The Volga Germans

Soon after coming to power in a bloodless coup, Catherine II (later “The Great”), herself German, extended an invitation to Germans to colonize portions of the lower Volga, to improve farming in the region [colonization by Russians was not deemed feasible, because serfs were tied to the land they worked]. The offer included free land for all colonists, payment of passage to Russia, freedom of religion, freedom from military servitude, freedom from taxes for 30 years and self-government of national groups. Needless to say, this was an enticing proposal to German peasants who had little chance of owning land in Germany and who had suffered mightily under the Seven Years War (1756-63).

The German colonists flocked to the Volga region from 1764 on, establishing over 100 colonies between Saratov and Kamyshin and coming to be known as “Volga-Germans” (Nemtsy povolzhe). The majority of Volga-Germans came from the Southwest portion of Germany. Large numbers of Germans also settled along the Black Sea coast.

The Germans lived largely in isolation from the surrounding Russian population and, not limited by the ties of serfdom, were able to develop much better local economic conditions. But, toward the end of the 19th century, with the Russifying policies of Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III, the advantageous conditions and self-government extended the Germans was curtailed. This led to massive German emigration (over 100,000 to the US alone) and, with other reforms at the turn of this century, to internal emigration – to the southern Urals, Kazakstan and Siberia, where new lands were being opened up for settlers. The 1897 census showed some 1.8 million persons of German ancestry living in Russia, in over 2000 settlements.

The First World War brought certain repressive measures for Russians of German ancestry. Germans living near the front lines were relocated, limits were imposed on property ownership and the use of the German language. The revolution brought respite and, in 1918, with the establishment of the Workers’ Commune of the Volga Germans, the Nemtsy povolzhe became the first ethnic minority to receive local autonomy in the new USSR (largely because this was one of the first areas the Bolsheviks controlled). The Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans, centered on the city of Engels (formerly Pokrovsk), superseded the Commune in 1924.

The period between the wars saw huge emigrations of Germans from Russia – some 400,000 Germans left different parts of Russia, mainly for Germany. But the most notorious migration was yet to come. With the onset of WWII, in 1941, Stalin ordered the forced migration of some 800,000 Germans from European portions of Russia to Kazakstan and Siberia (the emigrants were not told this was a permanent evacuation and expected to return after the war was over). Half of these were from the Volga region, as, in 1939, there were 392,500 Germans living along the Volga, comprising over 60% of the population of the autonomous republic. With the forced emigration, the Autonomous Republic of Volga-Germans ceased to exist.

A decade after the war there were 1.6 million Russians of German ancestry living in the USSR, roughly half in Russia and half in Kazakstan. By 1979, the number was close to 2 million. Needless to say, with the forced migrations and the related social pressures of this and the war, ties to a German cultural heritage began to unravel. By 1989, less than half of Germans in the USSR considered German to be their first language, and only 45% spoke German fluently.

Still, in the period after the war, some Germans did make their way back to the Volga (the Volga-Germans were not officially “rehabilitated” until August 1964). There are an estimated 17,000 Russians with German ancestry living in the region. This represents about 0.6% of the population, ranking the population of ethnic Germans in the region between Belorusans and Azeris. Russians now comprise 85% of the region’s population.

Igor Plehve, professor of history at Saratov State University and a noted authority on the Volga-Germans, said that the autonomy movement began as early as the 1960s, but until 1972, it was virtually impossible to get a propiska to settle in the region. And, after the onset of perestroika, the movement began to pick up speed. But “local authorities were very scared by that. Very scared.” So opposition, Plehve said, was “created” by party apparatchiks, “who knew they would lose all their power ... if other bodies of power, new German structures, could be created.” The publication of a USSR Supreme Soviet Resolution in 1989 on the resurrection of the Volga-German Autonomous Republic incited further action.

In early 1991, there was even talk of resettling 200-300,000 Germans from Kazakstan and Siberia back to the Volga. Seven raions in Saratov oblast and five in Volgograd oblast were marked out for recreation of an autonomous German republic. The Volga-German movement picked up speed over the course of the year, but was sidetracked by the dissolution of the USSR.

The turning point, Plehve said, came in January 1992, when President Yeltsin visited the region and declared that there will be no autonomy until Germans comprise 90% of the local population. “From that point on,” Plehve said, “the idea of German autonomy began fading away ... a de facto mass exodus began ... Now there is no one to create autonomy for ...”

Since 1991, Germans from Russia were allowed to freely emigrate and resettle in Germany and some 200,000 have done so each year.