Der Erste Weltkrieg und die deutschen Kolonisten im Gouvernement St. Petersburg
The First World War made it possible for the weakling state apparatus of the Russian Empire to direct the discontentment of the masses against the so-called “internal enemies”. The colonists owned considerable land areas, and it was supposed to expropriate the land. The idea of land expropriation appeared long before the First World War, but it was the War that became the reason for the seizure of land from the German colonists. “Liquidation laws” had to raise the prestige of the government and to redistribute the agricultural land.