How German was the Russian Empire?

A Quantitative Analysis

I have decided to do an overview of German influence in the Russian Empire ever since stumbling on this powerful AI generated table suggesting significant German overrepresentation in the Russian Empire that goes beyond the ruling dynasty itself.

View this as purely a quantitative endeavor with no commentary. Perhaps I will eventually turn this into a bigger post or a YouTube video with my own commentary and conclusions, but right now I am simply documenting the research without any qualitative input.

The Army

I immediately set out to verify these claims, beginning with the military aspect. If Grand Dukes are counted as German, then during World War I, Germans comprised a striking 38% of the Russian Empire’s top generals. Vindicated?

Here is how many Russian generals were of German descent in different periods of Russian history according to Claude:

Napoleonic era (1800-1820)~25-30% of generals

Nicholas I era (1825-1855)~20-25% of generals

Alexander II era (1855-1881)~15-20% of generals

Alexander III era (1881-1894)~10-15% of generals

Nicholas II pre-war (1894-1914)~8-12% of generals

Then I have decided to dig further and study Russia’s Civil War generals and here is their ethnic backgrounds:

White Army:

Anton Denikin — Russian

Alexander Kolchak — Russian + Moldovan/Turkic

Pyotr Wrangel — Baltic German

Lavr Kornilov — Russian + Asian

Nikolai Yudenich — Russian

Sergey Markov — Russian

Anatoly Pepelyayev — Russian

Roman von Ungern-Sternberg — Baltic German

Pyotr Krasnov — Russian, Cossack

Mikhail Alekseyev — Russian

Yevgeny Miller — Baltic German

Germans = 27% of the main White Army forces generals if you include Roman von Ungern-Sternberg as a White army general, 18% if you don’t.

Red Army:

Leon Trotsky — Jewish

Sergey Kamenev — Russian

Mikhail Tukhachevsky — Russian

Semyon Budyonny — Ukrainian/Russian Cossack (Don region)

Vasily Chapayev — Russian

Ion Yakir — Jewish

Ieronim Uborevich — Lithuanian (possible of Belarussian descent)

Jukums Vācietis — Latvian

Alexander Yegorov — Russian

Kliment Voroshilov — Russian

Mikhail Frunze — Moldovan + Russian

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko — Ukrainian

Pavel Dybenko — Ukrainian

Zero prominent Germans among famous Red Generals.

Then I decided to improve my methodology and instead of going based on famous ones I have decided to take a look at all of them combined using this database:

Using Claude for my counting I got the following results:

Here is how Red and White sides compare:

Red Side:

White Side:

These lists didn’t add up to my own calculation and so I decided to look into the labeling and as predicted it counts many Germans as Russians because they were culturally assimilated.

Still, the amount of Germans even if you include those with 1/4 German grandparents is 9% of the total. Consistent with Claude estimates of later Russian army being around 9% German.

The Government

Then I decided to look into the government, how many ministerial positions were occupied by Germans. For my methodology I decided to look at those who occupied the last ministerial position for any sphere:

Nikolai Golitsyn - Chairman of Council of Ministers - Russian

Alexander Protopopov - Minister of Interior - Russian

Pyotr Bark - Minister of Finance - Half German, half Russian

Eduard Krieger-VoinovskyMinister of Railways - German, some Polish ancestry

Nikolai Pokrovsky - Minister of Foreign Affairs - Russian

Nikolai Dobrovolsky - Minister of Justice - Russian

Mikhail Belyayev - Minister of War - Russian

Nikolai Kulchitsky - Minister of Education - Russian of Ukrainian descent

Vladimir Fredericks - Minister of Imperial Court - Baltic German

Ivan Grigorovich - Minister of the Navy - Russian

Vsevolod Shakhovsky - Minister of Trade and Industry - Russian

Alexander Rittikh - Minister of Agriculture - Half German, half Russian

Georgy Ermolaevich Rein of Public Health - German surname, little info on family

Sergei Feodosyev - State Comptroller - Russian

Nikolai Rayev - Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod - Russian

Pavel Stakhovich - Head of State Stud Farms - Russian

Out of 16 ministers 5 were of German descent, though most of them were of partial German descent. If you break it down in terms of genetics, it will appear that indeed 20% of Russia’s ministers having German DNA.

In my previous article I have estimated that people with German ancestry were in charge of the Russian government about 10% of the time.

Diplomacy

The next claim is the German overrepresentation among the Russian diplomats (which I have noticed myself)

Let’s start with the heads of the Russia’s foreign ministers:

Alexander Vorontsov 1802-1804 Russian

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski 1804-1806 Polish

Andreas Eberhard von Budberg 1806-1807 Baltic German

Nikolay Rumyantsev 1808-1814 Russian

Ioannis Kapodistrias 1816-1822 Greek

Karl Nesselrode 1814-1856 Baltic German

Alexander Gorchakov 1856-1882 Russian

Nicholas de Giers 1882-1895 1/2 Swedish 1/2 German

Alexei Lobanov-Rostovsky 1895-1896 Russian

Nikolay Shishkin 1896-1897 Russian

Mikhail Muravyov 1897-1900 Russian

Vladimir Lamsdorf 1901-1906 Baltic German

Alexander Izvolsky 1906-1910 Russian

Sergei Sazonov 1910-1916 Russian

Boris Sturmer 1916 1/2 German 1/2 Russian

Nikolay Pokrovsky 1916-1917 Russian

Out of 16 ministers 5 were of German descent and 3 were of full German descent. Funny enough if we look at the later stage of the Russian Empire it was noticeably less German. Genetically that’s about 25% Germanic.

