Ethnic Germans in Kazakhstan face legacy of the Soviet Union

Kazakhstan is struggling to deal with the legacy of the Soviet dictatorship. Some 85 years ago, Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of people: Some 400,000 ethnic Germans living in the USSR were sent to Kazakhstan. She wants to keep history alive. Yunna Kinereish, 22, is studying public relations in Kazakhstan's modern capital, Astana.

She describes herself as a Kazakh German. "I am German by ethnicity. But I also feel that I'm Kazakh, because I keep the traditions with my family, and I have this mentality," she told DW. Kinereish, who belongs to the Wiedergeburt (Revival) Association of Germans in Kazakhstan, is one of 223,000 Kazakh Germans living in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan today.

Kinereish recently acted in a play at the association's youth theater that told the fate of her Russian German forebears. From the 18th century onward, Germans were incentivized to leave Germany and settle in the Russian empire, including in Ukraine's Black Sea region.