Volga Germans


The Volga Germans are ethnic Germans who colonized and historically lived along the Volga River in the region of southeastern European Russia around Saratov and to the south. Recruited as immigrants to Russia in the 18th century, they were allowed to maintain their German culture, language, traditions and churches. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Volga Germans emigrated to Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, California, Washington and other states across the western United States, as well as to Canada and South America.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 during World War II, the Soviet government considered the Volga Germans potential collaborators, and deported many of them eastward, where thousands died. After the war, the Soviet Union expelled a moderate number of ethnic Germans to the West. In the late 1980s and 1990s, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved from the Soviet Union to Germany.

Catherine the Great

In 1762, Catherine II, born a German princess and a native of Stettin, Pomerania, deposed her husband Peter III, born a German prince in Kiel, and took the Russian imperial throne. Catherine the Great published manifestos in 1762 and 1763 inviting Europeans to immigrate and become Russian citizens and farm Russian lands while maintaining their language and culture. Although the first received little response, the second improved the benefits offered and was more successful in attracting colonists. People in other countries such as France and England were more inclined to migrate to the colonies in the Americas than to the Russian frontier. Other countries, such as Austria, forbade emigration. The settlers came mainly from Bavaria, Baden, Hesse, the Palatinate, and the Rhineland, over the years 1763 to 1767. They indeed helped modernize the backward agricultural sector by introducing numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing. Furthermore the Volga Germans helped to populate Russia's South adding a buffer against possible incursions by the Ottoman Empire.
The early German settlements were attacked during the Pugachev uprising from 1773 through 1775, which was centred on the Volga area, but they survived the rebellion. According to Darrel P. Kaiser, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1,573 settlers from colonies in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."
Those who went to Russia had special rights under the terms of the manifesto. Some, such as being exempt from military service, were revoked in the latter part of the 19th century when the government needed more conscripts for the Russian army. The German Mennonite communities were opposed to military service because of their pacifist beliefs, so many Mennonites emigrated to the Americas instead.

20th century

Following the Russian Revolution, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established in 1924, and it lasted until 1941. Its capital was Engels, known as Pokrovsk before 1931.

Deportation of the Volga Germans

The Deportation of the Volga Germans was the Soviet forced transfer of the whole of the Volga German population of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to Siberia, and Kazakhstan on September 3, 1941, during World War II. Of all the ethnic German communities in the Soviet Union, the Volga Germans represented the single largest group expelled from their historical homeland. Shortly after the German invasion, on June 22, 1941, Stalin sent Beria and Molotov to the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to determine a course of action for its German inhabitants. On return, they recommended the deportation of the entire German population. Consequently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a resolution on August 12, calling for the expulsion of the entire German population. With this authority, Beria on August 27 issued an order entitled "On Measures for Conducting the Operation of Resettling the Germans from the Volga German Republic, Saratov, and Stalingrad Oblasts," assigning the deputy head of the NKVD, Ivan Serov, to command this operation. He also allocated NKVD and Red Army troops to carry out the transfer. The Germans were to be sent to various oblasts in Siberia and Kazakhstan, beginning on September 3, and ending on September 20, 1941. On September 7, 1941, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was officially abolished, clearly showing that the Soviets considered the expulsion of the Germans final.
On August 28, 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved and published a decree, which was the only official decree ever published by the Soviet Union concerning the deportation and exile of the German Russian community. The Soviet regime stated that the evacuation was a preventive measure—so that the German population would not be misled into collaborating with the German Army—rather than a punitive measure. Stalin allegedly gave the following "secret" order to the NKVD, produced in Nazi controlled Latvia on September 20, 1941:

"After the house search, tell everyone who is scheduled to be deported that, according to the government’s decision, they are being sent to other regions of the USSR. Transport the entire family in one car until the train station, but at the station, heads of families must be loaded into a separate train car prepared especially for them....Their families are deported for special settlements in the far away regions of the Union. must not know about the forthcoming separation from the head of the family."

This above document may be a fabrication, as Latvia was under German occupation at that time. Nevertheless, the instructions were followed by the NKVD troops who directed the deportation.
The reason for separating the men is that they were all destined for the forced labor camps, Trudarmii. The German exiles coined this phrase, whereas Soviet documents only referred to "labor obligations" or "labor regulations." Men between the ages of 15 and 55 and, later, women between the ages of 16 and 45 were forced to do labor in the forests and mines of Siberia and Central Asia under conditions similar to that prevalent in the Gulag forced-labor camps.
The expulsion of the Volga Germans finished on schedule at the end of September 1941. The number sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan totaled approximately 438,000. Together with 27,000 expelled in the same ethnic cleansing action from the Stalingrad Oblast and 47,000 from the Saratov Oblast, the total number sent to forced internal exile was about 950,000 of which 30% died during deportation. The source of these figures is from the Soviet Union. It took 151 train convoys to accomplish the transfer of the Volga German population, an astounding figure when one considers that the Soviet Union was heavily engaged fighting the advancing German army, and all railway stock was required to bring soldiers to the front. This operation also involved 1,550 NKVD and 3,250 police agents assisted by 12,150 soldiers of the Red Army.
In 1941, after the Nazi invasion, the NKVD banned ethnic Germans from serving in the Soviet military. They sent tens of thousands of these soldiers to the Trudarmii.
In 1942, nearly all the able-bodied German population was conscripted to the NKVD labor columns. About one-third did not survive the camps.

