16–17.
52
DAOO, f. 1, op. 220, d.13, ll. 250.
53
RGIA, f. 383, op. 29, d. 205, l. 54; DADO, f. 134, op. 1, d. 72, l. 15.
54
DAOO, f. 1, op. 220, spr. 4, ark. 124.
55
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 98, arkk. 71–72.
56
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 72, ark. 51.
47
49
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
In other words, the withdrawal of land from the Swedish colonists was
not an act of ill-will, nor a violation of their rights, or a breaking of
earlier obligations by the state administration. It was the result of the
prevailing state of things in the colony, as well as of the state policy at
that time towards all agriculturalists in the region.
Table 1: The number of families in the Swedish colonist district (1800–1887).
1800
1804
1812
–
1815
1821
1836
1859
1887
Gammalsvenskby
22
34
30
40
40
40
71
Klosterdorf
-
-
30
33
33
35
70
Mühlhausendorf
-
-
16
18
21
35
57
Schlangendorf
-
-
19
28
32
35
50
Source: Materialy dlia otsenki zemel Khersonskoi gubernii, t. 6. Khersonskii uezd
(statistiko-ekonomicheskoe opisanie uezda), (Kherson: Tip. O.D. Khodushynoi,
1890), 147–148; DAKhO, f. 14, op. 1, d. 36, l. 44, 58; DAOO, f. 6, op.1, d. 4458, l. 117.
Table 1 shows that although the number of families diminished in some
years, there was a tendency towards an increase in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Thus, the number of families grew while the acreage
available to the villagers remained the same. This process brought about
the “land problem” and the judicial wrestling that began in the late
nineteenth century.
A question that remains to be answered is why the Swedes were given
sixty desiatinas of land. Resettlers with Russian citizenship – starovery,
raskolniki, dukhobory,57 the state peasants – were given no more than
fifteen desiatinas per household. On what basis did the Swedish settlers
claim privileges for 30 years? All colonists were only granted ten years.
Since 1800 at the latest there are no traces of the document according to
which the Swedes were settled in the Kherson region.
57
Eighteenth century religious denominations that opposed the official Russian
Orthodox Church were persecuted for disobedience to the authorities and refusal to
serve in the army; they migrated to Canada at the end of the nineteenth century.
50
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
Military service
When in 1874 compulsory military service was introduced in Russia, the
Swedes objected that the new law should not apply to them. However,
the reform encompassed all estates and was motivated by the political
situation outside Russia and the necessity to strengthen the country’s
defenses. The army needed new principles of recruitment. Minister of
Defense Dmitrii Miliutin wrote:
It was meant to annul a great number of outdated articles of the
previous recruitment regulations /…/ to lay the burden of
military service upon as large a number of people as possible
and in this way make easier the lot of that part of population
which had been bearing that burden before. It was a delicate
task. With our estate privileges and various favors given at
different times to some or other categories of population, what
criterion should be accepted in the new legislative work?58
The inhabitants of Dagö had since 1721 been Russian subjects, and it
was quite natural that the Swedes were, like all other colonists who were
Russian subjects, to be the part of conscription. The terms on which the
Swedes were invited to settle in the south did not include exemption
from military service. Yet there was a catch. From the time they moved
to Ukraine, the Swedes were de facto treated as colonists. In 1800 they
were granted the status of foreign colonists, and the document had a
clause detailing colonists’ exemption from the military service.59
Beginning in 1874 all colonists including the Swedes were obliged to
serve in the armed forces. Times and circumstances were changing and
not only in Russia. In Europe as well as in the USA a program of integrating the population into the consolidated whole – civic society – was
underway. It was accompanied by the unification of legislation and
forms of governing the territories. In this process, uniform rights and
duties of citizens were introduced.
A question that remains to be answered is why the Swedes were given
sixty desiatinas of land. Resettlers with Russian citizenship – starovery,
58
Otdel rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi Rossiiskoi biblioteki, fond Dmitriia Miliutina, М.
7850, str. 91–92.
59
PSZRI, sobr. 1, t. 26, no. 19372, str. 115–128.
51
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
raskolniki, dukhobory,60 the state peasants – were given no more than
fifteen desiatinas per household. What privileged thirty-year period did
the Swedes claim in 1800? All the colonists were granted ten privileged
years. Since 1800 at the latest there are no traces of the document
according to which the Swedes were settled in the Kherson region.
Authorities and colonists
Russia has been called the jail of peoples, and there is no doubt that
Tsarist Russia was unjustifiably cruel to indigenous peoples in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, the position of foreign
colonists could not be compared with that of Russian serfs.
When discussing the problem of the Russian state’s attitude towards
the Swedes, we cannot separate it from the problem of foreign colonization in general, i.e. the attitude of the state power towards Germans,
Mennonites, French and other settlers in New Russia. From the very
start of the colonization, the Russian rulers of the eighteenth century
through to the beginning of the nineteenth century considered the
populating of New Russia a top priority. They took personal interest in
the economic development of the colonies and directed the process.
Historical literature has practically not touched upon the subject of
how the settlement policy in Russia was worked out, or how it was based
on the experiences of other European countries. References to “enlightened absolutism” alone are insufficient. There was a concrete historical
practice which served as a model for the Russian government.61
By the time Catherine II came to the throne the leading European
states (Great Britain and France) had a practice of colonization policy
developed when populating the North American colonies. This policy
was based on rather harsh principles. The settlers had to pay a considerable sum of money to cover transportation costs, and those unable to
pay on arrival became “contract workmen.” From the day the first
colony was founded in Jamestown and up to the revolution of 1776 (and
in some places even fifty years after) it was a routine practice in the
British colonies that white immigrants were turned into virtual slaves for
a period of seven years and sometimes longer to repay the cost of ocean
60
Eighteenth century religious denominations that opposed the official Russian
Orthodox Church were persecuted for disobedience to the authorities and refusal to
serve in the army; they migrated to Canada at the end of the nineteenth century.
61
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 24.
52
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
crossing. Civil and criminal law placed them on the same footing as
slaves. Prior to 1700 more than half of the immigrants in Virginia had
been “contract workmen.”62
However, the Russian Empress chose to follow the colonization
policy of the Prussian rulers of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries.
Her Manifesto of 1763 basically copied the Potsdam Edict of 1684 of the
Great Elector Frederick William, with only a handful of separate clauses
being extended and developed.63
Despite some shortcomings when implementing the principles of
Catherine II’s manifesto, it did not lose its significance and constituted the
basis of Russian legislation regarding foreign colonists. The responsibility
for the settlement was placed on the Office for Foreigners’ Guardianship
which was founded almost at the same time the as the manifesto of 1763
was issued, and put under the direct control of Catherine II herself. The
Empress’s favorite, Count Grigorii Orlov, was appointed head of
Kantseliariia. The instructions outlining the responsibilities of the Office
said that its main task was to provide favorable conditions for the resettling colonists.64 The Office should make an inventory of the property
brought by the settlers, compile maps of vacant land, and make sure that
the newcomers were properly settled.65
On Orlov’s initiative an “Instruction about the delimitation of lands
allotted for settling foreign colonists” was published in March 1764. The
document appointed land-surveyors to delimit the boundaries of future
colonies, with the assistance of personnel hand-picked from military
detachments. On the same day, “Rules for Colonies” were issued, which
were to regulate life in the colonies. On 22 March 1764, there appeared a
“Plan for Populating New Russia province,” which was a kind of
supplement to the 1763 manifesto. The plan was an attempt to embrace
all aspects of life in the region and to adjust them to the demands of
colonization. It became a law that remained in force in New Russia until
the 1780s.66 The Catherinean law put foreign colonists on a privileged
footing compared to the other tax-payers in the Russian Empire.
Foreigners were granted big lots of arable land on communal property
62
William Foster, Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Ameriki (Moskva, 1955), 115–116.
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 27–28.
64
Iakov Ditz, Istoriia povolzhskikh nemtsev-kolonistov (Moskva: Gotika, 1997), 39–40.
65
Klaus, Nashi kolonii, 15.
66
Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko, “Pivdenna Ukraina 1787 (zi studii istorii kolonizatsii),” in
Zaporizhzhia 18 stolittia ta iogo spadshchyna, t. 2 (Munich: Dniprova khvylia, 1967), 136.
63
53
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
and individual land tenure. The Swedes who resettled not as foreigners
but as Russian subjects nevertheless obtained land, tax privileges, means
for building and starting a home of their own, sowing grain, provisions
at public expense for the first year etc. It is clear, therefore, that on the
legislative level the Russian authorities treated colonists and the Swedes
with consideration and benevolence.
However, the governmental orders were not always carried out
because of the circumstances and the specific mentality of Russian
bureaucrats. All the more so, when in 1782 the Office for Foreigners’
Guardianship was abolished and the Swedes on arrival in the Kherson
region were left with no assistance in settling their affairs. Such assistance had previously been given to foreign resettlers in other regions –
to a greater or lesser degree.
Paul I intended to raise the social and cultural level of the colonies,
making them into model households. He demanded impartial information as to the state of the colonies. In March 1797 he established a
special department tasked with assisting the foreign colonists in the
development of agriculture – the Board of State Economy, Guardianship
of Foreigners and Rural Husbandry.67
In 1798 Court Adviser Samuel Contenius was sent to New Russia to
assess the situation and inform the government about the state of affairs
in the colonies. Contenius was also expected to suggest improvements.
The authorities were particularly worried by the situation that had
appeared in the Swedish and Danzig colonies. Contenius was asked, in
particular, to evaluate the general situation in those colonies, the conditions of life and work of the Swedes, and also of the privileges they had
been given. He was also instructed to gather information concerning
public expenses in those colonies and find out what taxes they paid to
the state.68
The information presented by Samuel Contenius formed the basis of
the Senate report of 6 April 1800. The report suggested improvements in
the conditions of New Russia’s foreign settlers, and set up an institution
67
PSZRI, sobr. 1, t. 24, no. 17865.
Law – applying to all or large groups of population. In our context privilege means
full or partial exemption from laws.
68
54
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
for supporting the colonists – the Guardianship Office of New Russian
Foreign Settlers of Southern Russia.69
The report characterized the twenty-two families of Swedes as
“zealous and hardworking in farming and house-keeping.” However,
crop yields were poor because of the unfortunate colony location and
the climate of the region. In order to make ends meet, they70 “engaged in
fishing which was their primary source of income.” The report proposed
that, with all things considered, the Swedes ought to be given the status
of colonists as “they were resettled from a far-off land, with a different
climate, and placed among people differing from them in their customs,
faith and language.”71 This proposal was confirmed by the Emperor.
Another no less important step taken by Paul I was to approve the
“Instructions to the Guardianship Office” of 26 July 1800 and the
“Instructions for regulations and management of colonies” of 16 May
1801. The clauses of the Instructions show that their aim was to create
the instruments necessary for managing the colonies and improving
living conditions there. During Alexander I’s reign good guardianship
was provided for the development of colonies. He continued the work
that his father, Paul I, had begun. Among the institutions formed to
reform Russia, the Committee for the Development of New Russia
(further - Committee), held a prominent place.72 The Committee started
its work in December 1801. Though it did not produce any significant
documents concerning colonists, the very fact of its existence proved the
government’s concern about the region’s urgent problems including
those of the colonists. In 1802, Ministries replaced Collegia and the
control over the colonies passed to the Ministry of the Interior. Local
branches of the Guardianship Office were subordinated to that Ministry.
Without going into details concerning a new order issued in February
1804 – “About receiving and settling foreign colonists” – it should be
noted that it marked the beginning of a new stage of foreign colonization and its main task was to stimulate the economic development of
the recently populated territories.73
69
O predlagaemykh sredstvakh k popravleniu sostoianiia Novorossiiskikh inostrannykh
poselentsev i ob uchrezhdenii pod vedomstvom Ekspeditsii gosudarstvennogo khoziaistva,
Kontory opekunstva Novorossiiskikh inostrannykh poselentsev.
70
Iakov Ditz, Istoriia povolzhskikh nemtsev-kolonistov (Moskva: Gotika, 1997), 39–40.
71
PSZRI, sobr. 1, t. 26, str.115–128.
72
In Russian: Komitet ob ustroenii Novorossiiskoi gubernii.
73
O priiome i vodvorenii inostrannykh kolonistov.
55
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Owing to the growing number of colonists and the plans of the government, the bodies managing the colonies were reorganized in 1818. A
state committee was established called the Trustees Committee for
Foreign Settlers in Southern Russia for the southern territories including
Ekaterinoslav, Odessa and Bessarabia departments. These structures
were placed under Ivan Inzov, the Chief Guardian of the colonists of
New Russia. The most important functions of these departments were
supervision of the economic development of the colonies, auditing of the
public funding for the colonists, control of the colonists’ doing their
duty, etc.
These departments were abolished in 1833 as a result of a new policy;
there were to be no more settlements of foreign colonists and free entry
into Russia was no longer allowed. In 1842, many different legislative
acts concerning foreign colonists were replaced with one set of
“Regulations for the Colonies.”74 In 1857, “Regulations Concerning
Foreigners’ Colonies in the Empire” were issued by the authorities.75
This document contained the bulk of the information accumulated by
the Russian government concerning the legal status of the foreign
colonies. Its nine sections and 577 clauses covered, in minute detail, the
colonists’ rights and obligations, the system of managing the colonies,
and the rules governing the life of the foreign colonists.76 There was
considerable variation between different groups of colonists, e.g. with
regard to the size of land lots, terms of paying all debts, and period of
privileged years. The rules applying to the Swedes were listed in legislation concerning German colonists which could probably be explained by
the geographical position of their settlements. German colonists and the
Swedes were in a more privileged position as compared with Bulgarians,
Montenegrins, Serbs, and Italians.
An important factor in the life of the colonists in general and the
Swedish colonists in particular was that the people who managed the
colonization process were close to the throne, and enjoyed great authority and the full confidence of the ruler. Last but not least, they did not
merely carry out the Tsar’s decrees, but also took initiatives on their own
to bring about change and they were talented organizers. Among them,
one can mention Grigorii Potemkin, Samuel Contenius, Emmanuel
74
“Ustav o koloniiakh inostrantsev v Imperii,” in Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, t.
12, ch. 2 (Sankt-Peterburg: Tip.2 Otdeleniia s.e.i.v. kantseliarii, 1857).
75
Ustav o koloniiakh.
76
Ustav o koloniiakh inostrantsev v Imperii.
56
THE RUSSIAN STATE – BOBYLEVA
Richelieu, Johan Kornis, Platon Zubov, and Ivan Inzov.77 Contemporary
judgments of them ranged from blind admiration to bitter criticism.
Documents in archives and the correspondence of the leading personalities show that their attitude towards the Swedish colonists was one
of sympathy. Samuel Contenius compiled trustworthy and balanced
information about them, and his proposals for improving their situation
became the basis for granting them the status of colonists. In his capacity
as main moderator of the Guardianship Office he became one of the key
figures in the colonization process.78 He made regular inspections and
wrote reports on the situation in the colonies, including the Swedish
colony.79 He wrote the instructions on the duties of supervisors in the
foreign colonies of Kherson and Tiraspol provinces,80 inspected the
bookkeeping work of the Kontora opekunstva,81 and analyzed the specific
conditions of nature and climate in the settlement territories.82 He also
tried to find ways to improve the colonists’ economic conditions83 by
introducing new trades and sources of income such as sheep breeding,
forestry, gardening, and silkworm breeding.84 However, in these efforts,
he was often forced to overcome initial resistance by the colonists. He
also improved the medical service provided to the colonists and he took
charge of smallpox vaccination among them. Contenius provided for the
expansion of arable farming85 and solved a number of controversial
issues.86
Conclusions
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Russian state regarded
the colonization of New Russia as the most important aspect of its
policy, both from an economic and a strategic point of view. The
Russian monarchs (Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I and to some extent,
Nikolai I too) paid great attention to settlement policy and the popu77
Bagalei, Kolonizatsiia Novorossiiskogo kraia, 112.
Glavnyi Sudia.
79
DAOO, f. 1, op. 220, spr. 4, arkk.122–126.
80
DAOO, f. 1, op. 1, spr. 969, arkk.114–124.
81
DAOO, f. 1, op. 1, spr. 215, arkk. 24–25.
82
DAOO, f. 1, op. 220, spr. 4, arkk. 122–126.
83
RGIA, f. 383, op. 29, d. 199, ll.1–3.
84
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 969, arkk. 100–110; DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 428, arkk. 29–42.
85
DAOO, f. 252, op. 1, spr.10, ark. 4.
86
DAOO, f.6, op. 1, spr. 281, ark.1.
78
57
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
lating of the Wild Field territories. This becomes apparent both from the
orders they issued to regulate the regional conditions, and from their
personal correspondence.
A number of factors can explain the hardships experienced by the
Estonian Swedes during their initial years in their new settlement. The
Russian administration had no experience of colonization, as the Swedes
were the first colonists in this region. They could not benefit from the
experiences of predecessors – there were none. The route taken by the
Swedes was too long, and the season of the year – fall was not suitable
for such a long journey. At the time of their migration, the Russian
officials had little knowledge of the natural and climatic conditions in
the area where the Swedes were to settle.
The interrelation of the Swedish population in Kherson province and
the Russian state should be viewed in the general context of the
colonization policy in the region. Two important questions are: How
many families left Dagö to settle in Ukraine, and when was the colony
founded? They are directly connected with the land problem that arose
many years later. The problem of land tenure and of military service was
connected with legislation for all of Russia. Therefore, one cannot speak
of a breach of rights and a betrayal of the privileges of the Swedes by the
Russian state. A noble part in the life of the Swedish colonists was played
by people who were directly in charge of the colonization process in the
region (Grigorii Potemkin, Emmanuel Richelieu, Samuel Contenius, and
Ivan Inzov).
58
Map 6: Grand plan, poor outcome. A project map of the future Swedish colony made
in 1781, with the village (township?) neatly divided into farmsteads and streets.
Plan of Kazykermen [Kezikermen] district of Kazykermen province divided into lots for
Swedish peasants from Estonia. It planned for 105 dvors , supposed to be 25 sazhens in
length and 16 sazhens in width for each dvor. he Plan was constituted on 19 September
1781. DAKhO, f. 14, op.1, spr.85, ark.13.
Map 7: Ethnographic Map of the Russian Empire, 1851 (“Etnograicheskaia karta Rossiiskoi
Imperii”).
he light blue colour that signiies Swedes is hard to ind, surrounded as it is by red colour for
Germans (Klosterdorf and Mühlhausendorf) and black colour for Jews. A darker shade of blue
colour signiies Tatars. For safety’s sake, the publishers kindly awarded each group a number
– 37 for Swedes, 23 for Germans, 10 for Jews and 29 for Tatars. Krigsarkivet, 0403/31/A/027c.
People in between
– Baltic islanders as colonists on the steppe
JULIA MALITSKA
This shapter deals with the acculturation of the Estonian Swedes in New
Russia during the period 1805–1871. It is divided into three main parts.
The first part highlights the social-economic activity of the Estonian
Swedes in New Russia, their role in the colonization of the Black and
Azov Sea region. The second part deals with the relations between the
Swedes and their neighbors. The final part of the chapter describes the
culture of the Swedish colonists, the process of their acculturation and
integration into a new cultural and social milieu, and gives an outline of
their special identity.
The Estonian Swedes became agents of Russia’s colonization project
in the Black and Azov Sea region unintentionally; their migration was
not spontaneous, but undertaken as a result of planning by the authorities and with their support. On a propaganda mission among the Dagö
Swedes in the summer of 1781, Russian officials, in particular Colonel
Ivan Sinelnikov, created an image of New Russia as a prosperous land.
When the Swedes arrived at their destination, there was a clash between
that image and the reality of the region. In the first few years in the new
settlement, nature and climate in combination with various social
factors wrought havoc among the settlers, causing a drastic decline in
their numbers. Therefore, their adaptation took an extremely long time,
about 20–25 years, (1782–1805/1807), compared to the average adaptation period of 8–10 years.1
1
Leonid Rybakovskii, Migratsiia naseleniia. Tri stadii migratsionnogo protsessa
(Ocherki teorii i metodov issledovaniia) (Moskva: Nauka, 2001), 91.
61
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
During these 20–25 years, the Estonian Swedes adapted to new climatic
conditions and overcame the demographic catastrophe which
threatened the existence of Gammalsvenskby. Although the birth rate
was high, the population grew only slowly because of the high child
mortality. Slow but more or less stable population growth started in
1795–1796.2
Figure1: The Size of the Population of Gammalsvenskby 1781–1929.
Source: Julia Malitska, Estonski shvedy na Pivdni Rosiiskoi imperii: mihratsiia, adaptatsiia ta aculturatsiia pereselentsiv-colonistiv (1781–1871) [The Estonian Swedes in
the South of the Russian Empire: Migration, Adaptation and Acculturation of the
Migrants-Colonists (1781–1871)], Manuscript of the Candidate thesis (Dnipropetrovsk, 2010), 242.
The building of a church and permanent dwellings, the first attempts in
agriculture and, finally, the attainment of the status of colonists signified
the end of the accommodation and adaptation period, as well as a
certain measure of legal integration. Furthermore, in 1804-1805, the
Swedish village became a board centre and an administrative unit of
New Russia.
2
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 204, ark. 13; Gammalsvenskbydokument, Alexander Loit &
Nils Tiberg (Uppsala: Lundequistska bokh., 1958), 42,115–146.
62
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
The long accommodation process of the Estonian Swedes in New Russia
is explained by the following factors. The government’s colonization
plans were risky and adventurous; therefore an improved resettlement
strategy, efficient support, and guarantees of emigration conditions for
Swedes were absent. The Russian government in St Petersburg and its
diplomatic agents abroad were not aware of the actual climatic conditions and the geographic specifics of the recently annexed steppe of the
Black Sea region. As a result, the Swedes were unintentionally misinformed about the region where they were to settle, which made the
cultural and psychological shock when they arrived acute. Their spontaneous decision to move to a new place, the lack of adequate information about the region they had come to meant that they had little
opportunity to work out new strategies and find ways to cope with the
difficult conditions of the steppe. The distance between their old home
on Dagö and the new settlement was huge and so was the difference
between the living conditions of the two places. The physical exhaustion
of the migrants, the disastrous mortality among them during 1782–
17833 and the resulting breakup of families meant that there was little
population growth in the ensuing years and that the Swedes had
difficulties in adjusting to the new place. Owing to bad timing and
misunderstandings between the Russian government and the local
colonist administration they reacted too slowly to the housing problems,
food shortages and other hardships suffered by Swedes. Finally, the age
structure of the Swedish colonist group – many were children – caused
problems for their social and economic adjustment and made their
community vulnerable to external developments.4
Theoretical remarks
One can question whether, or how far, modern theories of adaptation
and acculturation are applicable to the migrations and resettlements of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Be that as it may, such theories
3
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 65, arkk. 104, 119, 123; Gammalsvenskbydokument, Loit &
Tiberg, 38, 43, 147–164; Alexander Loit, “Pereselenie shvedov iz Estonii na Ukrainu
v kontse 18 veka,” in Skandinavskii sbornik, no. 32 (Tallinn: Eesti paamat, 1988),
112–114.
4
Julia Malitska, Estonski shvedy na Pivdni Rosiiskoi imperii: mihratsiia, adaptatsiia
ta aculturatsiia pereselentsiv-colonistiv (1781–1871)[The Estonian Swedes in the
South of the Russian Empire: Migration, Adaptation and Acculturation of the
Migrants-Colonists (1781–1871)], Manuscript of the Candidate thesis (Dnipropetrovsk, 2010), 77–115.
63
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
are stimulating and inspiring, and although this chapter primarily aims
at presenting empirical material, some of the theoretical ideas the author
had in mind when analyzing her sources will be presented here.
As a result of acculturation, changes occur both on the individual and
on the group level. The direct interaction of groups of individuals, who
belong to different cultures, leads to changes in the primary cultural codes
of one or several groups. On the group level, several changes may occur.
To begin with, the newcomers are faced with a new place of residence,
with (for them) unusual agricultural and climatic conditions along with
different population density. They also face a different biological milieu
with new food, unknown diseases etc. In addition, there are usually legal
changes, when the non-dominant groups get under the control of the
major groups and lose some of their autonomy. To another category of
changes one can count the economic ones that cause modifications in the
traditional activities and management forms. Finally, there are cultural
transformations that influence the traditional language, religious codes
within the intergroup, but also interpersonal relations. As will be shown,
the Swedes as a group were facing all of the above.
In a multicultural environment, both individuals and groups face two
main problems. The first problem is connected with one’s identity and
how it is manifested. In this connection, the question arises whether the
individual or group at all chooses to emphasize and preserve its ethnic
originality or not. The second problem is whether the individuals and
groups wish to stress the contrast with other ethnic groups. In this
context, it is necessary to define if the relations with major ethnic groups
are viewed as desirable.5 Obviously, in everyday interaction, groups and
individuals can either preserve the cultural codes and maintain the
cultural originality, or go for contact and participation in the wider
society, thus joining other cultural groups.6
Following John Berry’s terminology, the four major patterns of
interethnic encounters are assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization. Particularly, interethnic integration covers the preserving of a
certain cultural integrity of a group, as well as an intention of becoming an
5
John Berry, “Akkulturatsiia i psikhologicheskaia adaptatsiia: obzor problemy
(nachalo),” Razvitie lichnosti, no. 3–4 (2001):183–193; John Berry, “Akkulturatsiia i
psikhologicheskaia adaptatsiia: obzor problemy (okonchanie),” Razvitie lichnosti,
no.1 (2002), 291–296.
6
Elvira Plesskaia, “Problemy sokhraneniia natsionalnoi kultury v usloviiakh
sushchestvovaniia i vzaimodeistviia s kulturoi titulnoi natsii,” in Kliuchevye
problemy istorii rossiiskikh nemtsev (Moskva: MSNK-press, 2004), 192–204.
