Their civil rights were disregarded; they were detained and forbidden to speak German. Most had to work in labour camps in inhumane conditions. An estimated 700,000 Germans died due to bad working and living conditions and inadequate medical treatment. In particular, the Stalinism destroyed the independent German culture in Russia. In 1955, the discrimination was subsided, and the ethnic Germans were allowed to change their residence, but not to their former colony areas. The Aussiedler became partly assimilated in the last decades of the USSR
