[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] german russians?

[Otto]

The German? Prussian? Pole? Russian? Ukrainian? issue many succumb to  
is a political issue.
It is one of 'nationality', Nationhood.
Nationhood is one of time frames.
Nations rise and fall.

Nation'ality
1.	the state or fact of being a citizen of a particular Nation.

Many ethnicities can comprise a nation.
My personal definition of nation is an "imaginary circle drawn around  
a specific area of land, empowered with an imaginary bundle of  
rights." Enforced with guns of course.
National boundaries changed often and at times completely disappeared  
in Eastern Europe.
Did redrawing imaginary boundaries change the genetic makeup of the  
taxable citizens?
Nationality can be changed overnight, not ethnicity.

Nationality can be changed as did my father swearing allegiance to the  
Untied States and swearing off allegiance to the Russian Tzar even  
though the country he left behind had been Poland.

Even as a United States citizen, his new chosen nationality, he  
remained an ethnic German as he had been in Prussia, Russia and Poland.
I, as a United States citizen, born here, remain an ethnic German.  
Ethnic Germans are outstanding when it comes to assimilating into a  
national culture, yet remain proud of their genes and rightly so.

The issue is not political and about boundaries, it is about genes, DNA.
One can change nationalities but remains what one was born.

Ethnicity.
1.	relating to or characteristic of a human group having  
racial,religious, linguistic, and certain other traits in common
2.	relating to the classification of mankind into groups, especially  
on the basis of racial characteristics
-Establish ethnicity first, then establish nationality.

. . .   Otto
          " The Zen moment..." wk. of January 01, 2011-
                   _____________________________________
                                 "Everything . . .  isasis"