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Russian Germans as an ethno-linguistic community: Historical development and current state of the youth age group in Moscow
From the end of September 2020 to November 2021, the Year of Germany was held in the Russian Federation. At present, while summing up its results, it seems appropriate to focus this paper on the study of the multifaceted, ethnolinguistic community of Russian Germans, especially its Moscow diaspora. In this study, two key points are considered: a brief survey of the history of representatives of the community to the present day and the empirical part of the study, which includes an analysis of in-depth interviews with respondents who are young Russian Germans under 35 living in Moscow. The main purpose of the work was to determine the state of this ethno-linguistic community today: to consider the problem of self-identification of its members, to trace the level of knowledge of the language of the ancestral homeland and the interest in studying and preserving the cultural heritage of their ancestors. In the course of the study, the analysis of various sources revealed that throughout the history of German presence on the territory of this country, the attitude towards them has repeatedly changed: from positive to hostile, then to more neutral; from praising this community as competent specialists and innovators in many fields of science and art, to persecution and repression during the first half of the twentieth century and refusal to be recognised as a full-fledged community. As a result of these actions on the part of the state, the community of Russian Germans found themselves in a state of identity crisis with the problem of the gradual disappearance of their linguistic and cultural landscape. In turn, interviews compiled on the basis of a form created within the framework of the “Languages of Moscow” project demonstrated that even in Moscow, historically, one of the most important centres of Russian Germans settlement, the state of the community is not quite established, due to the low level of presence of native Moscow Germans. At the same time, there is an opportunity for its development, as many respondents consider it important to pass on their cultural and linguistic heritage to their descendants and develop it on the territory of Russia. So, current work has the potential for further, deeper research of the ethno-linguistic community, in particular with a focus on the diaspora of Russian Germans who emigrated to Germany.
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