The 'German minority in Russia and the Soviet Union' was created from several sources and in several waves.
Germans in Russia and Ukraine
The earliest German settlement in Russia dates back to the reign of
Vasili III in the
16th century. A handful of German and
Dutch craftsmen and traders were allowed to establish themselves in
Moscow's
German Quarter (''Немецкая слобода'', or Nemetskaya ''
sloboda''), providing essential technical skills in the capital. Gradually, this policy extended to a few other major cities.
1682 Moscow had about 200,000 citizens, 18,000 of them were ''Nemtsy'', which means either ''German'' or ''western foreigner''.
Peter the Great was greatly influenced by the international community located in the German Quarter, and his efforts to transform Russia into a more modern European state are believed to have derived in large part from his experiences among Russia's established Germans. By the late
17th century, foreigners were no longer so rare in Russian cities, and the German Quarter had lost its ethnic character by the end of that century.
Vistula Germans
Main articles: Vistula Germans
Through wars and the partitions of
Poland,
Prussia acquired an increasing amount of northern, western, and central Polish territory. The
Vistula river flows south to north, to near
Danzig, now
Gdansk; Germans and
Dutch settled its valley starting from the
Baltic Sea and reaching further south with time. Eventually, Prussia acquired most of the Vistula's watershed, and the central portion of then-Poland became
South Prussia. Its existence was brief, from
1793 to
1806, but many Germans and Dutch established
protestant settlements there, primarily agricultural in nature. From already-Prussian
Silesia to the southwest some German
catholics entered the region too. The 1935 "Breyer Map" shows the distribution of German settlements in what is now central Poland.
Napoleon's victories in the region ended the short existence of South Prussia; it and other territories were incorporated into the
Duchy of Warsaw. But in
1815 the Duchy was divided with the western
Posen region again becoming part of
Prussia, but what is now central
Poland became the Russian client state
Congress Poland that is more commonly known as
Russian Poland. Many Germans remained in this central region, and usually maintained their middle-German Prussian dialect, similar to the Silesian dialect, and religions. However, with World Wars' I and II eastern front on their doorstep, and increasing conscriptions, the Vistula Germans' migrations from Russian Poland increased. Some
Polinized, however, and some of their descendants remain in the region. After World War II, those that were still Germanic were forced from the region by the Russians and the Poles.
Passenger ship departure and arrival lists often show these Vistula German migrants as being from "Russia", "Germany", "Prussia", "Poland", or "Austria", for example. The oft-listed village of origin is the key to determining where an ancestor came from, however. The ShtetlSeeker Web site, linked to toward the end of this article, is a helpful device for locating villages' locations. However, due to variations in Russian, Polish, German, and English pronunciations and spellings, locating many and especially smaller villages is challenging.
Volga Germans
Main articles: Volga German
Catherine II's (herself a German, born in Stettin now Szczecin in Poland) proclamation of open immigration for foreigners wishing to live in the Russian Empire, dated
July 22,
1763, marked the beginning of a much larger presence for Germans in the Empire. German colonies in the lower
Volga river area were founded almost immediately afterwards. These early colonies were attacked during the
Pugachev uprising, which was centred on the Volga area, but they survived the rebellion.
German immigration was motivated in part by religious intolerance and warfare in central Europe as well as by frequently difficult economic conditions. Catherine II's declaration freed German immigrants to Russia from military service (imposed on native Russians) and from most taxes. It placed the new arrivals outside of Russia's feudal hierarchy and granted them considerable internal autonomy. Moving to Russia gave most of them political rights that they would not have possessed in their own lands, even though Russia as a whole was seen as a profoundly despotic state. Religious minorities found these terms very agreeable, particularly
Mennonites from the
Vistula river valley, which had fallen into
Prussian hands during the
first partition of Poland. Their unwillingness to participate in military service, and their long tradition of dissent from mainstream
Lutheranism and
Calvinism, made life under the Prussians very difficult for them. Nearly all of the Prussian Mennonites immigrated to Russia over the following century, leaving no more than a handful in Prussia.
Other German minority churches took advantage of
Catherine II's offer as well, particularly
Evangelical Christians like the
Baptists. Although Catherine's declaration forbade them from proselytising among members of the
Orthodox church, they were free to evangelise Russia's Muslim and other non-Christian minorities.
German colonisation was most intense in the lower Volga, but other areas were targeted as well. The area around the
Black Sea received many German immigrants, and the lower
Dniepr river area, around Ekaterinaslav (now
Dnepropetrovsk) and Aleksandrovsk (now
Zaporizhzhia), was favoured by the Mennonites.
In
1803, Catherine II's grandson
Tsar Alexander I reissued her proclamation. In the chaos of the
Napoleonic wars, the response from Germans was enormous. Ultimately, the Tsar imposed minimum financial requirements on new immigrants, requiring them to either have 300
gulden in cash or special skills in order to come to Russia.