For ambassadors I have decided to look at the last Russian ambassadors in major countries before the 1917 revolution:

British Empire (Chargé d'affaires) - Konstantin Nabokov - Russian

British Empire (Ambassador) - Sergey Sazonov - Russian

France - Vasily Maklakov - Russian

Italy - Mikhail von Giers - 1/2 Moldovan (possibly some German there) 1/4 Swedish 1/4 German

Spain - Mikhail Stakhovich - Russian

United States - George Bakhmeteff - Tatar (Christian)

Japan - Vasily Krupensky - Russian

Portugal - Pyotr Polikarpov - Russian

Switzerland - Ivan Efremov - Russian

Belgium - Alexander Nelidov - Russian

Netherlands - Nikolai Swerbeyev - Russian

Greece - Elim Demidov - Russian, symbolic Finno-Ugric descent

Serbia - Grigory Trubetskoy - Russian

Romania - Stanislav Poklevsky-Kozell - Polish

Sweden - Anatoly Neklyudov - Russian

Norway - Konstantin Gulkevich - Russian

Denmark - Matvey Sevastopulo - Greek

Argentina - Eugene Stein - Jewish

Persia - Nikolai von Etter - German

China - Nikolai Kudashev - Russian

Germans made only 6.25% of the total. That being said, I did a visual inspection of Russian ambassadors to these various countries and there was a lot of German overrepresentation to major countries like the UK, France and the United States in the middle of 19th century. Perhaps up to a third of all Russian ambassadors in major countries were of German descent, however in the early 20th century their influence has sharply fallen.

If you include the last Russian ambassadors to the Central Powers (1914) then here they are:

German Empire - Sergey Sverbeyev - Russian - (1912-1914)

Ottoman Empire - Mikhail von Giers - 1/2 Moldovan (possibly some German there) 1/4 Swedish 1/4 German - (1912-1914)

Bulgaria - Aleksandr Savinsky - Russian - (1913-1915)

Austria-Hungary - Nikolay Nikolayevich Shebeko - Russian - (1913-1914)

As you can see nothing really changes.

To test out my theory I decided to employ Claude to look at all Russian ambassadors to major countries in the 19th century (Italy, France, British Empire, United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire), here are the results:

Germans = 27% of the total. Here is how this breakdown looks like by each country:

Austria-Hungary: Germans: 4 out of 16 = 25%

Germany: Germans: 4 out of 12 = 33%

United States: Germans: 5 out of 13 = 38%

Italy: Germans: 1 out of 5 = 20%

France: Germans: 2 out of 9 = 22%

British Empire: Germans: 5 out of 10 = 50%

Ottoman Empire: Germans: 0 out of 15 = 0%

Administration:

Finally, let’s look at the administration. After excluding Poland, Baltics and Finland here is who governed the provinces of the Russian Empire for 1914:

As you can see the German input is tremendous and like many other things you’re about to see. The only correction I’d make is add more Russian Cossacks like the governor of Kuban Oblast. Anyways, there is basically no other ethnic representation besides the Russian and the Germans as it relates to governing provinces. As I wrote on Twitter:

If you examine gubernatorial appointments in the Russian Empire, it becomes clear that the Russian Empire could be described as Great Russian and German supremacist state. Only Georgians and to a lesser extent Armenians managed to attain some positions within this hierarchy.

Germans made 24% of the total governors of the Russian Empire, although, much of it was concentrated in the Baltics, Central Asia, Finland and Vistula. The European part of Russia in which the Germans reigned over was mostly territories of the Ukraine and Belarus.

Nonetheless, the Russians and the Germans have effectively co-ran the Russian Empire’s administrative borders at the exclusion of everybody else with some minor caveats.

Parliament (State Duma):

Thankfully there is a research article on this topic already so I don’t need to do extra research myself.

All the people of Russia acquired the right to present their
interests during the elections and in the Duma, to form nationally-based
political elites and to master parliamentary political culture.
However, only four deputies of the First State Duma were registered
as Germans. They all represented immigrant communities: Andreas
Widmer, a Lutheran farmer, deputy of a district zemstvo (local government)
assembly in Bessarabia province; Ivan Minkh, the Lutheran headman of a
German colony in Kherson province; another Lutheran, Jacob Dietz, a
lawyer and journalist from Saratov province; and Heinrich Schelhorn, a
parish foreman, owner of a printing house and deputy of the provincial and
district zemstvo assembly of Samara province.

In other words, out of 477 deputies, Germans amounted to just 4 or 0.84% of the total. This means that Germans were actually underrepresented in the one institution selected by something resembling a democratic franchise.

Anyways, I did some extra digging myself and found a list of all the deputies in the Russian Empire’s State Duma. Looking into the Fourth State Duma (1912-1917) specifically, here are the results:

As you can see, the Russian parliament was a Russian-dominated space. Germans amounted to just 2% of the total and overwhelmingly belonged to the Czarist Octobrist party.

Finally I decided to go with the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election after the Czarist regime lost power and here are the results of the first Russian election with universal suffrage:

As you can see both the Germans and the Russians took a heavy hit from the universal suffrage. But the Germans were completely wiped out.

I also challenged Claude on the Jewishness of the Bolsheviks and this is the results:

Cultural and Spiritual Life

German Writers

Thankfully I don’t need to conduct new research because I have already done an ethnic and religious study of the greatest Russian writers of all time and by Russian I mean writers from the Russian Empire and as I have determined Germans were not represented at the early stages of the Russian Empire yet they were not particularly overrepresented at the later stages of the Russian Empire either. For the most part, German overrepresentation means that one or two Russian writers were one eight or one quarter German themselves. Nonetheless here is the data:

German DNA made about 5.88% of Russian writers and poets of the Golden Age Era and 3.5% of the Silver Age Era. However the Russian Empire did not produce a single well known German writer.

Classical Music: