TheVolga Germans (German:Wolgadeutsche,pronounced[ˈvɔlɡaˌdɔʏtʃə]^ⓘ;Russian:поволжские немцы,romanized: povolzhskiye nemtsy) are ethnicGermans who settled and historically lived along theVolga River in the region of southeasternEuropean Russia aroundSaratov and close toUkraine nearer to the south.

Volga Germans

Wolgadeutsche
Flag of Volga Germans
Total population
594,138
[1]
Russia  Altai Krai 79,502  Omsk Oblast 76,334  Novosibirsk Oblast 47,275  Kemerovo Oblast 35,965  Chelyabinsk Oblast 28,457  Tyumen Oblast 27,196  Sverdlovsk Oblast 22,540  Krasnodar Krai 18,469  Orenburg Oblast 18,055  Volgograd Oblast 17,051  Tomsk Oblast 13,444  Saratov Oblast 12,093  Perm Krai 10,152  Kaliningrad Oblast	394,138[2]
Kazakhstan	226,092[3]
Languages
In Europe:German ·Russian ·Kazakh In America:Spanish ·English ·Portuguese
Religion
Lutheran ·Roman Catholicism ·Mennonite ·
Related ethnic groups
Black Sea Germans ·Don Cossacks

Recruited as immigrants to Russia in the 18th century, they were allowed to maintain their German culture, language, traditions and churches (Lutheran,Reformed,Catholics,Moravians andMennonites). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Volga Germans emigrated to theUnited States,Canada,Brazil, andArgentina.

After theOctober Revolution, theVolga German ASSR was established as an autonomous republic of theRussian SFSR. DuringWorld War II, the republic was abolished by the Soviet government and the Volga Germans wereforcibly expelled to a number of areas in the hinterlands of theSoviet Union. Following thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Volga Germans emigrated toGermany.

In 1762,Catherine II, born aGerman princess and a native ofStettin, Pomerania, deposed her husbandPeter III, born aGerman prince inKiel, and took theRussian imperial throne. Following the lead ofMaria Theresa, Empress of Austria and Hungary, invitingGermans to settle on the Danube in theBalkans, Catherine the Great published manifestos in 1762 and 1763 inviting non-Jewish Europeans^[4] to immigrate and become Russian subjects 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 asFrance andIreland were more inclined to migrate to the colonies in the Americas. Other countries, such asAustria, forbade emigration.

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. ThePlautdietsch-speakingMennonite communities were opposed to military service because of their pacifist beliefs, so many Mennonites emigrated to theAmericas instead.

In the late 18th century the nomadicKazakhs took advantage ofPugachev's Rebellion, which was centred on the Volga area, to raid Volga German settlements.^[5]

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian empire began to apply an aggressive policy ofRussification. Although they had been promised a degree of relative autonomy (including being exempt fromconscription) when they settled in the Russian empire, the Russian monarchy gradually eroded their specific rights as time went on. The Germans began to suffer a considerable loss of autonomy. Conscription was eventually reinstated. That was not wanted and was especially harmful to theMennonites, 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. This caused some Germans to organize themselves and send emissaries to some countries in the Americas in order to assess potential settlement destinations. The chosen destinations were Canada, United States, Brazil and Argentina. Most Volga Germans who settled in Latin America wereCatholic. Many Catholic Volga Germans chose South America as their new homeland because the nations shared their religion.

Germans from Russia were the most traditional of German-speaking arrivals toNorth America. In the United States, many settled primarily inthe Dakotas,Kansas, andNebraska by 1900. The south-central part ofNorth Dakota was known as "the German-Russian triangle" (that includes descendants ofBlack Sea Germans). A smaller number moved farther west, finding employment as ranchers andcowboys. They also settled inOhio,Iowa,Michigan,Minnesota,Oregon (especially inPortland^[6]),Washington,Wisconsin, andFresno County in California'sCentral Valley. They often succeeded indryland 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 northeasternColorado and inMontana along the lowerYellowstone River insugar beet fields. Colonies kept in touch with each other through newspapers, especiallyDer Staats Anzeiger, based in North Dakota. By author Richard Sallet's count, there were 118,493 descendants of Volga Germans of the first and second generation living in the United States according to the1920 United States census.^[7]

In Canada, the largest groups settled mainly in the area of theGreat Plains:Alberta,Manitoba, andSaskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, many settled in the predominantly German settlement ofSt. Joseph's Colony, including the town ofLuseland.