64
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
integral part of the society (adaptability). Hence, the cultural identity and
originality are preserved even though the group chooses to become a part
of the dominant society. With a development of this pattern, several
different groups cooperate within the major social system. As a result of
the integration pattern, selective acceptance of behavior moulds between
the interacting groups occurs. According to Berry, interethnic integration
demands from the ethnic groups and national minorities the gradual
adaptation to the main values of the dominant society, which in turn
should adapt its social institutions (education, administration etc.) to the
needs of the multicultural society. The non-dominant groups achieve
voluntary integration successfully only when the dominant society is open
and aspiring to cultural variety. A crucial factor is that both groups
recognize the other group’s right to exist as a distinct people.7 There are
two main factors of intercultural adaptation: the first one is the width of
the cultural distance between the interacting groups; the other contains
the peculiarities of the culture of the migrants, and the culture prevalent at
the place of their new settlement.
The migrants might suffer “cultural shock” in their new country or
place of residence. The culture of a new country or region of settlement
compels the migrants to partly or completely give up their former way of
life, which requires socio-cultural adaptation. Thus, there are three main
factors involved in successful socio-cultural adaptation: establishing
positive contacts with the new neighbors, solving everyday issues, and
participating in the socio-cultural life of a new society. The main factor
that determines the socio-cultural adaptation process is the distance
between the migrant’s native culture and the culture of the new place of
settlement (including language, religion, climatic and diet differences).8
Due to the official origin of sources used in this study, the author
focuses on the adaptation and acculturation of the Swedes on the
group level.
7
John Berry, “Acculturation,” in Joan E. Grusec, Paul D. Hastings, Handbook of
Socialization: Theory and Research (New York: The Guilford Press, 2006), 543; John
Berry, “Acculturation,” in Joan E. Grusec, Paul D. Hastings, Handbook of Socialization:
Theory and Research (New York: The Guilford Press, 2006), 550–552.
8
Tatiana Stefanenko, Etnopsikhologiia (Moskva: Institut psikhologii RAN,”
Akademicheskii proekt,” 1999), 164–165.
65
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
The Swedish colonists’ economy: anglers or farmers?
According to the Russian imperial vision, the annexed Black and Azov Sea
territories were to be developed as part of the agricultural infrastructure.
Therefore, the encouragement of farming among the colonists and
peasants was one of the main tasks of the government of the region.
Among several top-down agricultural projects was the breeding of cattle.
The colonist administration9 was particularly encouraged by the report of
the Minister of the Interior, which was approved by the Senate in 1806, on
the need to promote cattle and horse breeding on the lands between Buh
and Dnister rivers.10 Thus, despite a certain measure of skepticism among
the Swedish colonists, they became a part of grand “agricultural projects”
of the colonist administration in the region.11
Farming among the Swedes was of course heavily influenced by the
natural geographic and climatic conditions, the availability of water and
by the special background of the settlers and the skills they brought with
them. Another important factor was the colonist administration. The
relations of the Swedish colonists with the colonist administration were
wide-ranging. The sources used here do not support the idea that the
Russian government was hostile to the Swedish colonists and deceived
them.12 They reveal a considerable degree of irresponsibility, and
unsatisfactory coordination between the central power and the colonist
administration, rather than a prejudiced attitude towards the Swedish
colonists. However, the Swedes merely constituted one group among
many. Recent scholarship on Russian imperial history has described
Russia’s bureaucracy and “differentiated governance” as a way of ruling
heterogeneous imperial space.13
9
Here, the term encompasses the Guardianship Office of New Russian Foreign Settlers
of Southern Russia, later on – the Trustees Committee for Foreign Settlers in Southern
Russia.
10
Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii. Tom 29 (1806–1807) (St Petersburg,
1830), 785–787.
11
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius ob inostrannoi kolonizatsii Iuzhnoi Rossii, sbornik
dokumentov 1801–1829, ed. Olga Eisfeld (Odessa: Astroprint, 2003), 13; DAOO, f.6,
op. 2, spr. 4460, arkk. 1–2.
12
Hanna Chumachenko, “Shvedske poselennia na pivdni Ukrainy,” Narodna tvorchist
ta etnografiia, no. 2–3 (1997), 101–110; Loit, “Pereselenie shvedov,” 104–116.
13
From enormous amount of literature see: Russian Empire: Space, People, Power,
1700–1930, ed. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (Indiana
University Press, 2007).
66
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
Document 3: The fragment of Emmanuel Richelieu’s letter to Samuel Contenius, 9
April 1806.
/…/ The settlers of the Swedish colony ask for some assistance
in finishing their houses. I consider this request quite
reasonable, as there was only one carpenter among them,
which is insufficient to teach others. Therefore they had to
hire a Russian carpenter for 12 and 15 Rubles per house. The
houses there are only partly built, as they have no money to
finish them.
Source: Pisma gertsoga Armana Emmanuila de Richelieu Samuilu Khristianovichu
Conteniusu 1803–1814, ed. Olga Konovalova (Odessa: OKFA “TES,” 1999), 99.
Starting from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the colonist
administration took the following steps to improve the situation of the
Swedes. It made a financial contribution to the rebuilding of the Gammalsvenskby church and finishing of the Swedish houses.14 Moreover, the
colonist administration introduced sanitary, and quarantine measures
against epidemics in the Swedish district. One such case was the isolation
from neighboring villages in order to prevent the cholera epidemics
(1837). Another case was the routine vaccination of the Swedish children
against smallpox etc.15 The administration often supported the Swedish
colonists with food supplies and it also provided the Swedes with seed for
sowing, or money to purchase grain and food in times of poor harvests,
thus preventing famine and economic decline.16 Additional financial
assistance was provided by the state to the head of each household
personally when needed, and particularly in cases of lack of food reserves
during unusually severe winters.17
Document 4: Samuel Contenius report to governor-general Emmanuel Richelieu
about the lack of bread in Molochna, Swedish and Odessa colonies and in this connection paying food money to the colonists. Odessa, 17 November 1806
Your Excellency, Sir Emmanuel Osipovich!
From the reports of the caretaker of colonies I found out, that
Molochna colonists and the colonists newly settled down in
14
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 128, arkk. 9, 17-22, 24-26; DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 102, arkk.
10–13.
15
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 195, ark. 167.
16
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 177–178, 205–208.
17
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 176.
67
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
the Swedish colony because of the poor harvest do not have
enough bread for livelihood during winter. During the
inspection of the colonies settled down nearby Odessa, I have
also noticed a considerable lack of bread. For the sake of nonstarvation I recognize the need to continue paying 5 kopecks
of food money per day to each person as long as necessary.
Thereby I ask the permission of Your Excellency.
Note: Richelieu has agreed with Contenius proposition, but with one clause: those
who have enough bread for winter, are not paid food money.
Source: Samuil Khristianovich Contenius ob inostrannoi kolonizatsii Iuzhnoi Rossii,
sbornik dokumentov 1801–1829, ed. Olga Eisfeld (Odessa: Astroprint, 2003), 176.
Along with other colonists of the region, the Swedes were encouraged to
engage in pet “agricultural projects” of the colonist administration such
as forestry, cattle breeding, sericulture, tobacco growing, dam building,
and digging of the wells.18
The humid tropical heat of the region combined with the long
drought in summer was frequently followed by cold winters (even colder
than on Dagö, where snow was rather common). The fields of the
Swedes were often flooded in spring, then there was drought, and there
were hot dry winds from the steppe, people were struck down by epidemics of scurvy, cholera, typhus, and rodents and locusts ate the crops.
The extreme weather conditions of the steppe were intensified by severe
and snowy winters, extremely hot summers with hurricanes and hail,
that often made Swedes and other colonists helpless.19 Being located on a
hill, the Swedish colony suffered dearth of water resources. The fields
were heavily exposed to the sun, which stimulated the burning-out of
the harvests.
In the 1840s, a new project – the creation of artificial lakes in order to
preserve the melting water from the spring floods, and thus to have the
water resources required for cattle breeding for a whole year – was
launched. At the time, recurring drought in the region gave further
impetus to this project. The Swedes and the Khortitsa Mennonites responded positively to the government’s initiative to build a dam between
18
Jan Utas, Svenskbyborna. Historia och öde från trettonhundra till nu (Visby:
Gotlands Allehandas Förlag, 1982), 71.
19
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 5140, arkk. 5–39; Elena Druzhynina, Iuzhnaia Ukraina
(1800–1825) (Moskva: Nauka, 1970), 228-229; DADO, f.134, op. 1, spr. 784,789;
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov Iuga Ukrainy (konets 18 – pervaia polovina 19
vekov), ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Art-Press, 1999), 61.
68
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
Gammalsvenskby and the neighboring German village of Klosterdorf.
This would make it possible to flood the land in the spring in order to
facilitate cattle breeding.20
Military campaigns also affected life in the Swedish colony. For
instance, during the Russian-Turkish wars of 1828–1829 and 1836–1837
and the Crimean war 1853–1856, Russian units passed the Swedish
settlement, infecting its inhabitants with cholera and typhus.21
Before their migration to New Russia, the majority of the Dagö
Swedes was engaged in fishing, cattle breeding and livestock production.
Since they had now settled in a locality that was not very suitable for
agriculture, and since steppe farming was unknown to them, good
harvests were not to be expected.
Eventually, the Swedish peasants learned to plough according to local
custom, hitching four pairs of oxen to the plough. During their pioneer
decades on the steppe, the Swedes ploughed their land with a ralo, the
traditional wooden plough of the region.22 Later, it was replaced with the
German colonists’ bukker with iron blades.23 They grew rye, spring and
winter grains (for making bread), barley, flax, millet, watermelon and
melon.24 However, the grains were grown only with great difficulty, even
when local farming techniques were used. In order to support the
inhabitants in times of poor grain harvests and to prevent famine among
them, granaries were built in the colonies of the Swedish district. In
1819, the granary of Gammalsvenskby contained more reserves of grain
than the other two in the district: 59 per cent of the rye reserves and 57
per cent of spring bread reserves.25 Despite the Swedish colonists’
diligence in agriculture, their food needs were hardly satisfied, primarily
because of the extreme climate of the region.
In order to improve the economic situation of the Swedes, the
Guardianship Office initiated an experiment in 1817. They were
encouraged to grow Hungarian tobacco, a cash crop. Eventually, the
colonists were successful, and tobacco was continuously cultivated in
the village.26
20
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 107; Utas, Svenskbyborna, 78.
Utas, Svenskbyborna, 72–75; Hedman, Gammalsvenskby – the true story.
22
Ralo is Ukrainian for a type of a plough.
23
Materialy dlia otsenki zemel Khersonskoi gubernii, t. 6. Khersonskii uezd (Kherson:
Tip. O.D. Khodushynoi, 1890), 222–223, 226.
24
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 4935, arkk. 2–13; spr. 269, arkk. 6–26.
25
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 579, ark. 8.
26
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 512, arkk. 2–22.
21
69
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
According to the governmental instruction of 26 July 1800, the
Guardianship Office should have encouraged the foreign colonists to
plant grass to create pastures, to plant mulberry trees, grapevines,
sesame seeds and other useful plants.27 For every sixty to eighty
desiatinas of land the Swedish colonists were obliged to plant half a
desiatina with trees. The aim was to create more favorable conditions for
the development of agriculture, but also to protect the land from the hot
dry steppe winds and from drifting snow in the winter. The trees were
planted on special plots close to the church and the district centre, and
on the land surrounding the colonists’ households.
Every farmer who had received seedlings from the colonist administration was obliged to plant a certain number of trees near his house.28
The colonists of the Swedish district were successful in the cultivation of
acacia, which, beginning in the 1830s, was cultivated on the common
land of the villagers.29 Pussy willow, elderberry, and sedge, which mainly
had a decorative function, were planted on the colonists’ homestead
lands. The climate in the Kherson province was not favorable for oak,
maple, and birch, thus they did not take root.30 Unfortunately, despite
the colonist administration’s support and promotion, viticulture did not
develop satisfactorily and the produce did not suffice even for the needs
of the colonists.31
As to horticulture and vegetable gardening, the Swedish colonists did
not believe they could succeed in it because of the location of their
village, on a hill with hot summer winds.32 However, the colonist
administration promoted the foundation of communal plantations and
nurseries in Gammalsvenskby to cultivate fruit trees. Occasionally, the
Guardianship Office supplied the model farmers among the Swedes with
fruit tree seedlings from Kursk province.33 Eventually, gardens with
apple-trees, plum-trees, apricot-trees, cherry-trees, pear-trees blossomed
27
Materialy dlia otsenki zemel Khersonskoi gubernii, 148; Nemtsy v istorii Rossii:
dokumenty vysshykh organov vlasti i voennogo komandovaniia, 1652–1917, ed.
Viktor Diesendorf (Moskva: MFD: Materik, 2006), 95.
28
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 5137, arkk. 1-2; Wilhelm Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern i
April 1852,” Finlands Allmänna Tidning, no.132(1852), 549.
29
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 868, ark. 5; spr. 579, ark. 13.
30
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 4460, ark. 2.
31
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 261; DAOO, f.6, op. 1, spr. 2437.
32
Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern,” 549.
33
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 261.
70
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
in Gammalsvenskby. The cherry-trees yielded good harvests, whereas
apricot-trees gave small and uncertain harvests.34
Together with neighboring colonists, the Swedish colonists were
encouraged by the colonist administration to take up sericulture.35 In
summer 1815, a shed for silkworm growing was built in Gammalsvenskby paid by communal money.36 However, the benefits of
sericulture could not be reaped immediately. The sober-minded Samuel
Contenius recognized that “this agricultural activity needed at least sixty
to seventy years of persistent and hard work to get stable results and
benefits.”37
The breeding of cattle was an activity where the Swedish colonists
had good chances for success. Free pasturelands were available which
was important for the development of extensive cattle breeding.
Moreover, the Swedes had former experience of cattle breeding from
Estland where it dominated the economy.38 With regard to the quantity
of livestock, Estland held fourth place among Russia’s European
provinces. Sheep farming, pig farming and horse breeding were of
secondary importance.39 In this field, the Swedes had a clear advantage
over other colonists. They proved able to adapt or rather rearrange their
skills to a new climate and the terrain of the region.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a group of dedicated
cattle breeders, (Hindrik Cristiansson, Hindrik Petersson, and Cristian
Cristiansson) could be recognized.40 From time to time, this agricultural
activity proved vulnerable: 1810–1815, 1820–1825 and 1827 were the
most difficult years. During this time, the livestock (horses, cows and
sheep) was reduced significantly because of epidemics, diseases and poor
harvests.41 However, Gammalsvenskby still retained a leading position
34
DADO, f.134, op. 1, spr. 579, ark. 13; spr. 868, ark. 5; spr. 202, arkk. 10–27; spr.
4460, ark. 2.
35
DADO, f.134, op. 1, spr. 868, ark. 5; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 4460, ark. 2.
36
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 263.
37
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 254.
38
In 1719 the administrative absorbtion of the Baltic Sea region started: Estland was
incorporated into the Russian Empire as a Reval province. It would only finally
become known by its historical name, Estland province, in 1783.
39
Karl Vrangel, “Estliandskaia guberniia,” Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic
Dictionary, accessed September 3, 2010, http://gatchina3000.ru/brockhaus-and-efronencyclopedic-dictionary/119/119758.htm.
40
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 98, arkk. 138–139.
41
Elena Druzhynina, Iuzhnaia Ukraina (1800–1825) (Moskva: Nauka, 1970), 213;
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 74; DADO, f.134, op. 1, d. 784, l. 2; d.
868, l. 2.
71
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
among the villages of the Swedish district in large horned livestock
(oxen, cows).42
Trade and natural carpentry, smithwork, shoemaking and weaving
were the most widespread and popular handicrafts among the Swedish
colonists.43 As a home industry, weaving was the most popular among
the Swedes of New Russia due to the availability of animal and plant raw
materials, their former Dagö skills and experience. Almost every
Swedish household had a spinning wheel for the production of linen.44
Weaving was mostly based on wool, silk and flax fibers. It was the main
handicraft of the Swedes prior to the village fire in 1835, when all
spinning wheels brought from Dagö were consumed by the flames.45
Fishery and hunting were the salvation of the Swedish colonists in
times of poor harvests. They were very skilful anglers and successful at
selling what they caught. They had previous experience of fishing, from
Dagö, and they learned new fishing methods from the Zaporizhian
Cossacks when the old ones did not work on the steppe. Fish was often a
staple in their diet as harvests were always uncertain and prices of
agricultural products fluctuated. With hoop nets, a long line and fishingspears they caught carp and sturgeon as well as more common fishes.
Almost every Swede had special equipment for professional fishing
like fishing nets, valves and boats.46 There was a demand which they
could meet and thus get an additional income; sometimes fishing was
their main source of income. Therefore a Swedish fishing artel47 was
formed which paid tax to the board on its earnings and signed a contract
with the colonist administration every sixth year which laid down their
rights and obligations.48 Those who did not join the artel could fish only
for the needs of their families. The Swedes usually dried and salted the
42
DADO, f.134, op. 1, spr. 979, ark. 4; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 4459, ark. 28.
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 139, arkk. 80,85, 87,90; spr. 868, ark. 3; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1,
spr. 99, l. 91; spr. 4459, ark. 28; Anatolii Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u
Pivdennu Rosiiu (Dnipropetrovsk: Sich, 2005), 261.
44
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 98, arkk. 135–139; DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 139, ark. 91;
spr. 868, ark. 3; spr. 979, ark. 4.
45
Severnyi arkhiv: Zhurnal istorii, statistiki i puteshestvii, no. 8 (1824) 64–67.
46
Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u Pivdennu Rosiiu, 258–259.
47
Artel (Russian: артель, Ukrainian: артіль) is a general term for various
cooperative associations in Russia and Ukraine. Historically, artels were semi-formal
associa-tions for various enterprises: fishing, mining, commerce etc. Commonly
artels were seasonal, worked far from home and lived as a commune. Payment for
job done was distributed according to verbal agreements, usually in equal shares.
48
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 1821, arkk. 1–12; spr. 8366, arkk. 4–31.
43
72
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
fish, and sold it on the markets and fairs of the nearby towns of
Kakhovka, Berislav, and Kherson.49 Obviously, their success was due to
the extreme popularity of fish among the Orthodox and Jewish population of the region, especially during Lent. However, in some years the
fishing resulted in losses. Thus, for instance in 1812–1813 in Kherson
province, all boats and fishing activity was under the strict control of the
colonist administration because of the plague that spread from the
Pivdennyi Buh River.50
From being anglers, tar and lime stock manufacturers on their
home island of Dagö, the Estonian Swedes have mastered the basics of
challenging steppe agriculture. Alongside with the adjustment of their
skills in fishery, weaving and cattle breeding, the Swedes gained new
skills in sericulture, tobacco growing and forestry, due to governmental promoting. However, despite being quite hard-working and
prepared to adjust to the new economic conditions, the reputation of
the Swedes as modernizing agriculturists was not comparable, for
instance, to that of the German-speaking and Mennonite colonists
who lived in the same region.
Contested among strangers
For newly settled migrants it is essential to establish mutually beneficial
contacts with neighbors. From time to time the idea of returning to
Dagö was mooted among the Swedes due to despair and physical
exhaustion.51 However, they had lost contact with Dagö Island. Instead,
new contacts were established with neighbors in the region where they
had settled down.
The Swedes were the first colonists in New Russia, but not the first
inhabitants of the steppe. There was a unique ethnic and social milieu
formed by Cossacks, Romanis, Nomads, Tatars, and religious dissenters
from Central Russia.52 Like the Estonian Swedes, the religious dissenters
were newcomers, but the rest had established themselves there long ago
and considered the steppe their home.
49
Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u Pivdennu Rosiiu, 259; Druzhynina, Iuzhnaia
Ukraina, 325.
50
Druzhynina, Iuzhnaia Ukraina, 304.
51
See Jan Utas, Svenskbyborna, 54–55.
52
Iaroslav Boiko, Nataliia Danylenko, “Formuvannia etnichnogo skladu naselennia
Pivdennoi Ukrainy (kinets 19–20 st.),” Ukrainskyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 9 (1992),
54–65.
73
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
The neighbors of the Swedes were Cossacks, Nomads, Spaniards and
Greeks; Ukrainian and Russian peasants; German-speaking settlers. The
Swedish population formed a specific community, which differed from
the rest of the population in religion, language, type of dwellings,
clothing, etc. At first, the Cossacks were not pleased with having neighbors on “their lands,” and there even occurred some conflicts between
them and the Swedes.53 Nevertheless, the Cossacks were the first to help
the Swedes adjust to the new conditions on the steppe. They provided
the Swedes with some agricultural tools and instruments that could be
used on virgin lands, and taught them practical skills in fishery and how
to protect themselves from nomads. The Swedish-Cossack relations
were quite ambiguous. On one hand, the Cossacks helped the Swedes to
overcome the gravest initial problems, on the other hand, the Swedes
from time to time had to protect themselves from being robbed by them.
Nomads caused the first colonists a lot of trouble. According to
village oral tradition, Romanis looked for young Swedes to sell on the
Crimean slave market. In winter 1787, Nogais attacked the Swedish
village in an attempt to rob it. The priest Johan Adolph Europaeus
fought back, and was injured when defending his family. Later, in 1788,
because of the insecurity there, Europaeus left the village. The Swedes
considered the Tatars to be the most honest and reliable people among
their neighbors.54 In the years 1783–1784, the Swedes got new neighbors.
Groups of Spaniards and Greeks settled on their lands but there were no
conflicts between the Swedes and these groups. Naturally, there were
many Ukrainians and Russians among the neighbors of the Swedes.
Russian religious dissenters from Moscow, Kaluga, Tula and Chernigov
provinces were settled in Kherson region between 1752 and 1770, where
they built large villages between the two rivers of Pivdennyi Buh and
Dnipro.55 The Swedes established commercial relations mainly with the
local Ukrainians. The colonists hired local people from the neighboring
town of Berislav as builders, carpenters, and shepherds, and they also
bought timber from them. The Swedes also signed agreements concerning fishing rents with Ukrainians from the town of Berislav and
Kiev province. The Swedish colonists were welcomed at Berislav and
Kakhovka markets, since their traditional homemade cheese was very
53
Utas, Svenskbyborna, 45.
Utas, Svenskbyborna, 50–51.
55
Voenno-statisticheskoe obozrenie Rossiiskoi imperii, t. 11, ch. 1. Khersonskaia
guberniia (Sankt-Peterburg: Tip. Departamenta Gen. Shtaba, 1849), 85.
54
74
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
popular among the locals. After the fire in the village in 1835, the local
Slavic population helped the Swedes to repair their roofs, having
provided them with straw in exchange for fish.56 There was also some
contact between the Swedes and the Serbs.
Due to the decrease of the Swedish population during the first twenty
years or so after their arrival, they were not able to cultivate all of the
land granted to them by the Crown. Because of the growing shortage of
land for colonization, the government decided to settle Germanspeaking migrants and Poles on Gammalsvenskby lands. Thus, in 1804,
eight families of Danzig Poles were settled on land previously given to
Swedes. The Swedes did not establish friendly contacts with the Catholic
Poles.57 Subsequently, the number of Poles was reduced; in 1830, after
Andreas Maskewitsch’s family had left the village, there was only one
family left.
Not far from the Swedish village, 25 kilometers to the north of the
colony, there was an Orthodox monastery called Grigorevskii Biziukov
that gave assistance to the colonists in their agricultural activities.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the shortage of land
made life particularly difficult, the Swedes were able to rent fertile land
from the monastery on generous terms. Moreover, in the times of poor
harvests, they were exempted from paying land rent by the Orthodox
abbot.58 In general, the relations between the Swedes and the Slavic
population were well good. However, according to oral village tradition,
the Swedish colonists were offended by “Russians” since they were
considered to have installed Germans on the lands given to the Swedes
by the Empress Catherine II.
Between 1804 and 1806 migrants from Bohemia, Austria,
Württemberg, and Mainz on the Rhine, Baden, Prussia, Pomerania,
Silesia and Palatinates established settlements, which were named
Mühlhausendorf, Schlangendorf and Klosterdorf, on the sparsely populated “Swedish” lands. Most of them were Lutherans but there were also
Catholic families among them. At the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century, after constant, almost experimental, shuffles and reshuffles of the administration in the newly
absorbed Azov and Black Sea territories, Gammalsvenskby, Mühl56
Utas, Svenskbyborna, 75.
DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 8, arkk. 220–232; Voenno-statisticheskoe obozrenie
Rossiiskoi imperii, t. 11, ch. 1, 93–94.
58
Hedman, Gammalsvenskby – the true story.
57
75
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
hausendorf, Schlangendorf and Klosterdorf were grouped into a Swedish
district with the centre in Gammalsvenskby.59
The Swedish-German relations can be characterized as ambivalent.
The two groups were either peaceful neighbors, or irreconcilable rivals,
sometimes even enemies. When relations were strained, the tension was
usually due to disputes over land or religious differences. When faced
with threats like epidemics, fires, nomad raids, or bad harvests, the
Swedes and Germans united and helped each other.
Document 5: On bad harvest in the Swedish colony, 1899.
According to the Swedish teacher of the colony, Christoffer
Hoas, over half of the colonists are affected by real misery.
The Germans in Tavriia province have already collected
money for the villagers of Gammalsvenskby, who have
received 250 Rubles from them.
Source: “Från Ryssland,” Nya Pressen, 1900.01.29, no. 27.
However, when it came to electing the district mayor, the Swedes and
the Germans were persistent opponents. The Swedish-German relations
could be sketched within the following lines: conflict about the land,
discord as to the religious question, but also economic and everyday
interaction.
Generally, Swedish–German contacts can be described as interactive
and important. The Germans and the Swedes shared several characteristics in material culture. They also had the Lutheran religion in
common (except for the Catholic Germans from Klosterdorf).