The abolition of
serfdom in
1863 created a shortage of labour in agriculture and motivated new German immigration, particularly from increasingly crowded central European states, where there was no longer enough fertile land for full employment in agriculture.
Furthermore, a sizable part of Russia's ethnic Germans migrated into Russia from its
Polish possessions. The
partitions of Poland in the late
18th century dismantled the Polish state, dividing it between
Austria,
Prussia and
Russia. There were already many Germans living in the part of Poland transferred to Russia, dating back to
mediaeval and later migrations. Many Germans in Russian Poland migrated further east into Russia between then and
World War I, particularly in the aftermath of the
Polish insurrection of 1830. The
Polish insurrection in 1863 added a new wave of German immigration from Poland to those who had already moved east, and led to the founding of extensive German colonies in
Volhynia. When Poland reclaimed its independence after
World War I, it ceased to be a source of German immigration to Russia, but by then many hundreds of thousands of Germans had already settled in enclaves across the Russian Empire.
Germans settled in the
Caucasus area from the beginning of the
19th century and in the
1850s expanded into
Crimea. In the
1890s, new German colonies opened in
Altay in Russian Asia (see
Mennonite settlements of Altai). German colonial areas were still expanding in
Ukraine as late as the beginning of
World War I.
According to the first Census of the Russian Empire in
1897, there were about 1.8 million respondents who reported German as their
mother tongue.
Black Sea Germans
Main articles: Black Sea Germans
The Black Sea Germans settled the territories of the northern bank of the
Black Sea, in the
18th and
19th centuries in what is now
Ukraine. This includes the
Bessarabian Germans, the
Dobrujan Germans, and the
Bukovina Germans. This land was gained for Russia by
Catherine the Great through her two wars with the
Ottoman Empire (
1768-
1774) and from the annexation of the
Crimean Khanates (
1783). The area of settlement was not settled as compactly as that of the
Volga territory, rather it was home to a chain of colonies. The first German settlers arrived in
1787, first from
West Prussia, then later from
Western and Southwestern
Germany, as well as from the
Warsaw area.
Crimea Germans
Main articles: Crimea Germans
From
1783 onwards, there was a systematic settlement of
Russians,
Ukrainians, and
Germans to the
Crimean Peninsula (in what was then the
Crimean Khanate) in order to weaken the native population of the
Crimean Tatars.
In
1939, two years before the deportation of the
Russian Germans to
Central Asia, around 60,000 of the 1.1 million inhabitants of Crimea were German.
Under
Perestroika, Germans were allowed to return to the peninsula.
Caucasus Germans
Main articles: Caucasus Germans
Also in the
Caucasus region, such as the
North Caucasus,
Georgia, and
Azerbaijan existed a German minority of about 100,000 people. In
1941 Stalin ordered inhabitants with a German father to be deported, mostly to
Siberia or
Kazakhstan.
Volhynia Germans
The migration of Germans into Volhynia (today covering northwestern Ukraine from a short distance west of Kiev to the border with Poland) occurred under significantly different conditions than those going to other parts of Russia. Their migration began at the encouragement of local noblemen, often Polish landlords, who wanted to develop their significant land holdings in the area. Probably 75% or more of them originated from Russian Poland with the balance coming directly from other regions such as East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, Württemberg, and Galicia among others. Although the noblemen themselves offered certain perks for the move, the Germans of Volhynia received none of the special tax and military service freedoms attributed to the Germans in other areas.
The settlement started as a trickle shortly after 1800. A surge occurred after the first Polish rebellion of 1831 but by 1850, they were still only about 5000 in number. The largest migration came after the second Polish rebellion of 1863 when they began to flood into the area by the thousands until they reached their peak at about 200,000 in the year 1900. The vast majority of these Germans were of the Lutheran (in Europe they were referred to as Evangelicals) faith. Limited numbers of Mennonites from the lower Vistula River region settled in the south part of Volhynia while Baptists and Moravian Brethern also arrived, mostly settling northwest of Zhitomir. Another major difference between the Germans here and in other parts of Russia is that the other Germans tended to settle in larger communities. The Germans in Volhynia were scattered about in over 1400 villages. Though the population peaked in 1900, many Germans had already begun leaving Volhynia in the late 1880s for North America.
Between 1911 and 1915, a small group of Volhynian German farmers (36 families - more than 200 people) chose instead to move to Eastern Siberia, making use of the resettlement subsidies of the
Stolypin reform. They settled in three villages (Pikhtinsk, Sredne-Pikhtinsk, and Dagnik) in what is today
Zalari District of
Irkutsk Oblast, where they became known as the "
Bug Hollanders". They apparently were not using German any more, but rather spoke Ukrainian and used
Lutheran Bibles that had been printed in
East Prussia, in
Polish, but in
Gothic script. Their descendants, still bearing German names, continue to live in the district into the 21st century.
[1]
Decline of the Russian Germans
The decline of the Russian German community started with the reforms of
Alexander II. In
1871, he repealed the open door immigration policy of his ancestors, effectively ending any new German immigration into the Empire. Although the German colonies continued to expand, they were driven by natural growth and by the immigration of Germans from Poland.