Germans from Russia also settled inArgentina (seeGerman Argentines) andBrazil (seeGerman Brazilians). Additionally, many of the Volga Germans who had previously settled in Brazil later also went to settle in Argentina due to the difficulties of planting wheat in Brazil, among other reasons.

In Argentina, Volga Germans have founded many colonies or villages. For example, around the city ofCoronel Suárez in the South ofBuenos Aires Province, around the city ofCrespo inEntre Ríos Province, along the East ofLa Pampa Province, etc. Every year, the community of Volga German descendants holds different celebrations in the country in which they keep their traditions alive. For example, theKerb (festival to honour thepatron saint of a colony),^[8] theKreppelfest,^[9] theStrudelfest,^[10] theFüllselfest,^[11] theSchlachtfest^[12] (also promoted by its Spanish nameFiesta de la Carneada), theFiesta del Pirok (Bierock festival),^[13] etc.

Today, 8% of the Argentine population or 3.5 million Argentines claim German ancestry. Of those, more than 2.5 million claim Volga German descent,^[14] making them the majority of those having German ancestry in the country, and accounting for 5.7% of the total Argentine population. Descendants of Volga Germans outnumber descendants of Germans from Germany itself, who number one million in Argentina (2.3% of the population).

Following theRussian Revolution, theVolga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (German:Autonome Sozialistische Sowjet-Republik der Wolga-Deutschen;Russian:АССР Немцев Поволжья) was established in 1924, and it lasted until 1941. Its capital wasEngels, known asPokrovsk (Kosakenstadt in German) before 1931.

The deportation of the Volga Germans was the Soviet government'sforcible transfer of the whole of the Volga German population from theVolga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic toGulagcamps which were located inSiberia andKazakhstan. The Soviets, bearing in mind the collaboration of theSudeten Germans of Czechoslovakia withNazi Germany, decided as a precautionary measure to transfer the Volga German population.^[15]

These deportations, which also included the deportation of the rest of the ethnic Germans from Russia, had been implemented for several years beforeWorld War II and they became particularly exhaustive on September 3, 1941, during the war.^{[16][17][18][19]}

Of all of the ethnic German communities which lived in the Soviet Union, the Volga Germans represented the largest group of ethnic Germans which was expelled from its historical homeland. All of their possessions were confiscated and they were mainly deported because of their ethnicity. Shortly after theGerman invasion, on June 22, 1941, Stalin sentBeria andMolotov to the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to determine a course of action for its German inhabitants, as a way of carrying out collective revenge on the civilian population. On return, they recommended the deportation of the entire German population. Consequently, theCentral Committee of the Communist Party issued a resolution on August 12, calling for the expulsion of the entire ethnic 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 theNKVD, (secret police)Ivan Serov, to command this operation. He also allocated NKVD and Red Army troops to carry out the transfer.

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 Germans were to be sent to various oblasts (provinces) in Siberia, Kazakhstan and others, beginning on September 3, and ending on September 20. On September 7, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was officially abolished, clearly showing that the Soviets considered the expulsion of the Germans final.^[20][21][22]

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, and they did not reveal the sentence to the forced labor camps. Stalin allegedly gave the following "secret" order to the NKVD, produced inGerman 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. [Family members] must not know about the forthcoming separation from the head of the family."^[23]