Accordingly, the cultural distance between them was comparatively
small. In spite of the fact that the Swedes and the Germans had so much
in common – much more than with other colonists in the region –
marriages between Germans and Swedes were rare.60 Having adopted the
German style of dressing, the Swedes had to buy linen from the
Germans after their spinning wheels had been destroyed in the fire of
1835 Some Germans enjoyed considerable prestige among the Swedes,
59
Antifeodalnaia borba volnykh shvedskikh krestian Estliandii 18–19 vv., sbornik
dokumentov, ed. Julius Madisson (Tallinn: Eesti raamat, 1978), 350.
60
Iakov Shtakh, Ocherki iz istorii i sovremennoi zhizni iuzhnorusskikh kolonistov
(Moskva: Tip. A. I. Mamontova, 1916), 112.
76
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
for example the military medical assistant Johann Glaubberg and the
veterinary Fritz at Mühlhausendorf .61
The arrival of the Germans caused revolutionary changes in the
farming methods of the Swedes. As mentioned above, the ralo used by
the Swedes, was replaced with the German bukker plough with iron
blades that increased agricultural productivity. Functionally a hybrid of
the ralo and a multihued plough, the bukker was initially manufactured
with three or four shares. This plough enabled a farmer, with no
additional labour, to practically double the size of the area he cultivated.
The price of these ploughs was not low enough to make them affordable
for a poor farmer.62 Among the Germans who influenced the farming
metods of the Swedes one could in particular mention the Mennonite
Johan Kornis who exercised great influence both as an agriculturist and
educationalist,63 and who in New Russia influenced different groups of
the colonists including the Swedes.64 The first Swedes that were sent for
training to the Mennonite district of Molochna, were Anna Sergis and
Cristian Tunis. Both of them became model farmers who passed on the
new techniques they had learnt to others in the Swedish colony.65
As a result of cultural interaction with other ethnic groups, the
Swedes had selectively acquired new cultural features. The colonist
administration, the neighbors of the colonists, and the climatic and
geographical milieu were decisive factors for their economic development and determined what fields they would specialize in. When they
were hit by natural disasters, the different ethnic groups tended to
cooperate more with each other than otherwise.
61
Anton Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby: land och folk, serie: svenska landsmål och svenskt
folkliv (Uppsala, 1929), 60–61.
62
Leonard Friesen, “Bukkers, Plows and Lobogreikas: Peasant Acquistition of
Agricultural Implements in Russia before 1900,” Russian Review, t. 53, no. 3 (1994), 405.
63
Mennonite Johan Kornis, the most skilled and successful farmer among the Germans
and Mennonites in the region, was the head of Molochna agricultural association, the
Association of forestation, sericulture and winemaking in Molochna Mennonite
district in Tavriia province. He was also authorized to supervise schooling and
agricultural education in Molochna Mennonite district.
64
Ivan Zadereichuk, “Organizatsiino-pravova diialnist Johana Kornisa,” Forum prava,
no.1 (2008), 147–152.
65
Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby, 76–77.
77
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Preserving distinctiveness and becoming part of a whole
The natural resources of the region determined the shape of the Swedes’
dwellings. The topography of Gammalsvenskby was a synthesis of the
traditional dwellings of the Ukrainian villages and the Swedish settlements
of north-western Estonia.66 The clay-made houses dominated in the
Ukrainian villages in the first half of the nineteenth century. Ordinary
Ukrainian houses had no foundations, only an earth floor, and were made
of clay and straw. Straw was the main roofing material.67 The houses of the
Swedish colonists were built in no particular order, along the main village
road. This type of village structure was characteristic of the Swedish
settlements in Estonia68 and the Swedes seem to have brought it with them
from there to the steppe.
In 1787–1788, an unknown Ukrainian master built a small wooden
cruciform church in the centre of Gammalsvenskby. During the first five
to ten years, the topography of the Swedish settlement was constantly
changing and eventually it had shrunk in size. Due to the population
decline, the areas south and north of the village center were abandoned.
The inhabited areas consisted of two blocks called Taknegårda69 and
Nealinja. The fire in 1835 caused a radical reconstruction of Gammalsvenskby. The chaotic structure of the village was replaced by a geometrically organized one and the new Swedish houses were built along
three main streets.70
Timber was used to a lesser extent because of its scarcity on the
steppe, which also made it expensive. Clay, straw, vine, natural stone,
seashell were the main building materials for the Swedish houses. The
Swedes were well acquainted with stone as a building material since
Dagö times. It was cheap and durable and could thus compensate for the
lack of timber in the region.71 Some of the Swedes built stone walls
around their non-framed houses.72 The exterior of the Swedish houses
looked like typical Ukrainian buildings. However, the interior had its
66
Gea Troska, “Poselenie pribrezhnykh shvedov,” in Skandinavskii sbornik, no.21
(1976), 172–187; Kultura i pobut naselennia Ukrainy, ed. Vsevolod Naulko etc. (Kyiv:
Lybid, 1991), 83–86.
67
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 168.
68
Troska, “Poselenie pribrezhnykh shvedov,” 175.
69
Literally meant the farms of the people from the Takne village.
70
Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern,” 549.
71
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 133; Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern,” 549.
72
Samuil Khristianovich Contenius, Eisfeld, 150–158; Ukrainske narodoznavstvo, ed.
Stepana Pavliuka etc. (Lviv, 1994), 462–463.
78
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
special characteristics. The stove, the walls and the ceiling were whitewashed; the floor was made of clay, and in the winter covered with sand
and in the summer with grass. Later, the floor in the houses of
prosperous Swedes was made of wood.73 The roof was not coated; the
ceiling was crossed with thick whitewashed wooden beams. In front of
the house, there was a hall and in the middle there was a kitchen, with
several bedrooms attached to it. In contemporary sources it is said that
the Swedish and German houses had a similar planning.74
Contemporary sources also say that the portraits of the Russian Tsar
family appeared on the walls of the Swedish houses. When the colonists
established contact with Sweden, portraits of the Swedish Royal family
also became common. As the Swedish community was deeply religious,
richly decorated pictures with Bible psalms, on the walls were typical of
the Swedish houses. According to documented descriptions, in the right
corner of the Swedish hall, there was a portrait of Martin Luther but,
unlike the Orthodox religious tradition concerning pictures of the saints,
there were no lights or candles in front of it.75
The food the Estonian Swedes ate in New Russia was mainly the same
as that which they had eaten on Dagö but it was slightly adapted to the
conditions of their new surroundings. Bread played an important role.
The Swedish colonists preferred wheat bread, which was traditionally
baked with yeast. More seldom, they made rye bread. As a rule, breakfast
consisted of bread and butter and coffee mixed with chicory and vanilla.
What was served for supper depended on the season: river fish and sour
milk in the summer, noodle soup, meat with carrots and potatoes, and
porridge in the winter. Swedish homemade sour cheese was very popular among the locals at the markets all over Kherson province.
Cross-influences between the Swedes and the Ukrainian and Russian
peasants were common. Travellers and ethnographers noted that some
traditional Slavic meals such as kvas76 gained popularity among the
Swedes. Moreover, besides coffee the Swedes enjoyed drinking tea, using
73
Anton Karlgren, “Gammalsvenskby,” in Nordisk familjebok: Konversationslexikon
och realencyklopedi, vol. 9 (Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förlags aktiebolag,
1908), 705–708.
74
Olga Chaika, “Usadba, dom i byt mennonitov v 19 veke,” Muzeinyi visnyk, 2001: 1,
56–59; Chumachenko, “Shvedske poselennia na pivdni Ukrainy,” 106–107.
75
Utas, Svenskbyborna, 85.
76
Kvas (Russian: квас, Ukrainian: квас) is a fermented beverage made from black or
regular rye bread. It is classified as a non-alcoholic drink, as the alcohol content from
fermentation is typically less than 1.2%.
79
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
a samovar.77 The Swedes even used to cook varenyky,78 a traditional
Ukrainian meal, filling it with meat, mushrooms, fish, carrot, and rice.79
During the first fifty years of steppe life, the design of the Swedes’
clothing was a synthesis of originally Swedish elements of clothing and
some northern Estonian features. After the fire of 1835, they had to give
up their old-fashioned clothes. Their new clothes borrowed some
elements from their German and Slavic neighbors. The Swedish winter
clothes were, like those of Ukrainian and Russian peasants, made of fur
and leather. The summer clothing was very simple, made of cotton and
linen.80 In the summer, the Swedes used shoes without heels. Men were
only dressed in a shirt, trousers and a straw hat, women in linen
clothing, slim skirt, and head-scarf.81
Thus, the material culture of the Swedish colonists reflected their
background, as well influences from other ethnic groups in New Russia
and the process of socio-cultural adaptation they were undergoing.
Religiosity is considered to have been the main element of premodern peasant identity. It was viewed as a pillar of stability, and
therefore supported and promoted by the authorities. The Church had
social control over its parishioners and influenced their everyday
life.82Absolute obedience to the Law of the Church, going to church every
Sunday and observing religious holidays was the duty of all colonists in
New Russia. A parishioner who neglected this duty was usually fined.
Serious cases of neglect were punished more severely; in addition to
paying a double fine, the delinquent would be sentenced to communal
works, such as bridge repairing, tree planting, trench digging etc.83
77
Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u Pivdennu Rosi iu, 261.
Varenyky (Ukrainian: вареники) are similar to Polish pierogi, Russian pelmeni, and
Italian ravioli.
79
Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby, 46–47, 60.
80
Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby, 48–49.
81
Aino Voolmaa, Melanie Kaarma, “Estonskii natsionalnyi kostium,” Iunyi
khudozhnik, no. 2 (1983), accessed March 22, 2009, http://dress-history.sageway.info/estonian-dress.html; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 233, arkk. 12–13; AfanasievChuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u Pivdennu Rosiu, 258.
82
Olga Litsenberger, “Problemy nravstvennosti v deiatelnosti Liuteranskoi i
Katolicheskoi tserkvei,” Kliuchevyie problem istorii rossiiskikh nemtsev. Materialy X-I
mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Moskva 18-21.11.2003 (Moskva: ZAO MSNKpress, 2004), 218.
83
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 116.
78
80
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
After the expiry of the grace period,84 the colonists communities were
expected to support their Lutheran or Catholic pastors and priests by
themselves, and the government no longer paid their salaries.85 The
village headman was to make sure that every colonist aged sixteen to
sixty paid his due three times a year (in January, May, and September).86
After departure of the first Gammalsvenskby priest Adolf Europeus,
the German Lutheran priests from the nearby German colony of
Jozefstal visited the Swedish village once a year. They stayed in the
Swedish colony for a month to perform religious rites and to teach the
Swedish children the basics of the Christian faith.87 The Swedes were
not satisfied with this occasional religious service; therefore in 1816
they complained to the caretaker Dalke that they did not have any
priest at all. In November 1816, the Guardianship Office decided that a
Catholic priest should visit Gammalsvenskby twice a year – in spring
and in winter.88
In 1832 de jure recognition of its status as a denomination was
granted to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia. This meant that
all Lutheran parishes in the entire Russian Empire were reorganized.89
The Lutheran Swedes were incorporated into the St Petersburg Church
district, but still their parish had been without the services of a priest
long periods of time. The mere existence of the church organization did
not mean it actually functioned in the empire’s periphery.
The Swedish colonists in New Russia used the rune calendar, which
signified to the contemporaries – the outsiders but also neighbors – the
Swedes’ distinctive origin, as well as original method of numbering years
and measuring time.90 Christmas, Midsummer (end of June) and St
Martin’s Day (11 November) were the most important holidays.
Christmas was the main holiday of the year for the Swedish colonists,
just as Easter was for the Ukrainian and Russian peasants. As a rule
84
As a rule, the grace period, covered the first ten years after the migrants’
resettlement to New Russia, was given by the Russian State in order to stimulate the
colonists’ economic development and speed their adaptation in new region.
85
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 777, arkk. 1–16.
86
Nemtsy v istorii Rossii, Diesendorf, 117.
87
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 1672, arkk. 1–11; spr. 56, arkk. 10,34.
88
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 1025, arkk. 1–5; Olga Litsenberger, Evangelicheskoliuteranskaia tserkov v Rossiiskoi imperii (XVI–XX vv.) (Sankt-Peterburg:
“Liuteranskoe kulturnoe nasledie,” 2003), 136–137.
89
Litsenberger, Evangelichesko-liuteranskaia tserkov v Rossiiskoi imperii, 82–84.
90
Jörgen Hedman, Lars Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskby och svenskarna i
Ukraina (Stockholm: Dialogos, 2003), 13.
81
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Midsummer and St Martin’s Day, being Germanic holidays, were
unknown to the Ukrainian and Russian locals.91
The school in Gammalsvenskby played a dominant role in teaching
the young members of the community the Lutheran creed. They were
taught and brought up under the pastor’s strict control and were
protected from interference by the government as long as it was possible.
According to the Swedish Church Ordinance of 1686, the priests were to
provide the parishioners with knowledge that would strengthen their
faith. The Swedish colonist priest combined the functions of organist,
teacher, and spiritual leader of the community. There was a close link
between the school and the colonist community, which provided financial support to the school.92 The compulsory training of all children of
school age was not so strictly enforced within the Swedish community as
among the Mennonite colonists, who controlled the fulfillment of this
obligation consistently.93 In the 1850s, only three Swedish farmers out of
twenty-seven male grown-ups could write; the level of female literacy is
unknown, as it is largely neglected in the sources.94 However, most
Swedish colonists, both men and women, could read and knew the
basics of the Bible.
Beginning from the early nineteenth century, Swedish children aged
from seven to fifteen (up to their confirmation) were taught at the
teacher’s house, where they studied German, the basics of Geography,
handwriting, Bible history, Arithmetic, singing, and read the Scripture.95
The school year usually lasted from 1 October until 1 May, sometimes
from 1 November until 1 April, as the children had to work on the farms.96
Radical changes in imperial policy towards the non-Russian and nonOrthodox population of the empire, and the following campaign of
Russification had a profound impact on all foreign colonists in New
Russia.97 In the 1860s the Trustees Committee officially introduced the
Russian language into the colonist schools’ curriculum as a compulsory
91
Elena Shishkina-Fisher, Nemetskie narodnye kalendarnye obriady, tantsy i pesni v
Germanii i Rossii (Moskva: “Mezhdunarodnyi soiuz nemetskoi kultury,” 2002), 225229, 307–309; Anton Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby: land ock folk (Stockholm: Kungl.
Boktryckeriet, 1929), 62.
92
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 3717, ark. 44; spr. 4415, arkk. 17, 19; spr. 4450, arkk. 94, 97.
93
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 145-147,149-150.
94
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 19678, ark. 24.
95
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 4415, ark. 17; spr. 4450, ark. 97.
96
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 4415, ark. 17; spr. 4450, ark. 97.
97
James Urry, “Mennonites, Nationalism and the State in Imperial Russia,” in
Journal of Mennonite Studies, vol.12 (1994), 65–75.
82
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
subject. Henceforth Russian-German bilingualism was to be discouraged
and suppressed, and instead Russian became the only language of
administration in the colonies.98 As they were the first foreign colonists
in New Russia and were not German native speakers, the Swedes had, in
order to facilitate communication with the colonial administration and
their neighbors, started to learn Russian long before they were required
to do so by the government.
The Swedish colonist community was a typical patriarchal peasant
society with its characteristic forms of socialization and transmission of
cultural roles, knowledge, experience, gender order, and the unquestioned authority of elders. The colonists’ understanding of their identity
was that which predominated in early modern society; it was based on
religion, language and medieval privileges.99 The status granted to them
by Swedish law and the privileges they had enjoyed on Dagö, and the
colonist status they had in New Russia helped them maintain their
identity in both Estonia and Russia.
Eventually the Swedish ethnic identity, which had long remained
based on religion, origin and language, was transformed into a new
colonist identity based on their membership of a colony and their place
of residence. The pastors who arrived from remote parts of the Russian
Empire’s Northwest (Adolf Europeus, Alexander Nordgren) were not
only the carriers of the religious knowledge and background common to
the Swedes, but also symbolically linked colonists with their former
native island. Regarding the Swedes’ self-identification, they did not
initially identify themselves with Swedes from mainland Sweden, as had
been suggested by Russian travelers, contemporaries and imperial
officials from the middle of the nineteenth century.
Separation and inclusion, uniformity and diversity, which became
permanent features of the Russian imperial policy, along with the
missions of Finish and Swedish visitors to the village, promoted the
creation of a particular “Gammalsvensk” tradition and culture. The
tendency towards cultural conservatism and continuation of traditions
intertwined with borrowing and adaptation of new cultural codes in the
new milieu and emergence of a new “synthesized” tradition and dialect
characteristic of Gammalsvenskby.
98
Ocherki istorii nemtsev i mennonitov, Bobyleva, 151.
Piotr Wawrzeniuk, “Tradition and Past: The Swedes of Alt-Schwedendorf 1782–
1852,” in Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Porogi,
2007), 12–19.
99
83
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
According to ethnographer Alexander Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi who
visited the colony in the late 1850s, the inhabitants of the Swedish colony
were noted for their law-obedience and respect for legal procedures, their
honesty, diligence and loyalty to the state and other authorities.100
Religious intolerance as well as conversions to other faiths were rare
among them.101 As a rule they endeavored to solve socio-economic and
everyday problems by sending complaints, petitions and requests to the
authorities of the state.102 There was no unrest or agitation in Gammalsvenskby, and crimes were rare.103 The low delinquency among the
relatively few Swedes contrasted to nearby numerous German colonists’,
who were occasionally condemned for various misdemeanors, sexual
crimes, appropriation of property and disobedience towards authorities.104
The Swedish colonists were regarded as loyal subjects of the Russian Tsar
and were not as opposed to Russification and other crucial changes in
official policy towards the colonists as the Germans and Mennonites in
the region.
Conclusions
As a result of acculturation, and in exchange for privileges connected to
the colonist status, the Baltic islanders became loyal colonists and
empire-builders. Empire-builders came in many forms – settlers, missionaries, officials, prisoners, as well as governor-generals and generals.
The Swedish colonists contributed to the imperial project of transformation and reinventing of the steppe by pursuing different economic
activities promoted by the government. To abstain from taking part in
them was hardly possible, no matter what the Swedes thought about the
prospects of the experiments.
100
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 349, arkk. 2,24; DADO, f. 134, op. 1, spr. 512, ark. 22;
Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u Pivdennu Rosiiu, 257-261.
101
Utas, Svenskbyborna, 83.
102
Antifeodalnaia borba volnykh shvedskikh krestian, Madisson, 31–32, 39–40,52–
53,129,131–133, 332–333; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 56, ark. 10; spr. 128, ark. 9; spr. 1025,
arkk. 1–3.
103
Olga Konovalova, “Kolonisty Iuga Rossii v konflikte s zakonom (1800-1818),” in
Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Porogi, 2007), 98105; DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 1706, arkk. 10,110; spr. 889, arkk. 1-3; spr. 1131, arkk. 1-11;
spr. 4279, arkk. 3-8.
104
DAOO, f. 6, op. 1, spr. 608, arkk. 1-36; spr. 613, arkk. 1-40; spr. 767, arkk. 1-11; spr.
617, arkk. 1-17; spr. 1093, arkk. 1-29; spr. 767, arkk. 1-11; spr. 892, arkk. 1-8; spr. 1099,
arkk. 1-22; spr. 1181, arkk. 1-7.
84
PEOPLE IN BETWEEN – MALITSKA
As Willard Sunderland emphasizes, by the dawn of the twentieth
century, the steppe had been so profoundly transformed by Russian
imperialism that it was difficult for contemporaries to determine
whether it constituted a borderland, a colony, or Russia itself. It seemed
hard to believe that the plains could ever have belonged to anyone else
except Russia.105
Along with transforming the steppe, the Swedish community itself
experienced a number of radical transformations: physical (migration and
then residence in new geographical and social milieu); juridical (the status
changes: the loss of medieval privileges and obtaining of the colonist status
that guaranteed the rights and privileges in Russia, required some
obligations); economical (the changes in economic specialization of the
Swedes, managing certain economic activities unknown before). The
indigenous population, other foreign colonists, and the authorities were
the key actors that influenced and predetermined the specifics and the
extent of the Swedes’ integration and acculturation in southern Russia.
Apart from preserving some cultural elements as their traditional food
and their rune calendar, the Swedish colonists borrowed the trends of
garment, furnishings from their German and Slavic neighbors that proved
the intercultural dialogue. Unlike such non-numerous groups as Serbs,
Montenegrins, Hungarians, Italians, French speaking Swiss, the inhabitants of Gammalsvenskby managed to avoid assimilation in the
nineteenth century.
105
Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 89, 223, 228.
85
Illustration 1: he irst page of Herman Vendell’s travel account from his ieldtrip in
1881 to Gammal-svenskby and Nargö, an island in the Tallinn Bay. Ater returning to
Finland, he published several articles inluential in shaping of the public imagination
about the village in Finland and Sweden. SLS FS, SLS 182c.
Illustration 2: Beyond pure linguistics. Although a linguist himself, Vendell’s wide
ield of interest turned him into a scientiic omnivore. Here is a sketch of the farmstead where Vendell stayed during his work in Gammalsvenskby. SLS FS, SLS 182c.
The Making of Gammalsvenskby 1881–1914
– identity, myth and imagination
PIOTR WAWRZENIUK
The title of this chapter points at a long process during which the image of
Gammalsvenskby was “created,” so to say, in the interaction between the
villagers, their neighbors, the authorities, and the Finnish and Swedish
visitors and press. By the advent of the First World War, the image of the
village in the accounts of visitors and press was an amalgamation of various
cultural elements and processes. The cultural legacy with roots in the premigration times was very much present, somewhat altered by developments
since the migrants from Dagö settled there in 1782 and the specific
geographical, cultural, and judicial milieu of the colonists in the South of
the Russian Empire. In addition, the image of the village was strongly
influenced by contact between the villagers and Swedish speaking visitors
from Finland and Sweden. These encounters became frequent only from the
1880s, after word about the village was spread in Swedophone newspapers
in Sweden, Finland and the US. The village faced the diverse visions of what
it meant to be a Swede according to the ideas of ethnic nationalism
imported from Finland and Sweden.
In this chapter the village is seen as a cultural construct, created and kept
alive within a network of social relations. Gammalsvenskby existed in the
sphere of imagination, rather than as merely a geographic locality within
the administrative limits of the Swedish colonist district.1 The abovementioned point allows for following the process of imagining and
describing of Gammalsvenskby and its surroundings. Cultural delimitations
are a product of social relations, a creation of groups and individuals.2 This
1
Lars-Olov Sjöström, Modernitet i det traditionella – Kulturbyggen och gränser inom ett
nordsvenskt område (Umeå: H:ström Text & Kultur, 2007), 30.
2
Sjöström, Modernitet, 31.
89
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
perspective proves particularly fruitful when studying the construction of
the village in the accounts of visitors and newspapers.
This chapter will mainly deal with how the image of the village was shaped
and kept alive from the time when durable contacts were established between
Gammalsvenskby and various circles in Finland and Sweden in 1881 up to
the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. However, first it is necessary to
see what elements were decisive for the identity formation of the villagers
before regular contacts with Sweden and Finland started. Then the author will
then proceed with a presentation of the ideas that influenced the visitors and
contributed to shaping the image of the village among in the public in Finland
and Sweden. Two individuals whose views on Gammalsvenskby can be seen
as somewhat symbolic – Herman Vendell and Emma Skarstedt – have been
chosen for this purpose. Their accounts were basically in binary opposition to
each other when the village was discussed; Vendell was an idealist while
Skarstedt was a weary realist. Finally, the text will follow the creation of the
myth of the village as a fortress of patriotic Swedishness, and its population as
the lost Swedish tribe.
This basically romantic and nationalistic view of the villagers as timeless
vessels of Swedish and Germanic virtues prevailed until the late 1920s, and
exercised great influence when – in combination with the deterioration of
the living conditions of the villagers under Soviet rule – a belief grew in
Sweden that the villagers should be brought back into the bosom of the
Swedish nation. Once in Sweden many of the former villagers were not
content with what Sweden was prepared to offer. Horrified Swedish officials
discovered that the former Gammalsvenskby dwellers lacked many qualities
expected from a modern Swede and that – perhaps – the racial purity of the
resettled group might be in doubt.3
When differences matter
When studying the formation of identity and acculturation (understood as
cautious and selective adaptation to, but not assimilation into, the dominant
society) of the villagers, it is important to keep in mind that ethnicity becomes
relevant in a social situation where cultural differences assume significance;
there must exist at least one group that is regarded as different from the
3
Anna Wedin, “Gammalsvenskbybornas emigration till Sverige 1929. En studie i svenskhet
och etniskt ursprung,” Unpublished Bachelor Thesis in history supervised by Andrej
Kotljarchuk (Södertörn University, 2007).
90
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
others.4 An ethnic group will retain its separateness only as long as its
members hold on to specific traditions, customs or other characteristics that
can be seen as symbols of their separateness, such as language, a kinship
system, an old religion, or a certain way of life. Usually, in the circumstances
viewed as dangerous by a group, dramatic experiences activate one or several
of such symbols. Anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen identifies
migration, demographic changes, and integration or incorporation into a
wider political system as such experiences.5 The villagers and their migrating
ancestors went through virtually all of this. Their move from Dagö and
resettlement in Ukraine and the extreme mortality levels during the
migration and the initial years on the steppe can be mentioned as examples.
They brought with them a strong sense of separateness from Dagö, then
developed and nurtured in the new conditions of the colonist life.
The strong group coherence and the principle of exclusiveness that for a
long time guided the villagers in their relations with outsiders, is
reminiscent of the behavior covered by the sociological term sect. Such a
group views itself as the sole bearer of truth. The members are in a small
minority in society, but are expected to live according to a strict set of
teachings. There is often a measure of suspicion between the sect and the
surrounding society. While the sect views itself as unique and the outside
society as potentially dangerous and in a state of moral and religious decay,
others frequently regard the sect as dissenting and problematic.6 In the
following paragraphs several examples will be given of the exclusivist
approach the villagers took, but also of the negative view their closest
neighbors, the German settlers, had of them.
The persistence of the past
– Gammalsvenskby and its early modern features
The inhabitants of Gammalsvenskby managed to preserve their Swedish
identity because the village was a peasant society which, until the midnineteenth century, retained many features that were typical of the early
modern era. This does not mean the village was an entirely static society.
