134	HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
that world public opinion was not informed about the persecu-
tion of men and religion in Russia, and that even in Germany
the public^ after the 5^000 colonists had migrated, took no
interest in the fate of the others. Thus the Soviet Government,
which had been fearing a spontaneous ebullition of world
opinion, was confirmed in its view that the public and the
Churches of the West would remain blind to the extermination
of the Christians and Churches in Russia; and that there was
therefore no need to make any change in policy.
The last chapter in the tragic history of the German Volga
settlement begins, as in the Ukraine and elsewhere, with the
famine of 1933 and *934- The development was just as else-
where. Quite lately—probably as the result of the worsening
of the relations between Germany and Russia—the execution
of innocent peasants began, whose only fault it was that they
had received support from relief organizations abroad. Banish-
ment and sentences of death removed the remaining German
pastors—some thirty clerics out of the three hundred formerly
resident in the German settlement.
Similar events have been going on in the German settlements
in the Ukraine and in the Northern Caucasus and in Trans-
Caucasia. Here also the German remnant has been subjected to
systematic persecution and is faced with annihilation.1 /
1 Since the spring of 1935 the position of the Germans has further
deteriorated. In June the Berliner Tageblatt published an alarming account
by an expert on conditions in the Volga district. According to this version
the desperate peasantry refused en masse to continue working in the col-
lective farms, whereupon the district secretary of the Communist Party,
Shafransky, found himself compelled to give way. This step was cancelled,
however, by the Central Executive Committee of the party at Moscow,
and the Commissary Shdanov, the successor of Kirov, was despatched to
restore order in the German Volga Republic. There were collisions between
the peasantry and the Ogpu troops under Shdanov's orders. The Central
Committee of the party at Moscow issued a decree on June 24,1935, which
dealt exclusively with developments in the region of Saratov, and which
clearly indicated that there was considerable disagreement between Moscow
and the local authorities. The decree criticized measures taken by the local
administration, the practice of mass reprisals and other steps "which are
among the main causes of the continual desertions from the collective
farms."