The document above 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.^[24] The reason for separating the men is that they were all destined to be sent to forced labor camps, known asTrudarmee (NKVD labor army). The deported and enslaved Germans 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, while other Germans were directly deported to Gulag forced labor camps.^[24] After the Nazi invasion began, theNKVD (viaPrikaz No. 35105) banned ethnic Germans from serving in the Soviet military. They sent tens of thousands of these soldiers to theTrudarmee.^{[25][page needed]}

The expulsion of the Volga Germans was finished on schedule at the end of September 1941. According to the Soviet Union, the total number sent to forced internal exile was about 950,000. However, the actual estimated number of victims is much higher. It took 151 train convoys to accomplish the first transfers of the Volga German population, an astounding figure when one considers that the Soviet Union was heavily engaged in 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.^[26]

In 1942, nearly all the able-bodied German population was conscripted to theNKVD labor columns or had been sent to the Gulag forced labor camps. According to anti-communist Stanford historianRobert Conquest, during the first stage, about one-third (estimated at 1.5 million)^[27] did not survive the camps.^[28] The conditions imposed on ethnic Germans by the regime continued to be inhumane.^{[29][30][31][32]} The deportation and subsequent deaths to ethnic minorities during Stalin's rule is referred to as anethnic cleansing. Some historians refer to these acts as agenocide, though there is debate whether or not the destruction of non-Russians was intentional.^{[33][34][35][36]} Ethnically German minorities received little empathy for mass expulsions due to their German ethnicity and assumed relation to theNazi regime.^[37] There is debate among sociologists and historians whether ethnic cleansing is genocide.^[38][39][40]

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 World War II, many survivors remained in theUral Mountains,Siberia,Kazakhstan (1.4% of today's Kazakh population are recognized as Germans - around 200,000),Kyrgyzstan, andUzbekistan (about 16,000 or 0.064%).^[41] Decades after the war, some talked about resettling where the German Autonomous Republic used to be. But all their properties had been occupied by Russian communists. They met opposition from the new population there and did not persevere. A proposal in June 1979 called for a new German Autonomous Republic within Kazakhstan, with a capital inErmentau.^[42] 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 (Astana) protested this proposal. Fearing a negative reaction among the majorityKazakhs and calls for autonomy among localUyghurs, the ruling Communist Party scrapped the proposal for ethnic German autonomy within Kazakhstan.

Since the late 1980s and the fall of theSoviet Union, some ethnic Germans have returned in small numbers toEngels, but many more emigrated permanently to Germany. They took advantage of the Germanlaw of return, apolicy 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 thecollapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the independence of the Baltic states, some Russian ethnic Germans began to return to the area of theKaliningrad Oblast (formerly part ofEast Prussia), especially Volga Germans from other parts of Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as to the Volga Germans' old territory in southern Russia nearVolgograd. This tempo increased after Germany stopped granting the free right of return to ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union.

• Philip Anschutz (born 1939), American billionaire businessman.^[43]
• Harold W. Bauer (1908–1942), AmericanUSMC fighter pilot.^[44]
• Tom Daschle (born 1947), American politician.^[45]
• Sergio Denis (1949–2020), Argentine singer-songwriter
• Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941–2013), American political philosopher and academic.^[46]
• Joe Exotic (born 1963), American former Zoo owner.^[47]
• Helene Fischer (born 1984), German singer, dancer and entertainer.^[48]
• Tim Gaines (born 1962), American musician.^[49]
• Sir Andre Geim (born 1958), Russian-born Dutch-Britishphysicist and 2010Nobel laureate.^[50]
• Jim Geringer (born 1944), American politician,30th Governor of Wyoming.^[51]
• Sonja Graf (1908–1965), German chess player who became woman's champion of the US.
• Gabriel Heinze (born 1978), Argentine football player.^[52]
• Óscar Ibáñez (born 1967), Argentine-born Peruvian football player.^[53]
• Viktor Kress (born 1948), Russian politician, governor ofTomsk Oblast, Russia.^[54]
• Randy Meisner (born 1946), American musician, original bassist with theEagles.^[55]
• Roman Neustädter (born 1988), Russian-German football player.^[56]
• Peter Neustädter (born 1966), Kyrgyz-born German football player and coach.^[56]
• Boris Rauschenbach, (1915–2001), scientist, physicist in Russia.^[57]
• Eduard Rossel (born 1937), Russian politician.^[58]
• Cher Scarlett (born 1984 or 1985), American software engineer and labor activist.^[59]
• Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998), Russian composer.^[60]
• Kendall Schmidt (born 1990), American singer ofBig Time Rush.
• Heinrich Schmidtgal (born 1985), Kazakh footballer
• Diana Shnaider (born 2004), Russian tennis player^[61]
• Robert Shwartzman (born 1999), Russian racing driver.
• Alvina Shpady (1935–2019), Uzbek artist and art restorer.^[62]
• Afu Thomas (born 1988), German Internet celebrity active in China.^[63]
• Mitch Unrein (born 1987), American football player.^[64]
• Sergio Unrein (born 1991), Argentine football player.^[65]
• Joseph Werth (born 1952), Bishop of Transfiguration atNovosibirsk