However, there was a deep attachment to old customs and the ways of the
ancestors. In order to identify these features, reports by people who visited
4
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Etnicitet och nationalism (Nora: Nya Doxa, 1998), 29, 45, 47.
Eriksen, Etnicitet, 89–90; citation, 89.
6
Inger Furuseth, Pål Repstad, Religionssociologi – en introduktion (Malmö: Liber, 2008),
184-185.
5
91
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
the village have been used.7 The group coherence and solidarity between the
villagers were kept alive by their common ancestry, their language and
religion, and their collective memory of their special status as free peasants
on Dagö.
Religion was an important component of a pre-modern peasant’s identity.
A large number of books among those available to the villagers of Gammalsvenskby, religious books printed in Stockholm and Reval are mentioned
along with schoolbooks from Åbo. The schoolteacher used these books in
accordance with the “Old Swedish Church Law” (apparently the Church
Ordinance of 1686, as no other Church Ordinance was promulgated before
Dagö passed from Swedish to Russian control in 1710).8 The use of the old
versions of the Hymn Book and the Bible by the villagers constantly turned
their attention not only towards God and prayer, but also towards their past
as Swedish subjects. In this way links to the past were maintained, and
contributed considerably to preservation of the Swedish identity.
From early on there were also other features that preserved the common
group identity of the Swedes. The village in which they lived was eventually
named Staroshvedskaia, literally “Old-Swedish Village.” Together with the
German villages of Mühlhausendorf, Schlangendorf and Klosterdorf it later
constituted the “Old-Swedish” district. The authorities also pursued a
deliberate policy of differentiating between the various ethnic groups
among the settlers. In a list of people who inhabited the village in August
1808, the Swedes who migrated from Dagö in 1781 are separated from
people from Poland and Danzig, who arrived later. Even the Swedish
prisoners of war who settled in the village in 1790 were registered in
separate tables when the population and its property were counted.9 When
the villagers were given last names in 1860s, many referred to the names of
farms, other place names, and patronyms from Dagö. This shows that
memories from the island were still alive, and the old distinctions still
mattered in 1860s.
7
Reports written by August Nymann (1836), Wilhelm Lagus (1852), A. AfanasievChuzhbynskyi (1863), Herman Vendell (1881-1882), Anton Karlgren (1906), Herman
Neander (1912) are used. All of the reporters but Nymann, who sent a servant, visited the
village in person. The accounts of the stays in the village were published in newspapers,
journals and books. Apart from the reports, a letter written by three villagers to Haapsalu
school inspector Carl Russwurm in 1849 (published 1850) is used. As to archival sources,
materials deposited at DADO, DAKhO are used along with material from RGIA.
8
Piotr Wawrzeniuk, “Tradition and the Past: The Swedes of Alt-Schwedendorf 1782–
1852,” in Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Porogi, 2007),
12–19.
9
DADO, f.134, op.1, spr. 193.
92
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
In the preceding pages, about the early modern features of the villagers, one
finds several characteristics reminiscent of the term sect: a tendency to keep
a distance to outsiders who were not prepared to adapt to the culture of the
villagers; pressure on the members of the community not to leave the village
for any considerable period of time (and thus no longer under the influence
of the village collective). We also find that there were spiritual leaders who
ensured the old customs lived on in an almost unadulterated version. At the
same time, there were many elderly people who maintained the continuity
between the old and the new, and whose words were respected. Add to that
a sense of common ancestry (history, language, religion), strengthened by
the trauma of migration, and the long-term survival of group solidarity and
the coherence of the group becomes understandable.
Polish anthropologist Ludwik Stomma has argued that the peasantry
under Romanov and Habsburg rule in the nineteenth century was a
spatially, socially and mentally isolated group. The mental isolation made
the peasant society resistant to adaptation to impulses from the outside
world. In addition to that, few peasants travelled beyond their native region
or mixed with other social groups, thus adding spatial and social isolation to
the mental one. It was a culture that frequently looked to the past for
guidance and referred to primeval state in a remote past. A natural order of
things in ancient times, an essence of things, are standard components of
what the past may have to offer in form of guidance.10
Four reports about the village between 1836 and 1912 (Nymann, Lagus,
Vendell, and Neander) claim that the villagers seldom married outsiders.
Marriages to Germans or other outsiders were very uncommon.11 Herman
Neander who visited the village in the early twentieth century claimed that
many among the villagers were genetically closely related, as there were 140
families, but only 22 family names.12 Herman Vendell explained the beauty
of the village women with the fact that marriages with outsiders were “not
practiced” (emphasis added); this allowed the villagers to retain their
10
Ludwik Stomma, Antropologia kultury wsi polskiej XIX w. (Warszawa: Instytut
Wydaw. Pax, 1986), 65–77, 143, 146.
11
Wilhelm Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern i April 1852,” Finlands Allmänna Tidning,
no.132 (1852), 549.
12
Herman Neander, Gammal-Svenskby (Stockholm: Hugo Gebers förlag, 1912), 17. In
fact, by the time Neander wrote his book, the situation was already changing. The Parish
Register suggests that 9 of 23 marriages (almost 40 per cent) in Alt-Schwedendorf in the
years 1899 and 1903–1905 were mixed marriages. One can hardly treat this number as
insignificant; DAKhO, f. 232, op.1, spr.1, arkk. 34, 90, 133, 182.
93
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Swedish physiognomy.13 Karlgren wrote about their reluctance “to bring
alien elements into the village;” if such marriages were at all contracted,
they involved a Swede and a German, but never a person of Slavic origin.14
In a letter written in 1849 to school inspector Carl Russwurm, Haapsalu,
three representatives of the villagers claimed there were 52 families of “pure
Swedes” (rena swänskar) before providing the exact numbers of men,
women and children in these families.15 They did not write “villagers” or
“locals,” which would have been more inclusive, they wrote “pure Swedes”.
Wilhelm Lagus reported that few Swedes ever left the village for seasonal
work, as this was unpopular with the village collective. At the same time, he
noted that the relations between villagers were “thoroughly patriarchal,” as
“everything they [the villagers] know has its root in their [the elders’]
experience.”16
Lagus’ observations were later confirmed by ethnographer Alexander
Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, who after several visits to the village in the early
1860s described the relations between the Swedes as “kindly patriarchal.”17
In the early twentieth century, a Swedish visitor to the village, Anton
Karlgren, also characterized relations between the villagers as “thoroughly
patriarchal,” adding that the young had great respect for the elders.18
According to another Swedish visitor, contemporary with Karlgren, the
villagers “treated each other almost as members of the same family.”19
The letter from 1849 quoted above from the villagers also suggests that
customs from Dagö remained largely intact, with the exception of the
language used at weddings and baptisms, a change that is readily explained
by the fact that these spiritual services were provided by German pastors.
Some individuals played a leading role in the preservation of traditions and
customs. Mats Magnusson Kotz (1756–1839), bell-ringer and parish
schoolteacher, was an important mediator between the present and the past.
13
SLS FS, SLS 182c, “Berättelse öfver den resa, hvilken sommaren 1881 företogs till
Gammal-Svenskby ock Nargö af Herman Vendell, Docent” (Docent Herman Vendell’s
Account of His Journey to Gammalsvenskby and Nargö in the Summer of 1881), 94.
14
Anton Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby: land och folk, serie: svenska landsmål och svenskt
folkliv (Uppsala, 1929), 43
15
Carl Russwurm, “Om svensk koloni wid Dniepern,” Helsingfors Tidningar, no. 31(1850),
404.
16
Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern,” 549.
17
Anatolii Afanasiev-Chuzhbynskyi, Podorozh u Pivdennu Rosiiu (Dnipropetrovsk: Sich,
2005), 253–254.
18
Jörgen Hedman, Lars Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskby och svenskarna i
Ukraina (Kristianstad: Dialogos, 2003), 121.
19
Neander, Gammal-Svenskby, 17.
94
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
He was mentioned in the first report about the village in 1836 as the
villagers’ tutor in religion, and was mentioned again in the letter in 1849.20
In fact, his function seems to have been similar to that of the anthropological notion of a guru. A guru adds “personal charisma to booklearning, in a combination of oral and literate modes of communication.” In
societies where literacy is limited, the art of narration flourishes.21 Kotz
seems to have been the main interpreter and mediator of knowledge linked
to Dagö and the Lutheran religion in its seventeenth century version. Kotz
performed this function of a “guru,” a charismatic authority based on
custom and personal authority, for over three decades.22 After Mats
Magnusson Kotz’s death in 1839, his son Kristian Matsson Kotz took over
this function, and was in his turn succeeded by his son Henrik Kristiansson
Kotz in 1856.23
Kristian Matsson Kotz was one of three men who could read and
understand Carl Russwurm’s letter written in Swedish to the village and
answer it in 1849. Apparently, literacy otherwise hardly extended beyond
singing from the Hymn Book and reading the required parts of the Bible. In
fact, only the three men who wrote the letter to Carl Russwurm in 1849
seem to have been fully literate (i.e., able both to read and to write) in
Swedish; actually, in their letter they say they have joined forces in order to
be able to write the text.24
The songs, riddles and proverbs of old Dagö times were preserved at
least up to the First World War. They were reported to be disappearing
from daily use, but had been recorded for future generations.25 It seems
likely that the oldest inhabitants of the village, who lived three or four
decades into the nineteenth century, played a significant role in the
transmission of customs to the younger generations. There were several
elderly people in 1830s and 1840s who were adults or in their late teens at
the time of the migration from Dagö: Mats Nilsson Buskas (1761–1836),
20
Wawrzeniuk, “Tradition and the Past,” 14–15.
Jack Goody, “Introduction,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack Goody
(Cambridge: Cambrigde University Press, 1968), 13.
22
According to Max Weber, traditional authority is based on custom and presupposes
limited reflection over alternative development; see Furuseth, Repstad, Religionssociologi,
195.
23
Hedman, Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskbyn,
24
Carl Russwurm, “Om svensk koloni wid Dniepern,” Helsingfors Tidningar, no. 31
(1850), 405.
25
Neander, Gammal-Svenskby, 14; Sigfrid Hoas, Banditer i byn. Min barndoms äventyr i
Gammal-Svenskby (Stockholm: Ev. fosterlandsstiftelsen, 1959), 12–20, Karlgren,
Gammalsvenskby, 62.
21
95
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Mickel Greisson Albers (1765–1844) and two women, Maria Matsdotter
Mutas (born 1761) and Margareta Larsdotter Larsas (born 1767) both of
whom lived well into 1830s. In fact, fifty out of 220 villagers in the 1830s
were born in the eighteenth century. While the Swedish contemporary
writers Jörgen Hedman and Lars Åhlander view it as a sign of the Dagö
culture fading away, the number rather suggests that there was a large group
of people in the village who had either personal experience or memories
from the island, or had been told about life there by their parents.26
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century,
people who were passing away were grandchildren of the colonists of 1782,
and had probably encountered several elders from Dagö and the first
generation of villagers born in Gammalsvenskby. Fourteen of those who
died between 1905 and 1913 were born between 1816 and 1839. Two of
them were born in the 1810s, two in 1820s and ten in the 1830s.27 During
the most labor intensive farming season, the adults were permanently on
fields far away, leaving the running of the households “to the elderly and the
children,” Lagus reported.28 This opened for socialization where material
and oral culture could be transmitted to the younger generations.
The Swedish-Estonian historian Alexander Loit has studied the widespread favorable sentiments towards the Swedish Crown among the
peasantry of Estonia and Livonia under Russian rule that was reported by
ethnographers in the first half of the nineteenth century. The economic
pressure from the landlords increased after the Russian take-over and in the
collective memory of peasants the Swedish period is referred to as “the good
old Swedish times.” This somewhat idyllic view of the past mirrored the fact
that serfdom was abolished during the rule of Charles XI, and a model of
behavior developed where the peasants turned to their king for protection
against their mainly Baltic German lords. The peasantry in Swedish Livonia
was given the same rights and obligations as other peasants in the Swedish
domains.29 Needless to say, this interpretation of the past was even stronger
among the Swedish peasants of Estonia and Livonia. They remembered being
free men enjoying their rights and privileges (frequently codified in and
26
Hedman, Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskyby, 65.
DAKhO, f. 323, op. 1, spr. 1, arkk.135-288; f. 323, op. 1, spr. 2, arkk. 36–299; f. 323,
op.1, spr. 3, ark. 34.
28
Lagus, “Utflygt till Dniepern,” 545.
29
Alexander Loit, „Die ‚alte gute Schwedenzeit‘ und ihre historische Bedeutung für das
Baltikum,” in (eds.) Carsten Goehrke; Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Die baltischen Staaten
im Schnittpunkt der Entwicklungen: Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Basel: Schwabe, 2002),
76–88.
27
96
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
confirmed by letters from Swedish monarchs) that long preceded the brief
emancipation of the peasants of Swedish Livonia. After the Russian take-over,
the Swedish peasants referred to their rights as free men when faced with
attempts by feudal lords to enserf them. At the end of the eighteenth and in
the first half of the nineteenth century, runaways from islands and villages
inhabited by Swedes sought refuge in Sweden from Russian military service
and the exploitation at the hands of Baltic German lords.30
Thus, the villagers of Gammalsvenskby preserved their old customs and
language thanks to the continuity in the spiritual leadership in the village,
and the chariness of rapid change characteristic of peasant societies.
Custom, religion and the historical memory continued to matter in the new
surroundings. In fact, their importance even increased due to the vicissitudes of colonist life. The almost permanent crises in the village stimulated the preservation of the Swedish identity of the villagers and their
group solidarity. The work of the three subsequent bell ringers and parish
schoolteachers was carried out father, son, and a grandson, from 1782 and
into 1860s. The overlapping of generations of people who remembered
Dagö and the hardships of the first colonist decades, and people who were
passing away in the beginning of the twentieth century, must also have
stimulated the passing of the group’s customs and beliefs to younger
generations. The Swedish identity of the former islanders was also preserved by their attachment to a particular form of Lutheranism, the archaic
Swedish language of the sacred texts they carried with them to southern
Russia and collective memory that encompassed the rights and privileges as
free yeomen under the rule of the Teutonic Order and Sweden.
Modernity and the village: nationalism and the social question
Gammalsvenskby was a comparatively isolated village. Outside it however,
were currents that eventually influenced developments in the village.
Generally, these processes can be viewed as challenges posed by modernity
and the ways in which different groups handled them. In the case of the
visitors to Gammalsvenskby, and the Swedish and Finnish media’s descriptions of the village, growing cultural differentiation can be singled out as the
most important of these challenges. A general tendency during the
nineteenth century was a gradual diminishing of values that were shared by
large groups in society, and the emergence of a multitude of different values
30
Viktor Aman, En bok om Estlands svenskar IV. Kulturhistorisk översikt (Stockholm:
Utg.,1992), 14–25.
97
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
and new ways of communicating them in politics, science and economy.
The consolidation of the nation state and the rise of the so-called social
movement, with its plethora of civic organizations, were two features of this
process that were important for Gammalsvenskby.31 The organizations
linked to the social movement were often created as a reaction to rapid and
deep societal changes. Their ambition was to change society, and people’s
ways of thinking and living, by organizing people for common action.32 The
growing organizational diversity was also mirrored by women’s organizations, although there was a separate public sphere for women in the
second half of the nineteenth century. In the beginning of the twentieth
century, the restrictions on women’s participation in public affairs
decreased steadily.33 It would be impossible to understand the creation of
the image of Gammalsvenskby without taking into account the societal
currents and political and cultural development in Finland and Sweden.
Therefore, an outline of the relevant processes is presented below.
During most of the nineteenth century, Swedish nationalism was liberal.
However, by the end of the century, the ruling dynasty had developed an
official, conservative nationalism. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, there were numerous patriotic ceremonies,
many museums were built and numerous monuments erected to commemorate the nation’s great men, heroic achievements and culture.34 In
historiography, the national-romantic narrative focused on the people, and
the era when Sweden was a great power. The narrative also stressed what its
adherents viewed as a long tradition of freedom, with a free yeomanry, and
the alliance between the King and the people as the bedrock of the realm.
The position of the Swedish peasantry, which was unique in the early
modern period, was interpreted in terms of a millennium long era of liberty
with roots in the times of the Germanic tribes.35
31
Francis Sejersted, Socialdemokratins tidsålder. Sverige och Norge under 1900-talet
(Stockholm: Nya Doxa, 2005), 8–11.
32
Martin Stolare, Kultur och natur. Moderniseringskritiska rörelser i Sverige 1900–1920
(Göteborg: Historiska institutionen, Univ., 2003), 13.
33
Inger Hammar, Emancipation och religion: den svenska kvinnorörelsens pionjärer i
debatt om kvinnans kallelse ca 1860–1900 (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1999), 11; Lovisa af
Petersens, Formering för offentlighet. Kvinnokonferenser och Svenska Kvinnornas
Nationalförbund kring sekelskiftet 1900 (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis,
2006), 28–29.
34
Billy Ehn, Jonas Frykman, Orvar Löfgren, Försvenskningen av Sverige: det nationellas
förvandlingar (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1993), 24–25, 43–47.
35
Patrik Hall, Den svenskaste historien: nationalism i Sverige under sex sekler (Stockholm:
Carlsson, 2000), 197; Sejersted, Socialdemokratins tidsålder, 15; Torbjörn Nilsson,
98
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
In Finland, Finnish nationalism was locked in fierce competition with the
nationalism and aspirations of the Swedophone population (about 300,000
people in the 1880s) until the end of the nineteenth century. Several
intellectuals among the Swedish-speaking Finns (the term “Finno-Swedish”
– finlandssvensk – was not widely in use before the First World War)
opposed the Finnish nationalism that promoted the Finnish language and
Finnish culture as national, rather than the Swedish language that
dominated in the administration at least up to 1866, when Finnish was
introduced as a second official language. In the 1860s, the Fennomaner, as
the Finnish activists were called in Swedish, were a relatively small group of
Swedophone intellectuals who regarded the Swedish political and cultural
domination of Finland as unjust. This energetic movement engaged in
politics, achieving a majority among the peasant and priest estates in the
Finnish Diet, 1877–1878, thereby alarming intellectuals who sympathized
with the old order of things. The Swedish activists viewed the advance of the
Fennomaner in the political and educational sphere as a threat to the very
existence of the Swedish-Germanic culture (as opposed to the Finnish and
Finno-Ugric one).
The conflict between Fennomaner and Svekomaner (as the adherents of
strong position of Swedish culture and language were called) accelerated
during the 1870s and 1880s. While the Fennomaner viewed Swedish culture
as an obsolete remnant of an unjust order, several among the Svekomaner
(sing.: Svekoman) thought that the Germanic (Swedish) race was superior to
Asiatic peoples (according to the Fennomaner, the roots of the Finnish
people were to be found in Ural Mountains and Siberia). Consequently,
among the pioneers of the Svekoman movement in Helsinki, ancient Nordic
culture (viewed as genuinely Germanic) was in high esteem. However, the
conflict between the two groups was set aside as the Russification campaign
launched from St Petersburg intensified towards the end the century.36
The abovementioned process was formative for Herman Vendell, a Swedophone Finnish linguist who visited Gammalsvenskby in 1881, and
subsequently published influential accounts about the village. In a letter
Mellan arv och utopi: moderata vägval under 100 år, 1904-2004 (Stockholm: Santérus,
2004), 79–80.
36
Ilkka Liikanen, Fennomania ja kansa: joukkojärjestäytymisen läpimurto ja Suomalaisen
puolueen synty (Helsinki: Suomen historiallinen seura, 1995), 349–351, 357–358; Eino
Jutikkala, Kauko Pirinen, Finlands historia (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1982 [1973]),
122, 129; Bo Lönnqvist, “Drakskepp och runslingor,” in Gränsfolkets barn: finlandssvensk
marginalitet och självhävdelse i kulturanalytiskt perspektiv, (eds) Anna-Maria Åström, Bo
Lönnqvist, Yrsa Lindqvist, (Helsingsfors: Svenska litteratursällsk. i Finland, 2001), 236.
99
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Vendell wrote as a young man in 1876 to a Swedish relative he stressed that
the culture of the Swedophones in Finland rested upon “folk songs and
traditions, dialects and customs.”37 During his student years, Vendell collected language samples and other data about Swedophone inhabitants of
Finland. In 1874, Vendell, and the leading Svekoman figure Axel Olof
Freudenthal (later the first professor of Nordic languages at the Alexander
University in Helsinki) and several others founded Svenska landsmålsföreningen (The Swedish Dialects Society).38 Its main goal was the preservation of the Swedish language and culture, which “like everything
Swedish” seemed to be doomed to drown “in the flood of advancing Finnish
national and language ambitions,” as Vendell put it when looking back in
1880s. The collection of dialects and other data was supposed to end what
was perceived as the Fennoman denigration of Swedish culture in Finland.39
Svenska landsmålsföreningen provided the funding for Vendell’s journey to
Gammalsvenskby and the Swedophone enclave of Nargö in Estonia in 1881.
In 1885, the newly founded Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, Folkkultursarkivet och språkarkivet (The Swedish Literature Society in Finland,
Archives of folklore and language) in Finland laid down detailed rules on
the methods to be used and how to keep a diary while collecting dialect
samples and artefacts of ethnological interest.40 Vendell made considerable
contributions to the collection of Swedish dialects in the Russian provinces
of Estonia and Livonia, later also in Finland. His magnum opus, Ordbok
öfver de östsvenska dialekterna (Dictonary of East-Swedish Dialects), was
published shortly before his death in 1907.
The so-called social question in Sweden had strong moralistic connotations. The lower classes were frequently described as hopelessly poor,
dirty, unhealthy, immoral, and leaning towards drunkenness. The tone in
the bourgeois press was patronizing. As poverty was mainly considered to
be due to the individual, education and moral elevation were seen as the
remedy. A large number of voluntary organizations, whose tasks ranged
from philanthropy and education to advocating temperance, were founded
37
SLS HLA, SLSA 325, Herman Vendell to Henning Vendell, Ekenäs (Finland), 20 June
1876.
38
Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, “Folkdikten och dess upptecknare,” in Finlands svenska litteraturhistoria (Helsingfors & Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällsk. i Finland, 1999), 401.
39
Herman Vendell, “Svenska landsmålsföreningen i Helsingfors 1874–1881,” De Svenska
Landsmålsföreningarna i Uppsala, Helsingfors och Lund 1872–1881, one of booklets of
Nyare Bidrag Om De Svenska Landsmålen ock Svenskt Folklif, vol. 2 (1880–1887), 64.
40
Piotr Wawrzeniuk, “En resande i svenskhet. Herman Vendell i Gammalsvenskby
1881,” Personhistorisk tidskrift (2009): 2, 151, 155.
100
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
during the nineteenth century. They often cooperated with the Church, or
with governmental authorities in the town and rural districts. As the
industrialization and urbanization process gained momentum up towards
the end of the nineteenth century, the main thrust of attention of the
activists was directed towards the workers in towns, rather than, as earlier,
the poor in the rural areas. The social question was in no way unique to
Sweden but was the subject of a heated debate in many other countries, too.
Those in Sweden who wished to help the poor often sought to benefit from
the experiences of countries that had industrialized earlier, notably
Germany and Great Britain.41 For Gammalsvenskby, the activities of Emma
Skarstedt, who was sent to the village by Kvinnliga Missions Arbetare
(Female Missionary Workers), proved very important. She finally married
into the village, becoming the wife of the village teacher Christoffer Hoas,
the future pastor.
The modernizers from outside
The visit of Herman Vendell in the summer of 1881 started a wave of interest
in the village. This section shows how his convictions influenced the choice of
what to study, see and describe in Gammalsvenskby. Vendell’s visit took place
at a time when mass nationalism was on the rise in Finland and Sweden and a
broad public sphere came into being. One of the most notable features of the
latter was emergence of the press. Vendell’s accounts of the village would
hardly have gained such attention, if they had only reached the narrow circle
of Svekoman activists in Helsinki. He published stories about Gammalsvenskby already whilst he was in the village. His essays continued to appear
in the press for over a year. It was not only the journals where Vendell
published his articles that spread the news about Gammalsvenskby, other
journals also picked up his stories in a snowball effect and word of his
findings reached further afield. Some of them remained interested in the
village for a considerable period of time. Vendell’s writings had almost an
immediate impact on the readership of national-minded Swedes and
Swedophone inhabitants of Finland, and facilitated fund raising for the village
in Finland, Sweden, and among Swedes in the USA. In newspapers and
journals, the story of the villagers’ attachment to Swedish culture was
repeated along with warnings of their impending assimilation, if
Gammalsvenskby was not given sufficient assistance.
41
Roddy Nilsson, “Den sociala frågan,” in Signums svenska kulturhistoria. Det moderna
genombrottet, ed. Jakob Christensson (Stockholm: Signum, 2008), 141–143, 158.
101
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Herman Vendell visited Gammalsvenskby in the summer of 1881; he
viewed his journey as a completion of his earlier expeditions between 1877
and 1879, when he collected samples of dialects in Swedophone enclaves in
the Russian provinces of Estonia and Livonia.42 After arriving in the village,
Vendell swiftly proceeded to describing the interethnic relations. The
relationship between the villagers and Germans from the neighboring
villages had been deteriorating. The Germans have “forced upon” the
Swedes a “hated” German teacher. They also wanted the Swedes to participate in, and co-finance, the construction of a new church that would be
situated between two German Protestant villages. According to Vendell, the
resistance against the latter was fierce. The villagers of Gammalsvenskby
begged Vendell to help to bring a Swedish priest to them and a teacher who
would master the Swedish language.43
Although Vendell’s role, which he had created for himself, was to collect
samples of the Gammalsvenskby/Dagö dialect, he considered it only natural
to also study and describe the physiognomy of the villagers; it unequivocally
proved their Swedish, and Germanic roots. “The Swedish type immediately
steps before one’s eyes – naturally, as there are no mixed marriages. There
are several beauties among the women,” Vendell wrote. The villagers were
also quick when it came to making decisions and passing judgments,
enthusiastic socializers, and they were industrious. Although they were
“happy with their lot in life,” they still thought of “Svenskland” (approximately “Swedeland”), as they called Sweden. To Vendell, the villagers of
Gammalsvenskby appeared to be of the same “flesh and blood” as Swedophones in Finland; he added that he had never seen “more upright or
friendlier characters.”44
Vendell’s accounts of his journey appeared in Folkwännen (literally:
“Friend of the People”), a Helsinki weekly in 1881, and a cultural-scientific
monthly Finsk tidskrift in 1882. The articles shaped the image of the village
among the Finnish, later also Swedish, readership for a long time to come.