Recent years

The Volga Germans never returned to the Volga region in their old numbers. They were not allowed to settle in the area for decades. After the war, many remained in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. After the initial period of persecution, they recovered in their new locations, where their numbers increased, and they continued to preserve their distinct cultural identity. Decades after the war, some talked about resettling where the German Autonomous Republic used to be. They met opposition from the population that had been resettled in the territory and did not persevere.
A proposal in June 1979 called for a new German Autonomous Republic within Kazakhstan, with a capital in Ermentau. The proposal was aimed at addressing the living conditions of the displaced Volga Germans. At the time, around 936,000 ethnic Germans were living in Kazakhstan, as the republic's third-largest ethnic group. On June 16, 1979, demonstrators in Tselinograd protested this proposal. Fearing a negative reaction among the majority Kazakhs and calls for autonomy among local Uyghurs, the ruling Communist Party scrapped the proposal for ethnic German autonomy within Kazakhstan.
Since the late 1980s and the fall of the Soviet Union, some ethnic Germans have returned in small numbers to Engels, but many more emigrated permanently to Germany. They took advantage of the German law of return, a policy that grants citizenship to all those who can prove to be a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such a person..
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the independence of the Baltic states, some Russian ethnic Germans began to return to the area of the Kaliningrad Oblast, especially Volga Germans from other parts of Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as to the Volga Germans' old territory in southern Russia near Volgograd. This tempo increased after Germany stopped granting the free right of return to ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. As of the 2002 Russian census, 8,340 Germans were listed in the Kaliningrad Oblast, dropping to 7,349 in 2010 due to deaths. Volgograd Oblast counted 10,102 Germans in the 2010 Census. However, almost none of the pre-World War II German population remains in the Kaliningrad Oblast, with the vast majority of the current population recent Russian-speaking migrants. Due to the new restrictions by the German government, the flow of ethnic Germans to Germany has greatly slowed if not ceased, while the remaining Germans in Central Asia continue to emigrate, but to Russia instead of Germany.

North America

Germans from Russia were the most traditional of German-speaking arrivals to North America. Although they had been promised a degree of relative autonomy when they settled in Russia, the Russian monarchy gradually eroded their specific rights as time went on. Conscription was eventually reinstated; this was especially harmful to the Mennonites, who practice pacifism. Throughout the 19th century, pressure increased from the Russian government to culturally assimilate. Many Germans from Russia found it necessary to emigrate to avoid conscription and preserve their culture. About 100,000 immigrated by 1900, settling primarily in the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska. The south-central part of North Dakota was known as "the German-Russian triangle". A smaller number moved farther west, finding employment as ranchers and cowboys.
in Kansas
The largest groups settled mainly in the area of the Great Plains: Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in Canada; and North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and nearby areas in the US. Outside that area, they also settled in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, especially in Portland, Washington, Wisconsin, and Fresno County in California's Central Valley. They often succeeded in dryland farming, which they had practiced in Russia. Many of the immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1912 spent a period doing farm labor, especially in northeastern Colorado and in Montana along the lower Yellowstone River in sugar beet fields. Colonies kept in touch with each other through newspapers, especially Der Staats Anzeiger, based in North Dakota.

South America

Germans from Russia also settled in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. Most Volga Germans who settled in Latin America were Catholic. Many Catholic Volga Germans chose South America as their new homeland because the nations shared their religion.

Notable people of Volga German descent

The greatest number of Volga Germans emigrated from Hesse and the Palatinate, and spoke Hessian and Palatine Rhine Franconian dialects to which the colonists from other regions, and even from other countries like Sweden, assimilated. Some Volga German dialects are very similar to Pennsylvania German language, another Palatine Rhine Franconian language; in either dialect, one could say:
Some other common words:
Volga GermanStandard GermanEnglish
Baam, Boum Baumtree
daitsch deutschGerman
Flaasch, Fleesch Fleischflesh, meat
g'sotzagesessen sat down
ich sin, ich binich binI am
KoppKopfhead
netnichtnot
seimseinemhis
unundand

Volga Germans borrowed some Russian words, like Erbus "watermelon" from Russian арбуз "watermelon", which they carried with them on their subsequent moves to North America and Argentina.