The greatest number of Volga Germans emigrated fromHesse and thePalatinate, and spokeHessian andPalatineRhine Franconian dialects^[66][67] to which the colonists from other regions, and even from other countries like Sweden, assimilated.^[68] SomeVolga German dialects are very similar toPennsylvania Dutch, another Palatine Rhine Franconian language; in either dialect, one could say:^[66]

• (spelled according to standard German pronunciation rules:)Mehr wolla mohl gaern in die sche gehl Kaerrich geha.
• (in German:)Wir wollen einmal gern in die schöne gelbe Kirche gehen.
• (in English:) We would like to go into the beautiful yellow church.

Some other common words:^[66][69][70]

The above list only attempts to reproduce the pronunciation and does not represent how the Volga Germans wrote. The dialects of the Germans of Russia mainly presented differences in pronunciation, as occurs in the diversity of the English language. However, Volga Germans wrote and kept their records inStandard German.

Volga Germans only borrowed a few but anecdotal Russian words, likeErbus ("watermelon" from Russianарбуз "watermelon"),^[71] which they carried with them on their subsequent moves to North America^[67] and Argentina.^[72]

The Standard German-related variety influenced by dialects and spoken by Volgan Germans who moved to Argentina is calledParaná-Wolga-Deutsch. It is also spoken in the Brazilian state ofParaná in addition to the Argentine province ofEntre Ríos.^{[73][better source needed]}

• Kazakhstan Germans
• History of Germans in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union
• Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
• Volhynia
• Russian Mennonites
• Baltic Germans

• Merten, Ulrich (2015).Voices from the Gulag: The Oppression of the German Minority in the Soviet Union. Lincoln, Nebraska: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia.ISBN 978-0-692-60337-6.

• Koch, Fred C.The Volga Germans: in Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the present (Penn State Press, 2010).
• Mukhina, Irina.The Germans of the Soviet Union (Routledge, 2007).
• Salitan, Laurie P. "Soviet Germans: A Brief History and an Introduction to Their Emigration." inPolitics and Nationality in Contemporary Soviet-Jewish Emigration, 1968–89 ( Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1992) pp 72–83.
• Waters, Tony. "Towards a theory of ethnic identity and migration: the formation of ethnic enclaves by migrant Germans in Russia and North America."International Migration Review (1995): 515-544.

• The Volga German Institute at Fairfield University
• The Center for Volga German Studies at Concordia UniversityArchived 2008-09-03 at theWayback Machine
• Germans from Russia Heritage Society
• Flag
• Volga Germans
• American Historical Society of Germans from Russia
• Germans from Russia Heritage Collection North Dakota State University
• Germans from Russia in Argentina Genealogy(in Spanish)
• Wolgadeutschen(in Russian)
• The Golden Jubilee of German-Russian Settlements of Ellis and Rush Counties, Kansas
• Germans from Russia in Argentina
• German Memories - Volga Germans Migration Towards Americas
• Elaine Frank Davison Germans from Russia collection at the Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Whitman College.