After describing the lack of a Swedish priest and teacher (the children were
taught in German) in the village (the former task being carried out by the
bell-ringer of the village, “a simple peasant”), Vendell struck a somber tone.
“Our kinsmen,” he wrote, “are in danger of national obliteration at the
42
SLS FS, SLS 182c, “Berättelse öfver den resa, hvilken sommaren 1881 företogs till
Gammal-Svenskby ock Nargö af Herman Vendell, Docent” (Docent Herman Vendell’s
account of his journey to Gammalsvenskby and Nargö in the Summer of 1881), p. 1/68.
43
SLS 182c, p. 21/88-22/89, citations p. 21/88.
44
SLS 182c, p. 27/94–28/95.
102
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
hands of Germans and Russians.” The situation was urgent, and called for a
Swedophone man who could perform church services, and teach the
children in Swedish. One-hundred and twenty desiatinas of land, three
hundred roubles annually, and free accommodation were promised by the
villagers to such person. In fact, Vendell continued, Gammalsvenskby
should enjoy the same degree of support as the Swedes of Estonia and
Livonia had received recently thanks to the Finnish Church’s consistories
and the Swedish Evangelical Foundation (Svenska Evangeliska Fosterlands
Stiftelsen).45
In 1899, the association Kvinnliga Missions Arbetare decided it would
send Emma Skarstedt to Gammalsvenskby. With several years’ teaching
experience, and a good knowledge of German (the villagers were reported
to speak Swedish, German and Russian), she was regarded as the most
suitable candidate to become a teacher of handicrafts, and function as a
“Bible woman.”46 Needless to say, the association’s most fundamental aim
was that she would fulfill the latter function.
From her first days in the village, Skarstedt reported about poverty, the
poor health conditions, and various aspects of village life that she considered archaic or even superstitious. She found the economic situation of
many villagers hard. Several had to borrow money to be able to pay their
taxes. Cash was borrowed at high interest rates that could bring ruin upon
many households.47 In the summer of 1900, Skarstedt wrote that the three
main problems of the village were drunkenness, religion, and the ongoing
strife about the distribution of the economic aid that the village had
received. It was difficult to promote temperance in a milieu where many
believed that abstaining from drink “was synonymous with belonging to
some sects.” In the sphere of religion, she noted, most believed that the
mere fact of being a Lutheran would secure one’s salvation. In addition, the
villagers would not use the correct Swedish adjective for Lutheran
(“luthersk”), but insisted on saying “luthérisk,” a word that sounded
ridiculous to a modern Swede like Skarstedt. Moreover, the villagers could
not tell the difference between religions.48 What emerges from her reports is
a group of people who had been spared the campaign of the Swedish
45
Herman Vendell, “Från svenskar i Ryssland,” Folkwännen, no. 27 (1881).
Hemåt 1899: 6–7 (juni-juli), p. 76; Hemåt 1899: 11 (November), p. 11. Hemåt was a
journal, the tribune of Kvinnliga Missions Arbetare (Female Mission Workers) and
Swedish branch of KFUK (Kristliga föreningen av unga kvinnor, Christian Young Women’s
Association). Journal of the Female Missionary Workers, Sweden.
47
Hemåt, (1900): 2, februari.
48
Hemåt, (1900): 8–9 (September), p. 92.
46
103
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Church against the remnants of Roman Catholic beliefs among the
population in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century. The
belief (or practices that suggested such a belief existed) that our salvation
depended on our deeds in our life on earth was particularly common.49A
non-Lutheran missionary who also visited Gammalsvenskby, Wilhelm
Sarwe, saw Skarstedt struggling with various beliefs among the villagers, but
also with their distrust. Several believed she intended to re-baptize them,
only because she would teach people the song Få vi mötas där vid floden
(“Let us meet down at the River…”).50 To make things worse, the authorities
found Skarstedt’s work dubious, and threatened to deport her. Skarstedt’s
lack of success in the sphere of temperance and religiosity brought her to
the brink of exhaustion. She left for Sweden to rest and to attend nursery
school before taking on the great challenges she realized lay ahead.51
No missionary work and no religious enlightenment were possible
without an introduction of a minimum of modern health care in the village.
In 1903, Skarstedt reported that the villagers could only “be reached by the
Gospel” by indirect means. Organizing basic health care could help. Once
the physical health of the villagers improved, measures could be taken to
engage them in the conscious and active form of religiosity represented by
Skarstedt. Although such measures were beyond the purview of what
Kvinnliga Missions Arbetare normally approved of, Skarstedt was permitted
to engage in such work, as it was deemed crucial “to keep our work over
there going.”52 Having been left to their own devices, the villagers employed
methods that were so superstitious and revolting that to be able to believe
“that something like that can go in a Christian country” one had to see it
oneself.” The tradition of “reading” over the sick could perhaps be viewed as
normal, if God’s words were used. Instead, Skarstedt found various
“heathen” influences. A rat’s head baked in bread, a snake’s head tied
around the neck, and dung were other folk medicines that the missionary
found revolting. The problem was also that the villagers deeply believed in
the abilities of the so-called “wise women” (kloka gummor, a sort of naturehealers) to treat the sick, and called for Skarstedt (since her return to the
village in 1902 as a nurse with a diploma) only as a last resort – often when
49
Göran Malmstedt, Bondetro och kyrkoro: religiös mentalitet i stormaktstidens Sverige
(Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2002).
50
Wilhelm Sarwe, Bland Rysslands folk: i missionens och Röda korsets tjänst 1882–1922,
vol. 3, Gammalsvenskby (Stockholm: Svenska Missionsförbundet, 1929), 42–45, 50.
51
Alvin Isberg, Svensk lutherdom i österled. Relationer till ryska och baltiska diasporaförsamlingar och minoritetskyrkor (1883–1941) (Uppsala University, 1982), 23.
52
Hemåt, (1903): 8 (oktober), p. 100.
104
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
it was too late. This was hardly surprising, wrote Skarstedt, as the villagers
for a very long time could only depend on themselves for help. No wonder,
she added, “if they were somewhat behind their time.”53
Emma Skarstedt’s work mirrored the religious modernization that had
been underway in Sweden since the early eighteenth century. After the
introduction of religious freedom in the mid-nineteenth century, various
churches competed for followers. People were supposed to develop a
personal relationship to God - a form of religiosity that was very different
from the automaton-like religiosity that Skarstedt meant was typical of
many of the villagers. At the same time, her mission represented the
entrance of the Swedish social movement into the village; the task of the
modernizers was to teach people to help themselves. From Skarstedt’s point
of view, the village was in urgent need of spiritual and material help.
Vendell, on the other hand, was driven by motifs that were both patriotic
and romantic. His enthusiastic belief in the patriotism of the villagers was
due to the fact that they had by and large preserved their language and most
elements of their culture, and that belief functioned as a romantic filter
through which everything he knew or read about the Gammalsvenskby
passed. Where Skarstedt saw misery and problems, Vendell saw a reservoir
of edifying examples to be used on the “home front” – in Finland, where the
Swedophone minority was beginning to feel the pressure from the Finnish
majority that was claiming political and cultural rights.
The lost Swedish tribe
There were critical voices among the Swedish visitors to the village.
Skarstedt’s view was to some extent shared by Viktor Hugo Wickström
(newspaper editor, writer, and liberal politician), Anton Karlgren (a linguist
and journalist) and Herman Neander (a Lutheran priest) who visited the
village before the First World War. They too dwelled on the patriotism of
the villagers on the one hand, but – unlike Vendell – they also took up
issues they considered problematic. In the end, the image of the village as
unyieldingly patriotic and genuinely Swedish remained more or less intact
up to 1929 when most of the villagers migrated to Sweden. The myth of
genealogy, as this point of view can be called, survived more or less intact,
although there were dissenting voices among Swedish public and publicists
in 1920s, when the future fate of the villagers was discussed. However, those
53
När och Fjärran (1904): 1, 6; Hemåt (1902): 7, 83. När och Fjärran was issued as a
supplement to Hemåt from 1904.
105
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
were largely set aside in the process of the bringing of the villagers to
Sweden.54
The myth of genealogy is a powerful tool for holding nations together. It
defines the nation as an emotional category rather than a legal rational
one.55 For the purpose of this text, a myth can be characterized as “widely
shared assumptions, often unspoken and unconscious,” maintained by
stereotypes, images, and metaphors.56 The various elements of a myth
should be easily understood by a group it addresses, and it usually contains
evocation of the past as guidance for the future. A myth in this context is
not synonymous with a lie; however, the facts it contains have usually been
selected to suit the intentions of its creators. Mass media have been identified as a main source of myth-like structures in recent times.57
The nationalistic-romantic view of history was most explicit in the
Swedophone Finnish press, but there was also an exchange of information
and ideas between the Finnish and the Swedish press. Gammalsvenskby was a
valuable asset in the ever growing stream of news; stories of the village were
attention-grabbing and sensational whilst at the same time tapped into a
(perceived) cultural and mental proximity. The village was frequently
presented as something astounding (a tiny group of people preserving their
culture in hostile surroundings), and in this era of intense nationalism readers
could easily identify with Swedophones far away. Where the developments in
Gammalsvenskby were concerned the liberal and conservative press shared a
“consensual paradigm” with their readership. The term refers to consensus on
how the world should be viewed.58
In the case of Gammalsvenskby, the paradigm was patriotic, romantic and
inclusive. This approach was predated by the writings of August Sohlman in
the mid-nineteenth century. A liberal publisher and editor, he wrote a booklet
on the history of the Estonian Swedes in terms very similar to those used by
Vendell. The interest in “the smaller branches [of the Swedish people] that
had been broken away from the mother stem” was “heartening,” as they had
54
Anna Wedin, Gammalsvenskbybornas emigration till Sverige 1929. En studie i svenskhet
och etniskt ursprung, Bachelor Thesis at Södertörn University, 2007.
55
Chris Rojek, The Brit Myth. Who Do Britons Think They Are (London: Reaktion Books
Ltd, 2007), 75.
56
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009), 3.
57
Piotr Cichoracki, Legenda i Polityka. Kształtowanie się wizerunku marszałka Józefa
Piłsudskiego w świadomosci zbiorowej społeczenstwa polskiego w latach 1918–1939 (Kraków:
Księgarnia Akademicka, 2005), 9-10.
58
Gunilla Lundström, När tidningarna blev moderna. Om svensk journalistik 1898–1969
(Lund University, 2004), 23–24.
106
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
preserved “their ancient nature and state.” By studying them, the Swedes
could learn “to understand their disposition, character and vocation in world
history.” To Sohlman, the Estonian Swedes possessed qualities from olden
times, qualities that had now on the whole been lost by the Swedish peasantry,
who had undergone a “common national development,” with “good and bad”
consequences.59 Two statements are important for this text: there were
edifying examples to be found in the past that had been preserved by the
Estonian and Livonian Swedes; some of these superior qualities had
disappeared from Sweden proper owing to the process of modernization, a
phenomenon where “national development” can definitely be included. The
common ancestry was understood to outweigh the differences that had arisen
over time. The words “stem” and “tribe” are same in Swedish (“stam”), and
thus, the phrase “mother tribe” comes to one’s mind.
The rhetoric of something long since lost and then miraculously
recovered surfaces frequently in the descriptions of the village. In practically
all of the texts read by the author of this chapter, the ancient nature of the
village’s customs is stressed along with the patriotism of the villagers.
Therefore, it was argued, they deserved financial aid and moral support.
The villagers quickly learned this useful discourse, and as early as in 1883,
with the helping hand of Kristian Wahlbeck from Finland petitioned their
“kinsfolk” in Sweden and elsewhere to support the ongoing church
construction.60 Wahlbeck had answered Vendell’s call for a Swedishspeaking village teacher and moved to Gammalsvenskby. He wrote letters
that were published in the Finnish press, and toured Finland to collect
funds in 1883; similar campaigns were undertaken in Sweden and among
Swedes in the USA. Most illustrative was the call for “the fellow Christians
and kinsfolk in the Kingdom of Sweden” to make donations to the construction of a church, first published in Folkwännen in 1883. The villagers
also described themselves as “living in the southern lands among Germans
and Russians,” underlining their remoteness, isolation, their status as a
minority thereby – indirectly – conjuring up an image of something lost,
displaced, in need of help.61 This image of remoteness and isolation, along
with the villagers’ “faithfulness” to the Swedish language and “devotion” to
their ancient customs was frequently evoked. Folkwännen praised the
“faithfulness” of the inhabitants of Gammalsvenskby to the Swedish
59
August Sohlman, Om lemningarne af svensk nationalitet uti Estland och Liffland
(Stockholm: published by the author, 1852), 1–3.
60
Folkvännen, no. 103, 7 maj 1883, “Gammal-Svenskby.”
61
Folkwännen, no. 285, 6 december 1883, “Ännu engång Gammal-Svenskby.”
107
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language.62 Kotka Nyheter informed their readership that the villagers had
“faithfully” preserved their language, religion and customs “among alien
peoples, as if ship-wrecked on an island in the open sea.”63 In an article
discussing the likelihood of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland
adopting the Finnish language and Finnish customs, Åbo tidning described
Gammalsvenskby as an elevating example of the perseverance and
conservatism of Swedophone peasants in general. The author, who called
himself “Yeoman” (Allmogeman), claimed that this was impossible, given
the conservatism and a sense of superiority towards the Finns manifest
among the Swedophones.64 Nya Pressen cited the pastor of the Swedish
parish in St Petersburg, H. Kajanus, who called for financial aid to
Gammalsvenskby after the bad harvest of 1899, and claimed that “they [the
villagers] do really not deserve to be forgotten” as their religion and traditions had been preserved so well.65 The above examples from the Finnish
press illustrate a genealogy myth in making, on its way to function automatically by evoking certain images and emotions without further scrutiny.
Starting from Herman Vendell’s first letter to Folkwännen and continuing
with the letters supposedly written by the villagers to their “kinsfolk,” we
witness the beginning of imagining of the village as a Diaspora. This is
evidenced by the viable cultural and financial links and the process of
interaction between the villagers and the well-willing outsiders where the
concepts of village’s Swedishness were now created.
In general, the Swedish visitors did not ignore the fact that the Swedes of
Gammalsvenskby had been influenced by the surrounding society in one
way or another. However, such influences were more often than not viewed
as corrupting. Anton Karlgren claimed that whilst the Germans, who
arrived in 1805, “saved” the Swedes from becoming “savages” following
their extended isolation, they also started a long-term cultural and material
(the land originally reserved for the Swedish colonists) conflicts.66 Herman
Neander mentioned the corrupting influence of the authorities, who
permitted the opening of an inn in the village. The German “seizure” of
land that had originally belonged to the Swedes eventually made several
Swedish villagers into paupers. This had a corrupting influence on their
morals and the end result could be that they migrated and lost their national
62
Folkwännen, no. 64, 18 mars 1886, “Bref från Gammal-Svenskby.”
Kotka Nyheter, no. 60, 24 december 1897.
64
Åbo Tidning, nr. 67, 10 mars 1889, “Bref från landsbygden.”
65
Nya Pressen, no. 27, 29 januari 1900.
66
Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby, 9–12.
63
108
THE MAKING OF GAMMALSVENSKBY – WAWRZENIUK
character. The problem was made worse by the local custom of finalizing
transactions by drinking vodka. The villagers had furthermore developed an
unhealthy custom of lavish spending at wedding parties, something that not
only seemed immoral, but also brought economic ruin upon several families
who borrowed money for such festivities. Neander also cited extensively
from a letter full of words borrowed from Russian. The letter was written by
a young man from the village who was doing his military service in the
Russo-Japanese war.67 Victor Hugo Wickström, who visited the village in
1897, found the villagers prone to drink. According to him, the Russian
authorities were to blame, since they ignored the protests that had been
made and opened an inn in the village.68 In other words: the Swedish core
was good and genuine, but, in the long run, it was threatened by the
contacts with the surrounding world.
Conclusions
The main aim of this chapter has been to study how the image of Gammalsvenskby was formed and maintained from 1881 to 1914. The main
proposition was that the village was largely a creation by visitors to
Gammalsvenskby during the three decades preceding the First World War.
The visitors, in their turn, were affected by rapid developments in Finland
and Sweden, cultural differentiation being the single most important
feature. What the visitors encountered was a village where many aspects
typical of the peasantry of the early modern period had been preserved –
such as a strong attachment to religion, traditional customs, and loyalty
towards the Crown, as well as great respect for elders and oral tradition.
What the visitors saw was a village that basically did not differ from the
villages inhabited by Swedophones in the Russian province of Estonia, in
Finland and in Sweden. The romantic and nationalistic sentiments prevailed, and – although the criticism towards the developments viewed as
negative by several of the visitors was not lacking – these inclusive schemes
had the upper hand. The visit of Herman Vendell, the Svekoman linguist
from Finland, was the starting point of the creative process. From Vendell’s
reports in the Finnish press, the myth of genealogy that linked the village to
Swedophone Finland, Estonia and to Sweden was beginning to form. The
67
Neander, Gammal-Svenskby, 3–41.
Victor Hugo Wickström, I öster- och västerled. Reseminnen (Östersund: Jämtlandspostens boktryckeri, 1900), 31. The author also published his accounts in his newspaper,
Jämtlandsposten.
68
109
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
villagers also swiftly learned the new discourse. However, during the
process, the fact that the villagers had been influenced by developments in
southern Russia for more than a hundred years was largely ignored, and
only the historical and cultural features that seemed integrating were
adopted. This meant that the features acquired during the long-term socialization in the specific milieu of the steppe were largely ignored. The
similarities mattered, while the differences that were also found were not
ascribed the same weight. The myth of genealogy proved strong. Thus it was
only after the villagers had migrated to Sweden in 1929 that it was realized
that many of them did not have the skills and mental faculties expected
from a modern Swede.
110
Little Red Sweden in Ukraine
– the 1930s Comintern project in Gammalsvenskby
Soon the brothers will see the East in the Gold
Swedish Communist Party’s slogan
May Day 1931
ANDREJ KOTLJARCHUK
The history of Gammalsvenskby offers a unique opportunity to investigate
totalitarian political techniques in the twentieth century. The Swedish
agricultural colony on the bank of the river Dnipro, not far from its fall into
the Black Sea, is the only Scandinavian settlement in Eurasia. The church of
Gammalsvenskby was the first Lutheran parish in the Azov and Black Sea
territories. It functioned from 1782 to 1929. They owned the plots they
cultivated and as foreign colonists they had a considerable degree of selfgovernment in the Russian Empire and Soviet Ukraine.1
Recent research shows that the colonists of Gammalsvenskby had a high
degree of ethnic self-consciousness. They considered themselves Swedes
and spoke Swedish fluently in its dialect and standard form.2 Since the
middle of the nineteenth century the inhabitants of the village were in
continuous contact with the Kingdom of Sweden and ethnic Swedes of the
Grand Duchy of Finland. A number of Swedish cultural institutions (e.g.,
school, new church, library and choir) were erected or founded thanks to
1
Svetlana Bobyleva, “Shvedy i gosudarstvennaia vlast Ukrainy,” in Voprosy germanskoi
istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnepropetrovsk: Porogi, 2008), 247268.
2
Anton Karlgren, Gammalsvenskby: land och folk, serie: svenska landsmål och svenskt
folkliv (Uppsala, 1929); Alexander Mankov, “Selo Staroshvedskoe (Gammalsvenksby) i
ego dialekt. Rezultaty issledovanii 2004–2006 gg.,” in Shvedy: sushchnost i metamorfozy
identichnosti, ed. Tamara Torstendahl-Salycheva (Moskva: RGGU, 2008), 294–314.
111
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
the Scandinavian aid given to the village. As a consequence the colonists
received “an inoculation” of modern Swedish nationalism.3
During the first half of the twentieth century, this tiny Swedish
community became the subject of a series of social experiments conducted
by different political regimes. Their aim was to change the collective
identity of the colonists and make them to the new authorities. Under the
guidance of the Ukrainian Tsentralnyi Komitet natsionalnykh menshyn
(TsKNM) a policy of “indigenization” was conducted between 1923 and
1929 with the aim of transforming the former foreign colonists of the
Russian Empire into a loyal ethnic minority of Soviet Ukraine.4 After
virtually the whole village (888 persons) had moved to their historic
fatherland under the control of the “Gammalsvenskbykommittén” (OldSwedish Village Committee) that had been formed in Sweden, a new largescale experiment was undertaken between 1929 and 1938. The aim of this
experiment was to fully integrate the “archaic” Ukrainian Swedes into the
modern Swedish society by transforming them into successful Swedish
farmers. The emigrants were denied a separate settlement in Sweden and
the “Old Swedes” were spread all over the country to undergo “instruction
in the Swedish norms of economic and every day activities.”5 Inspectors
appointed by the Committee monitored all aspects of the integration of the
“lost generation” into the Swedish society. The colonists who disagreed with
this policy (around 265 persons) returned to the USSR in 1930–1931. There,
in so-called Röd Svenskby (Red Swedish Village), an experiment was
launched which aimed to create the first Swedish kolkhoz and village
council in the USSR. It was conducted under the patronage of the
Comintern and supervision of Swedish Communists and lasted for five
years. This chapter constitutes the first scientific account of this short-lived
and ill-fated endeavor.
3
Piotr Wawrzeniuk, “En resande i svenskhet. Herman Vendell i Gammalsvenskby 1881,”
Personhistorisk tidskrift 2009:2, 149–164; Tatiana Shrader, “Ocherki zhizni shvedskikh
kolonistov v Rossii 19 veka,” in Skandinavskie chteniia 2006 (St Petersburg: Nauka, 2008),
229–253.
4
About the politics of indigenization see: Harold R. Weinstein, “Language and Education
in the Soviet Ukraine,” Slavonic Year Book 1 (1941): 124–148; James E. Mace, Communism
and the dilemmas of national liberation: national communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918–1933
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1983), 215–217; Martin Terry,
The affirmative action empire: nations and nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
5
Anna Wedin, “Gammalsvenskbybornas emigration till Sverige 1929. En studie i svenskhet
och etniskt ursprung,” Unpublished Bachelor Thesis in history supervised by Andrej
Kotljarchuk (Södertörn University 2007), 2–23.
112
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
Sources
The protocols of the Swedish Communist Party, which are kept in Arbetarrörelsens arkiv (Labor Movement Archives of Sweden KOLLA), document
the discussions of the party on the measures to be taken by the party in
relation to the ideological work among the Ukrainian Swedes in the years
1929–1931. The relevant collection for this research is Biografica which
includes biographies of the activists who worked in Gammalsvenskby. Access
to the material was granted by the executive committee of the Vänsterpartiet
(The Left Party of Sweden). At Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden),
two sets of documents are particularly interesting: firstly, the materials of
Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare of Sweden), which
contain correspondence with the villagers, lists of the persons who returned
to the USSR, documents of Gammalsvenskbykommittén (Old-Swedish Village
Committee) and Arbetarnas Svenskbykommitté (Workers’ Swedish Village
Committee), documents from the Soviet Consulate in Stockholm; and,
secondly, the archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden
containing materials dated 1930–1933 from the Swedish Embassy in Moscow
on the situation in the village, correspondence dated 1932–1933 on the
question of bringing back Swedish communists and some other villagers from
the USSR to Sweden, and a collection of Soviet and Swedish newspaper
publications about the Old Swedes.
The archives of the Communist International at the Russian State
Archive for Social and Political History include the personal files of the
communists who worked in Gammalsvenskby.6 Thanks to the powers of
attorney of the relatives residing in Sweden the author gained access to the
most important part of these files where he found the file “O
staroshvedskikh poseleniiakh na Ukraine” (About the Swedish Settlements
in Ukraine). This confidential file, which was created by the officials of the
Skandinaviska ländersekretariatet (Secretariat for Scandinavian countries),
contains different materials highlighting the Comintern’s policies towards
Gammalsvenskby.7
In the vast collection of material on the history of Gammalsvenskby kept
at the State Archives of Kherson Oblast, the 1933 criminal case 287 by GPU
of the Ukrainian SSR on accusing the group of the Old Swedes and Swedish
communists in the organizing of mass re-emigration to Sweden is of great
6
RGASPI, f. 495 “Ispolnitelnyi komitet Kominterna,” 1919–1943, op. 275 “Lichnye dela.
Kommunisticheskaia partiia Shvetsii” (Personal files. Communist Party of Sweden).
7
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 31, d. 153.
113
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
value. Based on the powers of attorney on behalf of the relatives, the author
was given authorization to work on this criminal case.
The author also has used materials from the Swedish mass media, as well
as central Soviet and regional Ukrainian newspapers, and in addition to that
also a variety of publications and documents about the Old Swedes
Theoretical framework
By applying the thought of Michel Foucault and Alberto Melucci, the
author intends to study the techniques used by the Comintern and the
Soviet state to force normalization upon the population that remained in
the village. Their goal was to reshape the collective identity of Ukrainian
Swedes and to prevent them from offering collective resistance to this
process. The techniques of forced normalization are used in a process that
can be divided into three phases: conceptualization, implementation, and
results. Each phase has its own specific motives and mechanisms that
influence the three following dimensions: 1) the configuration of new
borders (administrative and geographical, social and political, historical,
cultural); 2) the new normative standard (political, social and economical,
cultural and linguistic); 3) the emergence of new collective values (through
propaganda, education, work practices, cultural life, compulsory political
rituals and so on).
