Oldal 1 [1]
XeAeNOw4e for November 1952.
SOVIET ACTION IN THE SORB AND WEND AREA.
Among the absolutely ig <a by and most mysterious
manoeuvres of the USS** in recent es, is again the efforts made
by both Prague and Moscow to raise ayi Slav irrendemtism in the
heart of Germany, by organizing and sZowly working up a major
problem about the Sorbs and Wends in Saxony. The matter is the
more strange, at first look, if one considers that this strange
agitation takes place right in the most important party of the
East German Communist R,public.
The Sorbs or Wends - the name Sorb is related to the word
Serb - are a relatively tiny slav tribe, which settled in Central
Germany at the times of the great migrations , between the fourth
and the sixth Century" The tribe occupied an area on the common
border between Eastern Saxony, Western Silesia and the South- "
Eastern corner of Brandenburg. In recent times their expansion was
not more than 800 Square Kilometers. They lived in absolute peace
with their G“rman neighbours, felt as Germans, but kept their lan¬
guage. In 1925 only 60,000»persons indicated as their first lan¬
guage the language of the Sorbs. Even in 1947, at a counting of the
population by the Communist authorities and after the first signs
of Soviet interest in the Sorbs had already shown, the Sorbs where
not yet any factor to be counted with. In the area of their most
intense settlement, in the city and Landkreis of Bautzen, out of
a population of 165,000, only 13000 declared themselves to be Sorbs
which is 7,8% of the total. In the rest of the Lausitz the average
of those who declared themselves as Sorbs was not more, despite
Communist efforts to the contrary, than 0,04% of the total popu¬
lations
: Despite these facts, beginning in 1947/4 8 , the Soviet
authorities started real activity among the Sorbs, under the use
of every means of compulsion at their Gisposal. They used for
that as primary "spontaneous" force the so-called Sorb National
Council, a small self-appointed Communist outfib. To this was ad¬
ded in 1947 a so-called Sorb Irrendentist and Nationalist Movement
called “Domowina", which was directed and financed by the Moscow
All-Slav Congress. It was thus an age | not an official Communist
groupe This movement did not progress a all t111 1949, when
two experienced former Graduates of Lenin U,ivefsity where put
in charge of the movement : these men are called Miuchin and Kowner.
Their presence and undeniable dynamism, coupled with the strongest
intervention of the Soviet Military forces achieved a miracle 3
according to the statements of " Domowina"” that organization has
now risen to a membership of 600,000 - obviously more members than
the Sorb nation ever had. At the same time, “Domowina" and the
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