The difference between the “old” identity standard and the new
requirements causes conflicts in the collective identity and brings about
changes in it.8 The conditions of the totalitarian state intensify the technological effect by not granting the common actors any choice and making
them participate in the project. According to Foucault, it is low efficient to
look for the explicit logically ordered economic purposes in the activities of
the authority. Each of the political regimes has their own different technologies, but only one common purpose of submission and the only one
common and most popular method of violence. The format of this chapter
does not make it possible to analyze more in detail all the aspects of the forced
normalization. The research is focused on analyzing configuration of the new
8
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage
Books, 1979); Power, Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed.
Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980); The essential Foucault: Selections from
Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York:
New Press, 2003); Alberto Melucci, “The process of collective identity,” in Social
movements and culture, under redaction, ed. Hank Johnson and Bert Klandermans
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 41–63.
114
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
borders and strategies of the collective resistance. Foucault viewed the
strategies of collective resistance as the less studied part of forced normalization. Foucault notes that the resistance does not express viable alternative
outside the power, but is a part of collaboration of the interaction between
power and its subjects in order to function furthermore.9
The main political actors
The Comintern and the Swedish Communist Party
In 1926, the Comintern created a special secretariat, the Secretariat for
Scandinavian countries, to facilitate communications with the Scandinavian
communist parties, and to monitor, to report on and control the implementation of the resolutions of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.
The Secretariat, remained active until 1935, was used to strengthen the
control of the ECCI over the communist parties of Sweden, Norway,
Denmark and Iceland.10
The imposition of its power by the Comintern was one of the main
reasons for the division of the Swedish Communist Party in the fall of 1929;
the most serious one in the history of the movement in Sweden. The split was
a catastrophe for the communists loyal to the Comintern. Hugo Sillén, who
led the pro-Comintern fraction, retained only 4,000 out of the 16,000
members of the SKP. The pro-Comintern party members lost the publishing
house Frams Förlag, the leading communist newspaper Folkets Dagblad
Politiken, most of its syndicates, and all communist members of parliament.
The majority of the party followed Karl Kilbom into a new Swedish
Communist Party, independent from the Comintern.11 However, with
financial aid from the Comintern, the SKP could regain its base and the mass
media. From 1930 the pro-Comintern faction had at its disposal the
9
Espen Schaanning, Fortiden i våre hender: Foucault som vitenshåndtør, vol. 1 (Oslo:
Unipub, 2000), 357–360.
10
Lars Björlin, “För svensk arbetarklass eller sovjetisk utrikespolitik? Den kommunistiska
rörelsen i Sverige och förbindelserna med Moskva 1920–1970,” in Sovjetunionen och
Norden – konflikt, kontakt, influenser, ed. Sune Junger and Bent Jensen (Helsingfors: FHS,
1997), 214 (201–225).
11
Bernt Kennerström, “Sprängningen av Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti 1929” in Från SKP
till VPK – en antologi, ed. Sven Olsson (Lund: Zenit, 1976), 82–105; Lars Gogman, I
skuggan av Stalin. Lokala konsekvenser av 1929 års sprängning av Sveriges Kommunistiska
Parti. Unpublished MA-thesis (Stockholm University, 1991), 2–13; Jan Bolin, Parti av ny
typ?: skapandet av ett svenskt kommunistiskt parti 1917-1933 (Stockholm: Acta
Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2004), 368–369.
115
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
publishing house Arbetarkultur; the newspapers Ny Dag, Norrskensflamman
and Kalmar-läns Tidning; the youth periodical Stormklockan; women’s
movement magazine Arbetar-Kvinnornas Tidning, a magazine attached to the
communist women’s movement; and the theoretical magazine Kommunistisk
Tidskrift. The association Sovjetunionens vänner (Friends of the Soviet
Union), which was controlled by the party, published its own magazine
Sovjetnytt.
During the New Year vacation 1930–1931, a delegation from the SKP
discussed the split of the party, as well as ways of getting out of the crisis,
with the Comintern leaders. Sven Linderot and Paul Thunell were the heads
of the Swedish delegation.
According to the Comintern, the Swedish Communist Party acted as a
Social-Democratic one, “in isolation from the masses.” Work among the
peasantry in Sweden had never been under the influence of the Communists. But this fact was not taken into account by the Comintern.12 The
formal promoter of the Gammalsvenskby project was Allan Walenius – the
director of the Comintern library and the head of the Scandinavian section
at the Kommunisticheskii universitet nationalnykh menshinstv Zapada imeni
Markhlevskogo (Markhlevskii Communist University of the National
Minorities of the West). He had nightlong discussions with the Swedish
communists about the bright future of Gammalsvenskby.13 He was a very
well educated man and one of the most influential theoreticians of communism in Scandinavia. In interwar Sweden, his articles on various issues
related to socialism were published regularly.14
When the delegation returned to Sweden they brought with them a plan
to make the agrarian population support the policy of the SKP:
The agrarian question has not been taken into account. The party
must obtain an agrarian program, and the work among agricultural
workers and small farmers should be actively pursued.15
12
Urban Lundberg, En fokusering och tre punkter – en studie av SKPs försök att vinna
arbetarklassen åt kommunismen under perioden 1929–1935.Unpublished C-thesis in
history (Stockholm University, 1994), 36–40.
13
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 275, d. 284.
14
Olof Mustelin, “Allan Wallenius - biblioteksman, publicist och revolutionär,” in Svenska
litteratursällskapet i Finland: 59 (Helsingfors, 1984), 269–389.
15
Lundberg, En fokusering, 40–42.
116
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
Document 6: The report of the Secretariat for Scandinavian concerning the OldSwedish immigrants in Sweden.
Source: Memorandum regarding the Ukrainian Swedes prepared by Aino Kuusinen,
referent of the Skandinaviska ländersekretariatet for the leading staff of the Comintern,
in RGASPI, f. 495, op. 31, d. 153.
Therefore, the former Gammalsvenskby villagers residing in Sweden
became a testing ground for the agrarian work of the SKP. The protocols of
117
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
SKP’s decision-making body, the political bureau, are not available for the
years 1929–1932, as the party was in deep crisis, and many members were
persecuted by the secret police. However, the few available documents that
are available prove that Gammalsvenskby played an important role in the
politics of the new party. At least six of the fifteen members of the political
bureau of the SKP, including the party leaders Hugo Sillén and Sven
Linderot, took immediate part in the discussions on the Old Swedes.
On the party’s initiative, a special committee was formed, Arbetarnas
Svenskbykommitté, to work among the colonists and to spite the official,
state-led committee. The communists Kasper Gustafsson, Hilmer
Fredriksson, Carl Bengtsson and Gunnar Sedin formed part of it. The
members of the committee were in contact with the Swedish authorities,
and carried out active propaganda to involve colonists in Communist
activities. In addition, candidates for party work and activists in the
women’s movement (Lydia Utas) were chosen among the former villagers.
These people and party agitators went on tours around the country.16 For
example, on 14 May 1931, the Swedish colonist Johan Knutas held a speech
along with the well-known party agitator Fritjof Lager in the park of the
town of Spånga.17
Information material about the villagers’ desire to get back to the USSR
became a regular topic which appeared regularly in the Communist press,
playing an important part in the debates with the publications of the Social
Democrats and the Communists led by Karl Kilbom.18 SKP issued an
optimistic note to the Swedish colonists explaining the meaning of a
collective farm – the kolkhoz:
You ask if you get pigs and chickens and have them as your own.
Of course, you will get them if you buy them. It is only the land
that is collective. Not houses and gardens. You write about the
16
ARAB, Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna. Protokoll politbyrå 1927–1931. Vol. A 3:1. RE
5/1.
17
ARAB. Gamla samlingen. Vol. 11737. Bild nr. XXL 1931:008. Affisch “Tillbaka till SovjetUnionen. Föredrag hålles torsdagen den 14 maj kl. 4 e. m. (Kristi himmelsfärdsdag) i
Spånga Folkets park av svenskbybon Johan Knutas. Dessutom föredras Fritjof Lager över
ämnet Sovjet-Unionens diktatur eller Sveriges demokrati. Diskussion.”
18
Jonas Ramstedt, “Utsugningsobjekt eller Stamfränder: rapporteringen om Ukrainasvenskar i vänsterpress 1929–1931, ur klass- och nationalitetssynpunkt,” Unpublished
Bachelor Thesis in historia. Supervised by Andrej Kotljarchuk (Södertörn University,
2007).
118
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
tractor. Now there are twenty tractors in Röd Svenskby. There are
even those who can repair them/…/.19
On the initiative of the SKP the villagers made a formal request for a visa
permitting them to return to the USSR. The Central Committee of the SKP
sent a telegram to the Secretariat for the Scandinavian countries requesting
them “to support an application for entry into the USSR and to emphasize
the political value of the return of the Old Swedes to the Ukrainian Soviet
Republic.”20 As a result, the adviser of the Secretariat for the Scandinavian
countries Aino Kuusinen prepared a memorandum which was presented to
several leading staff members of the Comintern.
For Comintern the Gammalsvenskby project was interesting not only
because of its value for the SKP. The future Swedish kolkhoz was an ideal
place to send young Swedish communists studying at Comintern schools.
Information about successes of the socialist construction in the Röd
Svenskby could be publicized abroad through the radio of and the printed
press of the Comintern. That was the usual practice. A group of Scandinavian communists was sent by the Comintern to inform members of the
collective fishery Polarstjernen (The Polar star), and the Norwegian national
village of Tsypnavolok. The Norwegian communist newspaper “Nordland
Arbeiderblad” published a series of articles about the wonderful life of the
Soviet-Norwegian fishermen.21 Many Nordic communists were working at
the national Finnish kolkhozes of Ingria, Karelia and North Caucasus.
The Soviet government
As a result of the negotiations between the Swedish and Soviet governments
and on the basis of decree number 83, dated 6 June 1929, of the political
bureau of the Soviet Communist party, the whole population of the village
moved to Sweden at the end of July 1929.22 The information about their
departure attracted international attention,23 and roused hopes among the
19
Jörgen Hedman, Lars Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskby och svenskarna i
Ukraina (Stockholm: Dialogos, 2003), 217.
20
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 31, d. 153, l.158.
21
Morten Jentoft, De som dro østover. Kola-nordmennenes historie (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2001),
87–114.
22
Politburo TsK RKP (b)-VKP (b). Povestka dnia zasedanii, 1919–1929, t. 1 (Moskva:
ROSSPEN, 2000), 696–697; Oleg Ken, Aleksander Rupasov i Lennart Samuelsson,
Shvetsiia v politike Moskvy 1930–1950 (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2005), 34–35.
23
See as example: “Swedish colonists return from Ukraine,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, July
27, 1929, 2.
119
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
other ethnic minorities of Ukraine. In the fall of 1929 around 11,000
German colonists from southern Ukraine and the Crimea, after having sold
all their belongings, went to Moscow where they approached the German
and Canadian embassies about getting visas. As a result of the negotiations
between Germany and the USSR at the end of 1929 around 6,500 German
colonists and Mennonites were permitted to leave the USSR. The struggle of
the German peasants was continued in 1930.24 The Kremlin considered
their case as a special kind of class struggle by German colonists and
insisted that the Ukrainian authorities should stop the inflow of German
colonists to Moscow. In February 1930 the issue of mass emigration was
discussed in the plenum of the central committee of the Communist Party
of Ukraine, which adopted a resolution on how “to neutralize those antiSoviet activities.”25 Mass emigration of Ukrainian Poles to Poland in the
winter of 1929–1930 could be prevented only by strengthening border
controls. The Polish authorities correctly noted that there was a direct link
between the Ukrainian Poles’ wish to emigrate and “the organized mass
emigration of the Swedish colonists.”26 That is why the return of the Swedes
back to the USSR could be used as a powerful ideological tool in the antiemigration propaganda. Indeed, one of the first articles in the Kherson
newspapers covering this topic considered the return of the Swedes to the
USSR to be a lesson for the German colonists.
On 5 January 1930, the leading newspaper of the Kherson region
Naddniprianska Pravda published the news that the collectivization process
was to be completed and the kulaks liquidated as a social class. According to
the decision of the regional party committee all homesteads were to be
collectivized by 1 March 1930. “We have time limits of less than two
months, not a single hour, not a single minute should be wasted,” wrote the
newspapers to warn their readers.27 However, the process of proved
extremely difficult because of the strong resistance of the German colonists.
In the reports of the GPU, the situation in the German colonies of southern
24
Harvey L. Dyck, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, 1926-1933: A Study in diplomatic
instability (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), 163–174; Natalia Ostasheva, Na perelome
epokh. Mennonitskoe obshchestvo Ukrainy v 1914–1931 (Moskva: Gotika, 1998), 162–
165. Both authors do not see the connection between the emigration moods of Soviet
Germans in late 1929 with the mass emigration of Swedish colonists to Sweden.
25
Viktor Chentsov, “Kollektivizatsiia” in Nemtsy Ukrainy, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva, t. 7
(Moskva: Obshchestvennaiia akademiia nauk rossiiskikh nemtsev, 2002), 101-105.
26
Jan Bruski, “Bolshoi golod na Ukraine v svete dokumentov polskoi diplomatii i razvedki,”
Europa 6, no. 21 (2006): 106.
27
Naddniprianska Pravda, January 5, 1930, 1.
120
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
Ukraine was described as very close to rebellion.28 Spontaneous uprisings by
women took place in one village after another and people refused to work.
In the spring of 1930, many fields remained waste. The wide-spread
corruption in the Stalinist state made it possible for the German colonists to
use bribes to have deported relatives sent back to them from Siberia. Several
false certificates were issued by local village soviets to the effect that people
who had been deported were in fact poor peasants, not kulaks. The
Ukrainian peasants thought that this showed that “the soviet authorities are
afraid of Germans.”29
Under these circumstances, the benevolent foundation of a Swedish
kolkhoz could be a powerful tool in Soviet propaganda. To illustrate this one
could mention the resolution adopted by the political bureau of the VKP(b)
on 21 June 1931 on the resettlement of 77 peasant families from Poland in
Soviet Ukraine; this would be “very useful for organizing at least one good,
even better model kolkhoz which would effectively undermine the propaganda of the bourgeois press in Poland.”30 Similar ideas were at work in a
resolution on the creation of a Swedish kolkhoz. The idea to create model
kolkhozes based on emigrant groups was not new. Since the mid-1920s there
was an American kolkhoz in Tambov province.31 In 1932 there were circa
thirty foreign kolkhozes in the USSR employing more than 5,000
immigrants.32
The negotiations concerning the Old Swedes and their return to Soviet
Ukraine were conducted by the Soviet ambassador to Sweden Alexandra
Kollontai who had talks with the Prime Minister of Sweden Carl Gustaf
Ekman and Foreign Minister Fredrik Ramel.33 All practical matters in
28
Andrea Graziosi, “Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales à
travers les rapports du GPU d'Ukraine de février-mars 1930,” Cahiers du monde russe, no.
35 (1994), 438–472.
29
E. A. Solonchuk, “Raskulachivanie v nemetskikh natsionalnykh raionakh Odesskogo
okruga: zima-vesna 1930 (po materialam spetssvodok okruzhnogo GPU v partiinye
organy,” in Nemtsy Odessy i Odesskogo regiona ed. Alfred Eisfeld (Odessa: Astroprint,
2003), 217–233.
30
Oleg Ken and Aleksandr Rupasov, Politbiuro TsK VKP (b) i otnosheniia SSSR s
zapadnymi stranami, vol. 1, 1928–1934 (St Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2000), 526–527.
31
Aleksandr Kurylev, “Opyt trudovoi deiatelnosti rossiiskikh re-immigrantov v selskom
khoziaistve v 1920-e gody. Na primere Pervoi Irskoi kommuny re-immigrantov iz
Ameriki,” in Problemy sotsialnogo i gumanitarnogo znaniia (St Petersburg: European
University Press, 1999), 403–437.
32
Anders Gustafson, Svenska sovjetemigranter: om de svenska kommunisterna och
emigrationen till Sovjetunionen på 1920- och 1930-talen (Linköping: Nixon, 2006), 17.
33
Alexandra Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, vol. 2, 1922–1940 (Moskva: Academia,
2001), 12–14, 42–43; TASS communiqué. Izvestiya, August 13, 1931. Alexandra Kollontai
121
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
connection with the re-emigration were the responsibility of Consul
Vladimir Smirnov.34 Viktor Kopp, an ethnic German from Crimea by origin
and former Soviet ambassador to Sweden, prepared the report for the
Kremlin about the Old Swedes.35 Having gone through all aspects of the
matter he proposed “That they should be allowed to return on the condition
that funding was provided by the Swedish government.” In the end, the
Swedish government paid the costs of the return of the colonists back to the
USSR.
The final decision about the re-emigration of the Old Swedes was taken
at the very highest level. On 15 June 1930 the political bureau of the VKP(b)
led by Stalin responded positively to Kollontai’s request “about letting in 40
Swedish colonists.”36 However, those who had already become Swedish
citizens were given a visa “only if they agreed to join a kolkhoz.”37
The re-emigration by the Swedes became a hot topic in the Soviet mass
media. TASS informed regularly about the circumstances of their return.
This news was also covered by the leading newspapers Izvestiia and Pravda
as well as newspapers of the Soviet Ukraine and special editions for the
Soviet Germans.38 The film studio Sovkinozhurnal produced a short documentary film in 1930 called “Obratno v SSSR” (Back to the USSR).39 A tract
called “Dva goda v Evrope. Pochemu krestiane sela Staroshvedskogo
vernulis iz Shvetsii” (Two Years in Europe: Why the Villagers of Gammalsvenskby Returned from Sweden) was published. The Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko found this topic so interesting that he planned
was half-Swedish by origin. Her mother Alexandra Massalin was a Swedish noblewomen
from Eastern Finland, see: Hans Björkegren, Ryska posten: de ryska revolutionärerna i
Norden 1906–1917 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1985), 113.
34
Vladimir Smirnov (1876–1952) was an “old” Bolshevik and Soviet-Russian diplomat
with Swedish as a second native language. His mother Wirginia Nygren was FinnoSwedish. Before the 1917 revolution he was a lecturer in Russian at Helsingfors University
(Helsinki). He was married to Karin Strindberg, the daughter of the famous Swedish writer
August Strindberg. Smirnov had good connections with in the 1930s Swedish political and
cultural elite. See: Yurii Dashkov, Ego znali pod imenem Paulson. Dokumentalnaia povest o
V. M. Smirnove (Moskva: Izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1984).
35
Oleg Ken, Aleksander Rupasov and Lennart Samuelsson, Shvetsiia v politike Moskvy,
note 37.
36
Politburo TsK RKP (b)-VKP (b). Povestka dnia zasedanii, 1930–1939 (Moskva, 2001), vol.
2, no. 128.
37
RA, Socialstyrelsen, Handlingar angående utlänningsärenden 1920–1938. Handlingar
rörande Gammalsvenskbyborna 1929–1931. F II:2. 1402.
38
“Rückkehr schwedischer Emigranten ein Schlag gegen die pfäffische Konterrevolution,”
Rote Zeitung, September 5, 1931.
39
RGAKFD, no. 2107, “Obratno v SSSR. Vystuplenie v dome krestianina gruppy shvedovkolonistov vernuvshikhsia iz Shvetsii.” Sovkinozhurnal no 4/267. 1930.
122
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
to make a film about the Old Swedes.40 Thus, because of the powerful
political forces involved, the return of a very limited number of Old Swedes
to the USSR became a big international project.
Configuration of the new boundaries
A new historical canon and a new vision of the future
A series of publications from 1929–1931 illustrate how the international
communist movement looked upon the past and future of the Swedish
colony in Ukraine. All of these texts were first and foremost intended for
those responsible for carrying out the new project, i.e., Swedish communists
and Comintern employees.
In December 1929 an unknown author from the Comintern wrote a
report called “Das Alt-Schwedische Dorf.” According to his analysis,
Gammalsvenskby was home to class struggles and exploitation. Rich
peasants (Grossbauer) like Johan Buskas who owned large plots of land
turned the poor peasants (Kleinbauer) into their farm-hands, making them
work for next to nothing. They were assisted by the Lutheran pastor, who
also belonged to the class of exploiters. The October Revolution 1917 put an
end to this exploitation, and justice with regard to land ownership became
the rule. The Soviet power liberated the poor Swedish peasants, but
capitalistic Sweden turned them into slaves again:
The land was distributed in the same proportions to all except the
priest who was not given land. That was surely the reason for his
stomach aches. That is why the pastor launched the propaganda
about going to Sweden, but the kulaks were the most interested
supporting faction in this matter. In Sweden the victims of the
Swedish nationalist propaganda became slaves of the landowners.
The Swedish working class and the Communist Party came to the
rescue of the cheated peasants. Now the colonists are ready to go
back to Ukraine by foot. If they are given permission to reemigrate, the kolkhoz will be created there not only for Swedish
dwellers of the village, also Germans and Jews will join. The new
life will put an end to nationalism and will be based upon the
principles of the working solidarity and fraternity.41
40
Alexander Dovzhenko, The poet as filmmaker. Selected writings, ed. Marco Carynnyk
(Cambridge: MIT press, 1973), 68.
41
“Das Alt-Schwedische Dorf ,” RGASPI, f. 495, op. 31, d.153, ll. 146–158.
123
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
On 23 January 1930 the political bureau of the SKP charged the propaganda
group with the preparation and publishing of a brochure dedicated to the
so-called “Svenskby affair.” The political bureau thought this publication
would “help our comrades to gain an understanding of those matters.”42
The book “Svenskbyskandalen” (The Swedish Village Scandal) was printed
in 1930. The author of the book was Gustav Johansson, who was at the same
time a leading left-wing journalist and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper
Ny Dag (New Day). Johansson viewed the story of the village in the same
way as the Comintern report did, through the prism of class struggle and in
the light of the leading position of the clergy in the village. The first months
the Old Swedes spent in Sweden were seen as an example of capitalist
exploitation and bourgeois cynicism. However, notwithstanding their
conservatism the poor colonists quickly realized they had made a mistake
and declared their wish to go back to the USSR. They approached the SKP
for help (in fact the party agitator was planning to make propaganda work
among the Ukrainian Swedes). The party could not leave “the victims of the
nationalist propaganda” to their fate and therefore created the Workers’
Swedish Committee. Funds were raised for the purchase of a tractor. The
first group of colonists had already gone back to Ukraine where “the world
of the old tradition gave place today to a kolkhoz in Röd Svenskby, a small
part of the great Soviet socialist construction.”43
When all Old Swedes wishing to return were back in the village, a
brochure to be used for ideological work “Dva goda v Evrope” (Two Years in
Europe) was published. The author used an assumed name, Mikhail Vasilev;
most probably it was Maria Andriievskaia, a journalist from the Soviet
peasant magazine Lapot.44 The style of the brochure was plain and simple, the
booklet was cheap (3 kopecks only), and the print run was 150,000 copies.
Apparently, the target audience was expected to be extremely large. The book
contained a set of interviews by the author with three peasants who had come
back, Greis Albers, Petter J. Knutas and Alvina Knutas. However, their names
were russified. The book contained a lot of false information and errors. This
was of no concern to the author, as the main purpose was to provide a clear
Marxist account of the past, present and future of Gammalsvenskby.
According to the author, the resettlers founded the Swedish colony as “life in
42
ARAB. Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna. Protokoll politbyrå 1927–1931. Vol. A 3:1. RE
5/1. Protokoll 7. February 23, 1930, f. 4.
43
Gustav Johansson, Svenskbyskandalen (Stockholm: Arbetarkultur, 1930), 35.
44
Ivan F. Masanov, Slovar psevdonimov russkikh pisatelei, uchenykh i obshchestvennykh
deiatelei, t.1 (Moskva: Knizhnaia Palata, 1956), 229.
124
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
Sweden was hardly possible, one and a half centuries before famine and
poverty had driven the first group of desperate and brave men from Sweden
to Russia.”45 The colony became rich,
if compared to an average Russian village, the Swedish colonists
had their own hospital, school, library house and their own
national minority village administration. However, notwithstanding this apparent prosperity an ardent class struggle was in
evidence in the village. As here, within this little piece of the
Soviet land the kulaks were extremely opposed to giving up.46
According to the author, the real reason for the Old Swedes to move back to
Sweden had been the collectivization and the resistance to it of the kulaks.
In fact, the resolution on the emigration and departure of the colonist from
the USSR was adopted before the collectivization campaign was launched in
the Kherson Oblast. The plan to emigrate was the work of “the agent of
capitalists” pastor Hoas and supported by kulaks, a caste of well-to-do
farmers. The author employed the commonplace Soviet propaganda theme
of the class struggle. The emigration is considered as a special kind of class
struggle, as a reaction of by the kulaks to collectivization. The kulaks also
had their allies: the priest, religious members of the community and poor
but evil men called podkulachniki.47 The stay in Sweden is depicted in
gloomy and exaggerated terms. The situation of a farm-hand in Sweden is
almost the same as that of an animal. According to Petter J. Knutas, the
landowner Axtorp made the Old Swedes drink water out of a drum filled
with cows’ urine. Knutas said that in Sweden his daughter gave birth in the
farmyard without any obstetrical help, whilst in Gammalsvenskby all
women gave birth at the local hospital. If necessary, they could stay there for
a long time, and could afford not to work thanks to an allowance from the
state for bringing up a child. In Sweden, the Gammalsvenskby Swedes
became slaves living in inhuman misery, sleeping being their sole
entertainment. Petter J. Knutas concludes: “I left Soviet Russia as a simple,
45
Mikhail Vasilev (pseud.), Dva goda v Evrope. Pochemu krestiane sela Staroshvedskogo
vernulis iz Shvetsii (Two Years in Europe.Why the Villagers of Gammalsvenskby Returned
from Sweden) (Leningrad: Priboi, 1931), 4.
46
Vasilev, Dva goda v Evrope, 4–5.
47
Podkulachnik is a Stalinist neologism means – “a person aiding the kulaks.” This political
label was used in the 1930s to designate those poor and middle-wealthy farmers who sided
with kulaks in their opposition to collectivization and therefore persecuted by the Soviet
regime as class enemies.
125
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
ignoramus, but in Sweden I became a revolutionary.”48 The author emphasizes the fact that the Old Swedes had taken an active part in the communist
movement while still in Sweden. For example, a column consisting of 100
Ukrainian Swedes took part in the May Day demonstration in Stockholm in
1931. Thus, according to the author, the return to the USSR was a conscious
choice “move on from the old to the new, from the slavery under kulaks to
the free life in the kolkhoz under the guidance of the Bolshevik Party.”49
The aim of the socialist construction they had engaged in was formulated
in an address dated 20 August 1931 with the heading “To the workers of the
Soviet Union and the whole world!” In all 180 Swedes promised “to correct
a big mistake made under the influence of letters from the priest and
propaganda by kulaks, and to struggle together with all other peasants for
total collectivization, for the liquidation of kulaks as a class.” Special
emphasis was given to their wish to make the “bitter experience” of their
emigration known among the workers of the USSR. In accordance with
Soviet political culture at the time, the address ended with cheers for the
party, its leader comrade Stalin and the world revolution of the proletariat.
In this way, the creation of the kolkhoz was the price the Swedes had to pay for
their mistake.50
Following the return of the first group to the village, an international
meeting was arranged on the premises of the club (in the building of the
former Swedish Church) with the German and Jewish neighbors of the
Swedes. The Swedish communist Paul Söderman (“comrade Lindroos”)
opened the meeting. He was followed by Petter J. Knutas, who had become
a member of the Communist Party in Sweden. Both speakers repeated the
main theses of the party instructions, and said they were confident that all
colonists still remaining in Sweden, excluding the kulaks, would return to
their Motherland. Petter J. Knutas said more specifically:
Having been in Sweden for a short time, we have at first hand
experienced what capitalist exploitation is. Now we truly understand that only the Soviet government and Communist Party are
our friends /…/ We will do everything to help the party to correct
the mistake we have committed.51
48
Vasilev, Dva goda v Evrope, 11.
Vasilev, Dva goda v Evrope,14.
50
Vasilev, Dva goda v Evrope, 16.
51
Jungsturm, “Tilky radvlada i kompartiia nashi druzi,” Nadniprianska Pravda, January
21, 1930, 2.
49
126
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
Illustration 3: Two Years in Europe: Why the Villagers of Gammalsvenskby Returned
from Sweden.
Source: Book cover of “Dva goda v Evrope. Pochemu krestiane sela Staroshvedskogo
vernulis iz Shvetsii” (Leningrad: Priboi 1931). Note the straightforward visual pedagogy
of the cover.
The same chord was struck in the short documentary film, “Obratno v
SSSR” (Back to the USSR). The subtitles claimed that the Swedes wanted “to
correct the mistake we made with the decision to go back to Ukraine with a
127
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
view to creating the first Swedish kolkhoz.”52 Thus, Soviet propaganda put
forward three main principles for the future organization of Röd Svenskby.
Firstly, a kolkhoz as a non-alternative socio-economic basis for all Swedish
villagers would be founded. It was to function as an outpost of solid
collectivization. Secondly, a cultural revolution would be launched. The
values and customs of traditional agrarian society must be uprooted.
Thirdly, the Swedish Communist Party and the Comintern would assume
the leading role in the construction of a new socialist Swedish village.
A new administrative and geographical landscape
An important instrument in Soviet policy was to give places new names,
particularly if the old ones were connected with the ancient regime. The
new names were symbolic ones and served the purpose of building a new
Soviet identity. In 1924, the capital city of the former Russian Empire was
renamed Leningrad, despite the fact that Lenin was not born there, nor had
he studied there.53 The old name of the city was associated with St Peter and
the emperor Peter I. In the same year, Iuzovka, an industrial centre in
southern Ukraine, which was named after the Welsh businessman and
founder of the city John Hughes, was renamed Stalino. In 1926 the other
centre of the southern Ukraine – Ekaterinoslav was renamed Dnipropetrovsk.54 Since 1926, the Swedish name of the village, Gammalsvenskby,
received official recognition and was used by the local authorities besides
the Russian and the Ukrainian names of the village. However, the historical
name included the adjective “old,” and that was not suitable in the light of
the ongoing construction of a new world. On 5 February 1931 the
newspaper of the central committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine
Radianske selo wrote that the Swedes had not come back to Ukraine to
rebuild the historical Gammalsvenskby, but to create а modern Red
Swedish Commune.55 On 16 February the same newspaper wrote that the
village soviet of Gammalsvenskby had decided to change the name of the
village to Röd Svenskby (Red Swedish Village).56 The Swedish communist
52
RGAKFD, no. 2107, “Obratno v SSSR. Vystuplenie v dome krestianina gruppy
shvedov-kolonistov vernuvshikhsia iz Shvetsii,” Sovkinozhurnal, no. 4/267, 1930.
53
Literally “City of Lenin.”
54
Literally “Glory of Catherine II.”
55
“Pane Hooz vasha sprava prohrana,” Radianske selo, February 5, 1931.
56
“Staro-Shvedske stae Chervono-Shvedskym,” Radianske selo, February 16, 1931.
128
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
press used the new name of the colony.57 On 21March 1931 communist
newspaper Ny Dag published the article “Röda Svenskby är stadd i snabb
utveckling” (Röd Svenskby is under rapid development) describing the
successes of communist construction and the Soviet nationalities policy
towards the Ukrainian Swedes. In letters to the Secretariat for the
Scandinavian Countries, the secretary of the local branch of the party of
Gammalsvenskby Edvin Blom gave as his address (in Russian): USSR,
Berislav district, Red Swedish village.58 The decision to change the name was
taken by the authorities, but according to Soviet political culture the
initiative should really have come from below. The very first time a new,
revolutionary name appears is in the book “Two Years in Europe.” In
response to the final remark made by the author: “The address should be
written ...Kherson region, Old-Swedish colony,” the Swedish colonists are
said to have replied confidently: “No, that’s wrong; you should write Red
Swedish kolkhoz.”59
However, the kolkhoz was instead named after the Swedish Communist
Party. The choice of name was meant to emphasize the special status of the
kolkhoz, the activities of which had been carried out under the auspices of
the international communist movement. It should be noted that the new
name of the village disappeared along with the international communist
project and from 1934 to 1945 the historical name of the village
Staroshvedskoe (Old-Swedish village) is used in all known sources.
The village was given its former administrative status as a national
Swedish village council, the only one in Ukraine and the Soviet Union. This
was a breach of Ukrainian law, as the minimum demographic norm for
creating a national council was 500 persons.60 The number of the Swedes,
who came back to the USSR, including also the families of the Swedish
communists who settled in the village, did not exceed 300 persons. The
decision was dictated by the political importance of the project, as well as by
the hope to attract new members to the Swedish colony. Between1930 and
1933, the Old Swedes who went back to the USSR maintained continuous
contact with those who preferred to stay in Sweden. Up to 1932, the letters
of the Soviet Swedes described the successes of the new life in the USSR and
57
“Röda Svenskby är stadd i snabb utveckling,” Ny Dag, Februari 21, 1931, 1; “Svensk
sovjetarbetare berättar om Röda Svenskby just nu,” Ny Dag, April 4, 1931, 1, 8; “Röda
Svenskby hälsar SKP,” Ny Dag, May 14, 1932, 1; “Kamrat Blom berättar om Sovjets land,”
Stormklockan, no. 7 (1932): 2.
58
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 275, d. 341.Lichnoe delo. Hugo Albert Lauenstein.
59
Vasilev, Dva goda v Evrope, 16.
60
A. B. Glinskii, Natsionalnye menshinstva na Ukraine (Kharkov: Tsentrizdat, 1931), 31.
129
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
called upon the former Gammalsvenskby who were now in Sweden to
return to their home. For example, Petter J. Knutas wrote the following in a
letter to Andreas Annas (30November 1931):
I live a hundred times better than I lived in Sweden. I am glad to
be free from the Swedish plague. We work in our kolkhoz or artel
as we call it. The damned priests continue to poison the people
and those who are ignorant still believe them, but they will never
deceive us again. We have a cinema with sessions four times a
month and we pay only 7 rubles 50 kopecks from the whole
village /…/ On the commemoration of the October Revolution
we had a holiday, we organized a banquet in the church (roasted
two calves), and then watched movies. We need more workers.
Come back, because we are building socialism, even for those
who remained in Sweden. Welcome home!
Swedish Communist Party Kolkhoz Röd Svenskby.61
Creating a new hierarchy
The status of the national Soviet corresponded well with the policy of
indigenization. Introduced in the USSR in 1923, it provided the representatives of ethnic minorities with the privilege to occupy the administrative
positions within the framework of the autonomous regions. In 1926 a
national Swedish village council was created in Gammalsvenskby, the only
one in the USSR. In this way, the Swedish colony was for the first time in its
history separated administratively from the neighboring German settlements and the separate ethnic status of the Swedes was explicitly recognized. This enabled the Swedes to occupy all administrative positions and,
what is even more important, to take decisions at the local level and
function as spokesman for the decisions taken locally. All letters from 1928
to 1929 from the inhabitants of Gammalsvenskby to the Soviet authorities
concerning the emigration to Sweden were written as official requests of the
local organ of power to the regional and central authorities. It was these
local authorities that issued the special permission which enabled the pastor
Kristoffer Hoas and the farmer Johan Buskas to go to Sweden and to act as
their representatives and prepare for the villagers’ move there.62
61
Andreas Annas, Livet i Gammalsvenskby. Unpublished manuscript, accessed August 2,
2010, http: www.svenskbyborna.com
62
RA. Utrikesdepartementet 1920 års dossiersystem. P 1534, f. 17, Kristoffer Hoas,
“Gammal-Svenskby.” Unpublished manuscript, 1938, 54 p.
130
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
On their return to the USSR, the status of the Swedish national council was
reorganized in breach of the norms of the law. The Gammalsvenskby
Swedes had to share power with Swedish communists who had come to the
village to speed up the construction of socialism there.
In this way, ethnic Swedes again occupied the leading positions in
Gammalsvenskby. The Swedish communist Edvin Blom became secretary
of the party unit and chairman of the village council. Johan Utas was elected
chairman of the kolkhoz; shortly to be replaced by the communist Petter J.
Knutas. The secret agent of the GPU Alexander Knutas became secretary of
the village council. The communist Karl Andersson received the important
position of the agronomist of the machine and tractor station (MTS) of
Berislav, which served the kolkhoz. Hugo Albert Lauenstein was appointed
head of the village library and reading room.
A number of other striking differences can be detected in the distribution of power in the Swedish village before the emigration and after it.
Before 1929, there were no members of the Communist Party and
Komsomol in the village. The inspection carried out in August 1928 by
TsKNM noted that “there is no interest in the building of socialism among
the villagers; the children are under strong religious influence.”63 The
inspection also noted that the inhabitants were highly influenced by the
pastor Kristoffer Hoas and his wife Emma even after they had left the USSR
for Sweden. Emma Hoas, who was a Swedish citizen, had lived in the village
since 1899. Kristoffer Hoas, who was born in the village, had graduated
from the Russian-German seminary in Sarata and had worked as a teacher
at the Swedish school until 1922. During his stay in Sweden in 1922, he was
ordained in Uppsala with a mission to serve in Gammalsvenskby and
Southern Russia. His ordination became the cause of a very deep conflict
between Hoas (who had no formal theological training) and the German
pastor of the Alt-Schwedendorf parish Woldemar Schlupp who had the
theological qualifications usually required.64 In order to prevent the conflict
from getting out of hand the authorities gave permission for the registration
of a separate Swedish parish. The reason they stated for this decision was
that the Swedish villagers said they did not understand German, a claim
which was not true.65
63
DAKhO, f. R-2, op. 1, spr. 558, arkk.85-94; f. R-2, op. 4, spr. 105, ark. 21.
Wilhelm Kahle, Geschichte der lutherischen evangelischen Gemeinden in der
Sovetunion, 1917-1938 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 247–251.
65
DAKhO, f. R-2, op. 1, spr. 1377, ark. 10.
64
131
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
It was not merely the religious influence of the pastor on his parishioners
that mattered. Kristoffer Hoas was the official representative of the Red
Cross of Sweden in Soviet Ukraine. All food and economic assistance from
Sweden to Gammalsvenskby was distributed through him.66 Only throughout the period of 1926–1928 Gammalsvenskby received from Sweden the
considerable amount of the economic aid in 14,602 rubles in total.67 The
Swedish Red Cross also supported the village dispensary. As a commissioner of the Swedish Red Cross, the pastor negotiated with all Swedish
bureaucrats who came to the village as well as with the local authorities. The
attempt to limit the pastor’s authority was not successful and after a
diplomatic intervention, the local authorities had to give all his real estate
back to him. This farming economy meant that rich peasants, mill owners
and the owners of the largest plots of land wielded considerable influence
over the poor.
After a group of the former colonists had returned to the USSR the
situation changed drastically. The pastor did not return, the church was
closed and turned into a club. The majority of the colonists preferred to stay
in Sweden but, under the influence of Swedish communists, several of them
joined the party. Woldemar Utas, Petter J. Knutas, Petter E. Utas and Irja
Buskas were among them.
An important task of the Soviet policy at this point was the preparation
of the young shift of the Communist contractors. In the short term, a
Komsomol unit was created in the village.68 The new Komsomol members
were offered high-ranking positions in the local hierarchy. Lydia Utas
became head of the dairy farm. Sigfrid Utas was appointed teacher at the
Swedish school. The sport interest group also worked under his guidance.
Sigfrid Utas became the first cycle champion of Ukraine.69 The tractor
driver, Johannes Knutas, was given the position of team-leader; he also
became head of the local section of the Soviet paramilitary youth organization. In this way in a very short period, the authorities altered the social
hierarchy of the Swedish community, and active participants in the communist movement found themselves in the most favorable positions.
66
Hoas, “Gammal-Svenskby,” 12–48.
Hedman, Åhlander, Historien om Gammalsvenskby, 159.
68
Viktor Prylutskii, “Molod u suspilno-politychnomu zhytti USRR 1928–1933,” Ukrainskii
istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 4 (2002): 60–79.
69
Anatolii Andreev, “Khersonets – pervyi chempion po velosportu,” Gryvna-SV, February
17, 2006, 15.
67
132
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
In accordance with the Bolshevik program of smychka70 the Soviet government, through their consul in Stockholm Vladimir Smirnov, suggested the
Swedish communists to draw up a “list of fifteen Swedish comrades wishing
to enter the USSR to build the first Swedish kolkhoz there.”71 There is no
information whether the list was ever made. But a group of Swedish
communists eventually came to Gammalsvenskby. This group included
Comintern employees who came to Gammalsvenskby for different kinds of
inspections, and students of the Comintern schools sent to the Swedish
kolkhoz to undergo their summer training. Some of them were sent directly
by the SKP. There were also some impostors, Swedish communists who
came to the village on their own from other regions of the USSR, after
having read about the kolkhoz in newspapers. Most of them came to the
village with their families or married in the village. In the archives, the
following Swedish communists are mentioned as working in the village:
Edvin Blom, Karl Andersson, Hugo Albert Lauenstein, Karl Ture Grääs,
Kasper Gustafsson, Hildur Gustafsson, Karl Sigfrid Holmström, Gunnar
Blomberg, Erik Karlsson (party alias Karl Johansson), Paul Söderman (party
alias Karl Nils Lindroos) and Erik Petersson. Two well-known SKP
members, William Heikkinen (party alias Edward Wallin) and Björn
Hallström (party alias Red Björn), also planned to settle in Gammalsvenskby, but they did not reach the village.
The biographies of the communists who worked in Gammalsvenskby
show that the Comintern and the SKP carefully selected the best-suited
candidates. Erik Karlsson and Paul Söderman originated from peasant
families, a rare case for members of the SKP. The Swedes who came to the
village from Karelia had worked at a greenhouse centre near Petrozavodsk,
thus having at least a minimum experience of agricultural work.72 Karl
Andersson was an experienced agronomist, who had worked in Denmark
for long periods. The communist Hugo Albert Lauenstein was a blacksmith,
whose skills would be in high demand in any kolkhoz.
70
Smychka means linkage between city and village.
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, ark. 100.
72
Gustafson, Svenska sovjetemigranter, 47–50.
71
133
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Document 7: Recommendation of the Politburo of the Swedish Communist Party to
comrade Hugo Lauenstein issued by SKP, certified by Edvin Blom. October 7, 1932.
Source: RGASPI, f. 495, op. 275, d. 341.
The Stockholm party organization sent the chairman of the Arbetarnas
Svenskbykommitté Kasper Gustafsson to lead the socialist construction in
Röd Svenskby. He had been working with the Ukrainian Swedes since they
134
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
first arrived in Sweden. His wife Hildur Gustafsson, who was also a party
member, was supposed to lead the women’s movement in the village.73
However, by the time Gustafssons arrived in Gammalsvenskby, Swedish
communists from Karelia, Edvin Blom, Ture Grääs and Sigfrid Holmström,
had already taken all the senior positions. They had learnt from the Soviet
press about the socialist project in Gammalsvenskby and had come to the
village with their families independently of each other. All of them had
emigrated from Sweden to Karelia where the construction of the Soviet
Nordic republic was underway under the guidance of the Finnish
communist Edward Gylling.74 As a result of the conflict between Kasper
Gustafsson and Edvin Blom, Gustafsson and his wife left Gammalsvenskby
for Leningrad within a matter of months.75
The Holodomor and the strategy of collective resistance
Under the totalitarian system that had been created, the authorities
anticipated that the collective identity of the peasants would change quickly
and radically. In the work “K voprosam agrarnoi politiki v SSSR” (On the
issues of the agrarian policy in the USSR) from 1930 Stalin emphasized that
the “collectivization will create a new type of peasant whose psychology has
been ploughed up by the tractor.”76 However, the resistance of the Swedish
community stalled this process, while the fate of the Comintern project –
the Swedish kolkhoz – was virtually sealed by Holodomor, the great famine
that is estimated to have taken 3.5 million lives in Ukraine in the years
1932–1933. The mass arrests that followed crushed all remaining ambitions.
Initially it seemed as if the Swedish colonists were ideally suited for the
construction of a prosperous kolkhoz. Those who had first gone to Sweden
and then returned to the USSR had no land of their own, cattle or real
estate. Thus there was no material ground for resistance to the collectivization process. There were no kulaks among the Swedes and
consequently there was no need for dispossession and deportation. The
state helped the Swedish community and gave them a credit of 85 thousand
rubles to buy houses and repair them, and to buy cattle. Thanks to the
73
“Till Röda Svenskby för att delta i socialismens byggande,” Arbetar-Kvinnornas Tidning,
1931:5–6, 8.
74
See: Nick Baron, Soviet Karelia: politics, planning and terror in Stalin's Russia, 1920–1939
(London: Routledge, 2007).
75
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, ark. 81.
76
Iosif Stalin, K voprosam agrarnoi politiki v SSSR (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo,
1930), 8.
135
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Comintern, the kolkhoz received a team of specialists, and tractors and
trucks from the Berislav machinery and tractor station were made available
to the kolkhoz. Several young Swedes were apprenticed free of charge as
tractor and harvester drivers. The excellent black earth of the Kherson
Oblast and the availability of water for irrigation from Dnipro River
ensured high productivity in agriculture. The Swedish communist press
painted an optimistic picture of the future of Röd Svenskby. For example, in
a report from April 1931 there were the following enthusiastic lines:
The wide and long street runs between the white and beautiful
mansions. In the center of the village is the former church, Hoas
dopey temple, but on its tower is now the red flag, a symbol of
new times above Nya Svenskby [New Swedish village]. The
Swedish kolkhoz has got the name of Sveriges Kommunistiska
Parti. The kolkhoz owns 765 acres of land. The state has granted a
loan of 100 rubles for the purchase of livestock and agricultural
machinery. The district government has provided an agronomist
and tractors, as well as seeds for the next harvest. The former
church is today the people’s house, which is equipped with a
stage, theatre props and the most modern cinema. In the village
there is a reading-room with a Swedish library, a Swedish school,
shop, medical center, department of the “Red Help” and
“Osoviakhim.” The next step will be a huge program of planting
vineyards and orchards and the electrification of the village.
“Never again Sweden” – say those who have returned and are
now awaiting the return of the remaining 200 people still held by
the government of Ekman [Carl Gustaf Ekman].77
Barely two years later, another Swedish communist who worked in Röd
Svenskby expressed a more pessimistic view:
The machines and the tractors crack one after another, there are
no spare parts, and fuel is scarce. The soil has been exhausted.
The plan of the state for the procurement of grain is not
practicable. Instead of horses, hungry cows are used; as a result,
the kolkhoz obtains a quantity of milk in the range of 12–13 liters
per day from twenty cows. The food is beyond criticism. The
people live on the verge of famine and work only under the most
rigid control.78
77
78
“Svensk sovjetarbetare berättar om Röda Svenskby just nu,” Ny Dag, April 4, 1931, 1, 8
“Svenskarna leva på svältgränsen i Gammalsvenskby,” Borås tidning, August 4, 1933.
136
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
In the absence of a pastor of their own in Gammalsvenskby the Swedes
began to visit a German Lutheran church in the neighboring village of
Schlangendorf. This is interesting in view of the fact that since the middle of
the nineteenth century there existed a painful conflict between the Swedish
and German parishioners about the question whether the parish should be
divided or not. Following the arrest in 1933 of the last German pastor
Friedrich Lang, the role of preacher was assumed by a Swedish woman,
Alvina Hinas. In 1935, she was arrested for religious propaganda. In 1937
she was arrested again and executed.
Notwithstanding the fact that the young people appreciated the cinema,
many members of the old generation were reluctant to enter the new club,
as they believed in “the ghosts who had settled there.”79 The new Swedish
school also had some problems. In order to fight religion the school in
Gammalsvenskby, like other schools, was open on Sundays and on
Lutheran holidays. However, parents tried to keep their children at home
on those days, using any pretext. None of the three teachers of the former
elementary school of Gammalsvenskby returned from Sweden. It was not
possible to train teachers specifically for the school in Gammalsvenskby, the
only Swedish school in the USSR. No Soviet textbooks in Swedish were
available. The Swedish communists Edvin Blom and Kasper Gustafsson as
well their eldest daughters Siri Blom and Wilma Gustafsson worked as
teachers without any pedagogical education. Later on they were joined by
Sigfrid Utas and Maria Utas (Terenina) who graduated from the class for
seven-year olds. While visiting Moscow in the beginning of 1932 Blom
offered a position as a teacher to one of the best educated members of the
SKP, Björn Hallström.80 After becoming unemployed in 1934 in Sweden,
Hallström sent a letter to the Comintern with a request to be appointed a
teacher at the Swedish school in Gammalsvenskby. But the older party
comrades talked him out of this idea referring to the famine in Ukraine not
covered by the newspapers. Gustav Johansson told Hallström that “the
picture he would witness could make a counter-revolutionary out of him, as
he would question the correctness of Soviet policy and of Communism.”81
Thus, having neither qualified teachers nor the necessary literature, the
Swedish school could not function normally. When the school was inspected for the first time, its work was found to be unsatisfactory. It used prerevolution literature and Swedish books with portraits of the Swedish Royal
79
Interview with Astrid Lauenstein Bragnum (born 1936), Stockholm. May 10, 2008.
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 275, d. 284.
81
Björn Hallström, Jag trodde på Stalin (Stockholm: Harrier, 1952), 72–73.
80
137
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
family. The pupils could only speak Swedish, and understood neither
Ukrainian nor Russian:
When I [the inspector] asked one student: “Why ... do you not
read a Soviet newspaper instead,” the answer translated by his
teacher was: “We are tired of reading about socialist competition
and polytechnic schools.”82
During the famine in Ukraine in the winter of 1932–1933 the peasants in
the Swedish colony were confronted with a dilemma: should they seek
assistance from the Soviet authorities or in Sweden? As many other farms in
the Kherson district the Swedish kolkhoz did not fulfill the exaggerated
target for the state grain quota of 1932. As a result the kolkhoz Sveriges
Kommunistiska Parti was put on a “black list.” The whole stock of grain
from the kolkhoz and the households belonging to it, including the seed for
sowing in 1933, was confiscated. The deliveries of foodstuffs to the local
shop were stopped. The kolkhoz members no longer received any products
in exchange for “workday units.” The specialists servicing the kolkhoz were
not paid their wages.83 In the fall of 1932, the famine came to the village.
People survived on potatoes, fish from the river and gophers from the
steppe. Virtually all valuable goods from Sweden were sold: bicycles, sewing
machines, and clothes.84
The members of the party unit approached the regional committee of the
party in Berislav with a request for emergency assistance to the village. The
request was refused. That meant that the Swedish communists were not able
to help Gammalsvenskby. In a conversation with a member of the Berislav
district party committee, one comrade Kabakova, Hugo Lauenstein said
that “he did not like the Soviet regime; the authorities arrested people – was
that communism and freedom; people were dying in their dozens of hunger
– was that democracy?”85
Conflicts broke out among the Swedish communists. Kristina Sigalet
witnessed a quarrel between Hugo Lauenstein and Edvin Blom. Lauenstein
cursed Blom and said that “the worms will eat him alive for luring them to
such a terrible place.”86
82
DAKhO, f. 306, op.1, spr. 279.
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85.
84
Interview with Matilda Norberg (born 1919).Roma, Gotland. August 1, 2008.
85
RGASPI, f. 495 op. 275, d. 341.
86
Hedman, Åhlander, Historien, 262.
83
138
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
In this critical situation the Swedish villagers resorted to a method used by
free Swedish farmers for centuries when living conditions had become too
hard or in conflicts the local authorities: a collective legal address to the
authorities of the state. This method had been used many times before, by
the inhabitants of Dagö in the Swedish empire as well as by those of
Gammalsvenskby in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. There are
approximately fifteen earlier examples of such collective letters to the
authorities, the first of which was written in the seventeenth century.87
In January 1933, the kolkhoz members secretly started discussing the
possibility of moving to Sweden again. They also considered other possibilities. One idea was to ask for help from the German Consulate in Odessa.
Some Swedes did not believe it would be possible to move to Sweden again
legally and instead suggested it would be better to cross the SovietRomanian border illegally. At one meeting, Julius Hansas declared that “I
will not die in this kolkhoz as I hope to get to Sweden through Bessarabia.”88
Several Swedish women sent letters to relatives in Sweden with stories
about the critical condition in the village and begging for help. One example
is cited below:
We have sinned against Sweden and the Swedes and we have
shown the greatest ingratitude. But, gripped by debilitating
nostalgia for our native home, we did not know what we did,.
There is no food in the village, no kerosene. There are only
Communist books and other rubbish to buy at the shop. Yes, if
you are Christian, you have to forgive us. Please, think of our
innocent little children.89
In addition, the Swedish communists in Gammalsvenskby sent critical
letters to Sweden. On behalf of the SKP Gunnar Granlund informed the
ECCI on 19 March 1933 that Hugo Lauenstein in letters to his mother-inlaw “writes openly counter-revolutionary things directed against the Soviet
Union and especially against Svenskby.”90
87
Jakob Koit, “De svenska dagöböndernas kamp för sin fri- och rättigheter 1662–1685,”
Svio-Estonica 1951:10, 50–153; Andrej Kotljarchuk, ”Nemtsy Ukrainy v sudbakh shvedskoi
kolonii na Dnepre, 1805–2007,” in Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva
(Dnipropetrovsk: Porogi, 2007), 27–35.
88
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 4, spr. 359, ark.131
89
“Nya nödrop från fränderna i Svenskby,” Norrköpings Tidningar, March 3, 1933, 7.
90
RGASPI, f. 495 op. 275, d. 341.
139
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
As a result, a virtual bomb exploded in the mass media. On 2 March 1933
the oldest liberal newspaper of Sweden Aftonbladet published an article,
“Djurkadaver och potatisskal mat i Gammalsvenskby” (Animal carcasses
and potato peelings – food in Gammalsvenskby), which reported about the
terrible famine and the extremely difficult situation of the Gammalsvenskby
inhabitants and Swedish communists. On 3 March 1933 the conservative
daily Norrköpings Tidningar published an article “Nya nödrop från
fränderna i Svenskby” (New cries for help from our compatriots in
Svenskby) harshly criticizing the Communist project. The article also
discussed concrete measures to help the villagers, for example, individual
currency transfers through Torgsin.91 The Swedish Embassy in Moscow
approached the German Embassy in Moscow requesting the Germans to
investigate what the real situation was in the village through their consulate
in Odessa. The embassy also planned to commission a Norwegian entrepreneur to travel to Ukraine to clarify the situation.92 The Soviet government was aware of the publications in the Swedish press, probably through
their embassy in Stockholm.
The threat of a serious international scandal became real for the
Kremlin. It should be noted that the USSR denied the existence of the
Ukrainian famine, and there was no information about it in the Soviet
newspapers. The Soviet propaganda accused kulaks of feigning famine. On
13 March 1933, the political bureau of the Communist Party of Ukraine
discussed the situation in the Swedish colony. The Odessa party committee
was instructed to take urgent steps to put an end to the famine in Gammalsvenskby. The chief of the Ukrainian GPU Vsevolod Balitsky was ordered
“to take measures to introduce immediate measures to stop the information
leaks abroad about cases of famine in Gammalsvenskby.”93 The GPU was
always quicker to strike; the first arrests in the Swedish colony had already
been made on 8 March.
In the beginning of March a list of Swedish villagers who wanted to leave
for Sweden was drawn up in Swedish in two copies and sent from the post
offices of the cities of Kakhovka and Kherson. The letter from Kakhovka was
intercepted by the GPU. The letter sent from Kherson reached the addressee
91
Torgsin (Russian: Торгсин) were state-run hard-currency stores that operated in the
USSR between 1931 and 1936. Their name was an acronym of “torgovlia s inostrantsami,”
which means “trade with foreigners.”
92
RA, Utrikesdepartementet 1920 års dossiersystem. P 1534, Del. 3. Diverse biträde åt
utlänningar Gammal-Svenskby bor, 1930-mars 1956.
93
TsDAGO, f. 1, op. 16, spr. 9, ark. 189.
140
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
and is today kept in the National Archives of Sweden.94 The Soviet secret
police were totally surprised that the list was signed by virtually all the
villagers, including the local members of the Communist Party and
Komsomol, as well as some communists from Sweden. When the GPU
interrogator asked Petter J. Knutas why he, a communist, had signed the list,
Knutas replied: “I signed because there are no supplies in the shop and lately I
have been eating potatoes without peeling them, and I don’t have any bread
anymore.”95 Mattias Norberg argued “there is no need for kolkhozes, we keep
working but we do not have bread, we are hungry, it is better to run an
individual farm.”96 During the interrogation, Alvina Hinas said: “Yes I signed,
because we have no bread to feed children, who all the time cry and ask for
food.”97 The explanation for the existence of such “anti-Soviet attitudes”
among the locals was, according to the investigators, explained by their kulak
origin. However, that argument could hardly be used about the Swedish
communists. The 47-year-old Hugo Lauenstein, who was a worker and a
communist since 1919, a veteran of the German revolution, and furthermore
a Swedish citizen said to the GPU investigators: “I signed the list because it
was necessary. My personal opinion is that emigration is not a criminal
activity, particularly when the villagers are starving.”98 Karl Andersson, who
prepared the list, declared “as for me personally, I had no plans to go to
Sweden, but my situation is too bad here, I haven’t received any wages for
three months and that is why I have to leave.”99
In May 1933, two Ukrainian members of the Polish parliament, Milena
Rudnitska and Zenon Pelensky, sent a letter to the president of the League
of Nations, the Norwegian politician Johan Ludwig Mowinckel. They wrote
that Soviet Ukraine had fallen victim to a catastrophe, a famine unequalled
in history. However, the Soviet Union denied the famine and the League of
Nations did not take any action. Western-Ukrainian politicians have
emphasized that among the victims of famine were representatives of
several different European peoples: Swedes, Latvians, Estonians and Poles.100
94
RA, Utrikesdepartementet 1920 års dossiersystem. P 1534, Del.3. Diverse biträde åt
utlänningar Gammal-Svenskby bor, 1930-mars 1956.
95
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, arkk.40–41.
96
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, arkk. 36–37.
97
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, ark. 38.
98
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, arkk. 78–79.
99
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op. 9, spr. 85, arkk. 21–22.
100
Vasyl Marochko, “Dyplomatiia zamovchuvannia: stavlennia zakhidnoevropeiskykh
derzhav do Holodomoru 1932–1933 v Ukraini,” in Holod-Henotsyd 1933 roku v Ukraini
(Kyiv: Institut istorii NAN Ukrainy, 2000), 154–158.
141
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Despite the measures taken by the GPU, the information about arrests in
Gammalsvenskby reached Sweden. The magazine Vecko-Journalen published
an article by Alma Braathen “Tjekans hand över Gammalsvenskby” (The
Cheka’s hold over Gammalsvenskby) with a detailed story of the arrests in the
Swedish village.101 Freelance Alma Braathen had visited Gammalsvenskby
during her trip to the USSR in July 1932. Sometime later, a number of her
reports were published in Sweden. The tone of her articles was quite neutral,
but in private talks with some of the villagers she promised to help them to
return to Sweden.
Illustration 4: The Truth about Gammalsvenskby.
Source: Magazine Cover. Vecko-Journalen (1932:45). To the article “Sanningen om
Gammalsvenskby” (The truth about Gammalsvenskby) by Alma Braathen.
Note: Reporting from a Communist utopia. Leftmost Edvin Bloom, in the center Karl
Ture Grääs, rightmost Alma Braathen.
101
Alma Braathen, “Tjekans hand över Gammalsvenskby,” Vecko-Journalen, no.19 (1933):
20–21.
142
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
On 3 July 1933, Dagens Nyheter reported about the fate of one of the arrested
Swedish communists, Karl Andersson. On 3 August 1933, the largest daily
newspaper in Sweden Nya Dagligt Allehanda published a detailed critical
report about the trial initiated by the GPU against the Old Swedes under the
heading: “Gammal-svenskbybor har deporterats av Sovjet! Tjekans process
mot svenskättlingarna ny Vickers-affär” (Inhabitants of Gammalsvenskby
have been deported by the Soviets! Cheka process against Swedish descendants is the new Vickers trial).102 On 4 August 1933 Borås Tidning printed an
article “Svenskarna leva på svältgränsen i Gammalsvenskby” (Swedes live on
the brink of starvation in Gammalsvenskby).
On 26 April 1933, a member of the Swedish Parliament and farmer,
Gustaf Olsson, wrote a letter to the Foreign Minister Rickard Sandler
requesting he intervene on behalf of the arrested Swedish citizens Karl
Andersson and Petter E. Utas. According to Gustaf Olsson, he had received
a letter sent from Kristina Utas in Gammalsvenskby with an account of the
arrests in the village.103
The diplomatic intervention by Sweden changed the course of events.
The secret police had been planning a big show trial, and the police of the
Kherson district arrested seven men and more than twenty villagers were
summoned for interrogation. The prosecutor demanded twelve years’
imprisonment for the arrested men and confiscation of their property.
However, only four of them were convicted by the special GPU court and
the sentence they received was three years’ exile. The communist Karl
Andersson was released and left for Sweden. With the assistance of the
Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs his wife Maria Andersson (née Utas),
who was a Soviet citizen, was given Swedish citizenship and moved to
Sweden. However, Petter E. Utas’ fate was different. On 18 June 1933 Utas,
who had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, sent a letter
appealing for help to the Swedish government. In spite of the support he
received from the influential politician Gustaf Olsson, he was denied the
right to go back to Sweden. A Swedish citizen since 1931, Utas visited
Gammalsvenskby in 1932 as an interpreter and translator for the group of
Swedish communists. He was arrested by the GPU, then released but
without his Swedish passport. The explanation given was that he had never
ceased to be a Soviet citizen and was, therefore, not allowed to renounce his
102
In March 1933, six British engineers, employed by the company “MetropolitanVickers,” were arrested by the GPU on a charge of wrecking and espionage.
103
RA, Utrikesdepartementet 1920 års dossiersystem. P 1534, Del.3. Diverse biträde åt
utlänningar Gammal-Svenskby boar, 1930-mars 1956.
143
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Soviet citizenship. In 1937, Petter E. Utas was arrested again and disappeared. In fact he was executed following an out-of-court decision by a socalled troika.104 The Prosecutor General of Ukraine rehabilitated him only in
1999.105 The place of his burial is still unknown.
The conflict of interests between various Soviet institutions unintentionally benefited the Ukrainian Swedes. When the Holodomor was raging,
the GPU tried to limit the contacts the villagers had with foreign countries.
However, Torgsin employees tried to undo their plans and used to visit
Swedish, German and Czech regions urging the people there to write to
consulates and relatives abroad pleading for help.106 The Old Swedes could
buy food in Torgsin shops in Kakhovka and Kherson for money that they
received from Sweden, whether in Swedish krona or in other foreign currencies. Alvina Hinas wrote to Sweden after receiving a pound sterling from
Gothenburg: “It was an angel of God who came this Easter with a gift to us.
For a pound sterling, we got 8 rubles 84 kopecks to buy food.”107
Thanks to the help from Sweden, the people of Gammalsvenskby could
survive the famine without a single death, in marked contrast to the
neighbouring Ukrainian and Jewish settlements.108
Conclusions
It is impossible to know how the international Communist project in Röd
Svenskby would have developed if the Holodomor had not hit the village.
Before that catastrophe, the authorities were able to bring about fundamental
changes in the traditional life of the Ukrainian Swedes within an extremely
short period of time. The first stage of the forced normalization of the
Swedish villagers brought considerable results. However, the resistance of the
Swedes altered the process of change. The rigid food policy of the Soviet
government that caused the famine was a manifestation of weakness rather
104
Trojka means three-man meeting of the local chief for secret police, party secretary
and prosecutor.
105
DAKhO, f.R-4033, op. 4, spr. 359.
106
Top-secret report of the chief of Ukrainian GPU Vsevolod Balytskii to the Central
Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, May 22, 1934 in: Nimtsi v
Ukraini 1920-1930 20 st. Zbirnik dokumentiv, ed. Bohdan Chirko (Kyiv: Intel, 1994), no.
87; see also: Vasyl Marochko, “Torgsin: zolota tsina zhyttia ukrainskykh selian u roky
holodu (1932–1933),” Ukrainskyi istorichnyi zhurnal 2003:3, 90–103.
107
Hedman, Åhlander, Historien, 264.
108
Z istorii holodomoru na Khersonshchyni u 1932–1933 rr. Dobirka dokumentiv
(Kherson: DAKhO, 2003); Vasyl Piddubniak, Zhnyvo Molokha. Holod 1932–1933 rr. na
Khersonshchyni (Kherson: KhMD, 2006), 80.
144
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
than strength. The government invested large sums in the agricultural sector
but the harvests of the kolkhozes were modest. This irritated the authorities,
especially compared with the high rate of the budget expense for the agricultural sector. The Ukrainian peasants were left to their fate during the
famine. They received no support from outside, and mortality among them
was very high. The Swedish villagers were in a better position, not only
because of the international status of the Swedish kolkhoz. Despite the strict
order given to the local authorities to take immediate steps to deal with the
famine in the village, the Soviet authorities or the Comintern had done
nothing. The rescue came again from Sweden, but it was organized by the
peasants themselves. They used the same strategy as they had used for
centuries and that enabled Old Swedes to survive the man-made famine
without any human loss. Nevertheless, those who had been sentenced to three
years’ imprisonment in 1933 for organizing the move to Sweden were
arrested again in 1937–1938 and executed (except for Alexander Knutas who
died in prison in 1935).
The Holodomor and the mass arrests put an end to the project of the
international Communist movement in Gammalsvenskby. In the beginning
of 1934 no Swedish communist remained in the village. A Swedish girl
Signe Kaskela met the Holmströms in 1933 in Karelia where she worked in
a factory with Svea and Göta Holmström:
They spoke of terrible distress; they lacked bread, although
Ukraine was one of Russia’s most fertile regions. However,
collectivization had fallen on hard times, and despite the severe
drought collective farms were still obliged to provide the required
quantity of grain to the state… Svea had scurvy and was bleeding
from the gums, and had bruises on her legs. Göta was also
starving, but not as badly as her sister was.109
The local Swedish communists were expelled from the party for their
support for re-emigration. Soon the authorities replaced the leading staff of
the village with ethnic Ukrainians. Makar Shurduk became secretary of the
party unit, Dmytro Krakovskyi was appointed chairman of the village
Soviet, Leonid Shevchenko became head of local Komsomol.
There are no indications in the records dating from 1934 onwards that
the local authorities and the Executive Committee of the Comintern wished
to revive the Röd Svenskby community. This is an important indicator as it
109
Signe Kaskela, Under Stalins diktatur (Göteborg: Tre böcker, 1990), 26.
145
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
supports the thesis about the total change of the course of the Kremlin in
early 1930s from World Revolution to isolation. The institutions set up by
the communists, i.e. the Swedish school, the Swedish national council and
the Swedish kolkhoz existed technically several years on. However, in the
course of the national operations of NKVD in 1937–1938, 23 villagers were
arrested and executed. All of them were accused of being members of a
fictitious Swedish counter-revolutionary nationalistic spy organization.
According to the version of the secret police, the leaders of the organization
were Edvin Blom and Hugo Lauenstein who from being communists had
become agents of the Swedish intelligence service. Not by pure accident, the
active members of the socialist construction were also arrested. Among
them the former SKP members Petter J. Knutas and Woldemar Utas, as well
as the Komsomol110 members, the chairman of the kolkhoz Johannes Utas
and brigadier Johannes Knutas.111
The mass terror was followed by the liquidation of all the national
administrative, economic and cultural institutes of Gammalsvenskby:
village council, Swedish kolkhoz, Swedish school, library, Swedish leisure
interest group and choir.
The Swedish national council was abolished by decree of the political
bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine on 16
February 1938. The reason given was that the existence of national districts
and village councils was not justified by the ethnic composition of the
population.112 Taking the floor on the XIV congress of the Ukrainian communists in June 1938 the new regional leader, Nikita Khrushchev, paid
particular attention to the work of the hostile intelligence services within the
national schools of Ukraine. He said that the establishment of the so-called
national schools had been forced upon Ukraine by agents of Western
intelligence services and Ukrainian nationalists. However, these schools did
not serve educational purposes but were instead turned into nests for
counter-revolutionary work. It is striking that Khrushchev mentioned the one
Swedish school in Ukraine in the same contexts as he discussed 180 Jewish, 93
Moldavian, 74 Bulgarian and 16 Greek schools. Apparently the Soviet leaders
realized that the fate of the Swedes who had returned to the USSR of their
own free will, thereby, as it was seen by public opinion in Sweden, betraying
their historical fatherland, would be of little concern to the Swedish
110
Komsomol (Kommunisticheskii soiuz molodezhi) – the Union of Communist Youth.
DAKhO, f. R-4033, op.4, spr.17, 359, 364, 533.
112
TsK RKP (b)-VKP (b) i natsionalnyi vopros, t. 2, ed. Liudmila Gatagova (Moskva:
ROSSPEN, 2005) 378–380.
111
146
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
government. There are no documents in the archives of the Swedish Ministry
for Foreign Affairs indicating any reaction to the closure of the only Swedish
school in the USSR, the dissolution of the Swedish village council or the, for
all practical purposes, ethnic cleansing in 1937–1938.
The fates of the Swedish communists after the Gammalsvenskby project
varied. The Berislav committee expelled Karl Andersson and Hugo
Lauenstein from the party. After a careful official investigation, the personnel department of the ECCI approved the decision. Their party cards are
today kept in Moscow. Erik Petersson and Björn Hallström left the party
after their return from the USSR. In 1952 Björn Hallström published the
book “Jag trodde på Stalin” (I believed in Stalin) condemning the Soviet
regime. Sigfrid Holmström took Soviet citizenship and disappeared in the
years of the Great Terror. His daughter Göta Holmström (born in 1917) has
since the breakup of the Soviet Union been trying to clarify the fate of her
father. His case was discussed during question time in the Swedish
parliament in 2010.113
For the young Comintern students Erik Karlsson and Paul Söderman
Gammalsvenskby became the starting point of a long successful career.
They enjoyed the full confidence of the Comintern and the Soviet government. In 1933 Söderman became editor-in-chief of the leading communist
newspaper Ny Dag in Sweden. In 1936, he was the leader of the party’s
campaign to mobilize support for Republican Spain. In the mid-1930s Paul
Söderman carried out a special mission as a courier in Scandinavia for the
foreign section of the GPU. His Swedish passport is kept in Moscow.114
During the Second World War Paul Söderman was one of the organizers of
the Communist resistance, which braced itself for a Nazi occupation that
failed to materialize.115
Erik Karlsson worked as an agitator among Norwegian lumbermen in
the Arkhangelsk region. In 1933, he became a docent, rector of the
Scandinavian sector of the Comintern Party School and head of the
Scandinavian broadcasting section of the Radio of the Comintern.116 After
the Second World War, Karlsson built an excellent political career in
Sweden. For several years, he was a party secretary, a deputy member of the
113
Kirunasvenskarna. Motion till Riksdagen.2010/11:FP1186. Gunnar Andrén (FP),
accessed October 28, 2010, http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/?nid=410&dokid=GY02
XFP1186.
114
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 275, d. 84.
115
Jonas Sjöstedt, “Tystnande motståndsmän,” Västerbottens-Kuriren, May 4, 2009.
116
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 275, d. 9, ch. 1–2.
147
THE LOST SWEDISH TRIBE
Swedish Parliament. He was considered the party expert on agriculture, and
he was the author of the first books on the history of the Swedish
communist movement and agrarian problems.117 He died in 1970 glorified
as “one of the best known party members, a true Leninist and theoretician
of communism.”118 Finally, the leader of the Röd Svenskby commune Edvin
Blom remained an active party member until his death in 1953, being at the
same time, by a twist of fate, the owner of a farm.119
After their return to Sweden almost all the communists, as well as their
wives and grown-up children upon return to Sweden, remained silent about
their life in Ukraine. Karl Andersson was the only one to break the rule, and
he was soon expelled from the party. He gave a series of interviews to the
Swedish media about the catastrophic situation in Gammalsvenskby and the
famine in Ukraine. In October 1933 the magazine Sovjetnytt published the
article “Agronom Andersson och Röda Svenskby” (Agronomist Andersson
and Röda Svenskby). The authors wrote that because of Karl Andersson, the
bourgeois press demonized the Soviet Union and the collective farm project
in Röda Svenskby. As a result, a split occurred in the section of Sovjetunionens
vänner in Varberg where Andersson had “personal accomplices,” after it had
been decided that a committee should be set up to interview the agronomist
about the content of the above hostile publications.
The members of the committee published a report, which demonstrated
a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Stalin’s repressive regime
and accused Andersson of incompetence:
Andersson claims that there is a famine in Ukraine. He also says
that despite all difficulties in 1933 Ukraine had a record harvest, the
best in 42 years. How this his statement is correlated with information about the people starving in Ukraine? In fact, he sold
himself to the capitalists. Was it not his job as an expert agronomist
to improve soil quality and racial management of the agriculture?120
After the massive repression by the regime in these years, it was no longer
possible to resist the annulment of all the rights of the Swedish minority.
Since 1933 the population of the Swedish colony was in deep shock. The
117
Erik Karlsson, Jordbruksfrågor i svensk politik (Stockholm: Arbetarkultur, 1936); Erik
Karlsson, Lantarbetarna: löner, arbetstid, bostäder (Stockholm: Arbetarkultur, 1936).
118
ARAB. Biografica. Vol. 159. Erik Karlsson.
119
Kaa Eneberg, Förnekelsens barn. Svenskarna som drog österut (Uddevalla: Hjalmarson
& Högberg Bokförlag, 2003), 156.
120
“Agronom Andersson och Röda Svenskby,” Sovjetnytt, no. 10 (1933): 8–9.
148
LITTLE RED SWEDEN – KOTLJARCHUK
kolkhoz named after Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti formally existed formally
until 1941. In 1943, the Nazis evacuated the population of Gammalsvenskby
as Volksdeutsche to the Third Reich.121 In 1945, a part of Swedes (around
sixty individuals) emigrated from Germany to Sweden. Another group was
deported from the Soviet zone in Germany to the Komi-Gulag.122 Those
who returned found their home village completely changed. In connection
with the campaign in 1945 to change the names of the former German
colonies, Gammalsvenskby received a new Slavonic name, Verbivka, and
soon the colony disappeared entirely as it was included in the new large
Ukrainian village of Zmiivka (the former German colony of Schlangendorf).
The Old-Swedish kolkhoz was renamed, in the typical Soviet manner, after
the aviator Valerii Chkalov. After twelve years, the dream of building a little
Red Sweden in Ukraine had become a blank spot on the map and in the
historical memory.
121
David Gaunt, “Swedes of Ukraine as Volksdeutsche. The experience of World War 2,”
in Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. Svetlana Bobyleva (Dnipropetrovsk: Porogi, 2007),
239–250.
122
Andrej Kotljarchuk, “Ukrainasvenskar i Gulagarkipelagen. Tvångsnormaliseringens
teknik och kollektivt motstånd,” Historisk Tidskrift, no. 1 (2011).
149
About the authors
is a history professor at Dnipropetrovsk Oles Honchar
National University, Ukraine. She heads the Institute of Ukrainian-German
Historical Studies. Bobyleva has published a multitude of articles on the
history of Germans and other foreign colonists in the Russian Empire.
SVITLANA BOBYLEVA
is a PhD student at the Baltic and Eastern European
Graduate School at Södertörn University, Sweden. In 2010 she defended a
candidate thesis at Dnipropetrovsk Oles Honchar National University
concerning the adaptation of the villagers of Gammalsvenskby to the new
judicial and environmental surroundings.
JULIA MALITSKA
PIOTR WAWRZENIUK holds
a PhD in history. He is a researcher at the Institute
of Contemporary History at Södertörn University and assistant lecturer at
Swedish National Defense College. His current research focuses on Polish
military security perceptions in the interwar time and Nazi genocide of
Roma in Ukraine 1941–1944.
holds a PhD in history, is a researcher at the Institute
of Contemporary History at Södertörn University and an assistant lecturer
at Stockholm University. His present research has centred on the persecution of small minorities in the Baltic and Arctic region in the Soviet
Union in the 1930s.
ANDREJ KOTLJARCHUK
151
In the spring of 1782 a group of peasants of Swedish origin reached
their destination on the right bank of Dnipro River in Ukraine. he
village they founded became known as “Gammalsvenskby” (Russian
“Staroshvedskoe,” English “Old Swedish Village”). In the 1880s links
were established with Sweden and Swedophone Finland where the
villagers were seen through a nationalistic-romantic prism and in broad
circles became known as a brave group of people who had preserved
their Swedish culture in hostile surroundings; in the terminology
of this volume, a “lost Swedish tribe”. he village remained largely
intact until 1929, when in the atermath of the Russian revolution
a majority of the villagers decided to leave for Sweden. When they
arrived, there was disappointment. Neither Sweden nor the lost tribe
lived up to expectations. Some of the villagers returned to Ukraine
and the USSR.
his book ofers an alternative perspective on Gammalsvenskby.
he changing fortunes of the villagers are largely seen in the light
of two grand top-down modernization projects – Russia’s imperial,
originating in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and the
Soviet, carried out in the early 1920s – but also of the modernization
projects in Sweden and Finland. he story the book has to tell of
Gammalsvenskby is a new one, and moreover, it is a story of relevance
also for the history of Russia, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland.
HE L
WEDI
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THE L STTH
SWED H SWEDI
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THE LOSTT
SWEDISH
TRIBE
Distribution:
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