The Russian nationalism that took root under Alexander III served as a justification for eliminating in
1871 the bulk of the tax privileges enjoyed by Russian Germans, and after
1874 they were subjected to military service. Only after long negotiations, Mennonites, traditionally pacifist denomination, were allowed to serve alternative service in the form of work in
forestry and the medical corps. The resulting disaffection motivated many Russian Germans, especially members of traditionally dissenting churches, to migrate to the
United States and
Canada. They moved primarily to the American
Great Plains and to western Canada, especially
North and
South Dakota,
Manitoba and
Saskatchewan.
After
1881, Russian Germans were required to study
Russian in school and lost all their remaining special privileges. Many Germans remained in Russia, particularly those who had done well, as Russia began to industrialise in the late
19th century. Russian Germans were disproportionately represented among Russia's engineers, technical tradesmen, industrialists, financiers and large land owners.
World War I was the first time Russia went to war against Germany since the
Napoleonic era, and Russian Germans were quickly suspected of having enemy sympathies. The Germans living in the
Volhynia area were deported to the German colonies in the lower
Volga river in
1915 when Russia started losing the war. Many Russian Germans were exiled to
Siberia by the Tsar's government as enemies of the state - generally without trial or evidence. In
1916, an order was issued to deport the Volga Germans to the east as well, but the
Russian Revolution prevented this from being carried out.
The loyalties of Russian Germans during the revolution varied. While many supported the royalist forces and joined the
White Army, others were committed to
Kerensky's
Provisional Government, to the
Bolsheviks, and even to smaller forces like
Nestor Makhno's. Russian Germans - including Mennonites and
Evangelicals - fought on all sides in the Russian Revolution and
Civil War. Although some Russian Germans were very wealthy, others were quite poor and sympathised strongly with their Slavic neighbours. Educated Russian Germans were just as likely to have leftist and revolutionary sympathies as the ethnically Russian intelligentsia.
In the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed it, many ethnic Germans were displaced within Russia or emigrated from Russia altogether. The chaos surrounding the Russian Civil War was devastating to many German communities, particularly to religious dissenters like the Mennonites. Many Mennonites hold the forces of Nestor Makhno in
Ukraine particularly responsible for large-scale violence against their community.
This period was also one of regular food shortages, caused by famine and the lack of long distance transportation of food during the fighting. Coupled with the
typhus epidemic of the early
1920s, as many as a third of Russia's Germans may have perished. Russian German organisations in the Americas, particularly the
Mennonite Central Committee, organised famine relief in Russia in the late
1920s. As the chaos faded and the
Soviet Union's position became more secure, many Russian Germans simply took advantage of the end of the fighting to emigrate to the Americas. Emigration from the Soviet Union came to a halt in
1929 by
Stalin's decree, leaving roughly one million Russian Germans within Soviet borders.
The Soviet Union seized the farms and businesses of Russian Germans, along with all other farms and businesses, when Stalin ended
Lenin's
New Economic Policy in
1929 and began the forced
collectivisation of agriculture and liquidation of large land holdings.
Nonetheless, Soviet nationalities policy had, to some degree, restored the institutions of Russian Germans in some areas. In July
1924, the
Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was founded, giving the
Volga Germans some autonomous German language institutions. The
Lutheran church, like nearly all religious affiliations in Russia, was ruthlessly suppressed under Stalin. But, for the 600,000-odd Germans living in the Volga German ASSR, German was the language of local officials for the first time since
1881.
When
Nazi Germany broke the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by invading USSR in
1941, the Volga German ASSR was abolished, and Russia's German population was almost entirely banished to
Kazakhstan,
Altai Krai and other remote areas. In 1942 nearly all of the able-bodied German population was conscripted into Soviet
labor armies.
Many of those who remained in European Russia followed the German army in its retreat in
1943 and
1944, remaining in Germany after
WWII. Others immigrated to
Canada, the
United States and
Latin America.
On
November 26,
1948, Stalin made the banishment permanent, declaring that Russia's Germans were permanently forbidden from returning to Europe, but this was rescinded after his death in
1953. Many Russian Germans returned to European Russia, but quite a few remained in Soviet Asia.
Although the post-Stalin Soviet state no longer persecuted ethnic Germans as a group, their Soviet republic was not re-founded. Many Germans in Russia largely assimilated and integrated into Russian society. There were some 2 million ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union in
1989, , and since most German language schools had been closed for decades, many of them could not speak German.
Perestroika opened the Soviet borders and witnessed the beginnings of a massive emigration of Germans from the Soviet Union. With the
collapse of the Soviet Union, large numbers of Russian Germans took advantage of Germany's liberal law of return to leave the harsh conditions of the Soviet
successor states. By 1999 about 1.7 million former Soviet citizens of German origin had immigrated to
Germany. About 6,000 settled in
Kaliningrad Oblast (former
East Prussia).
In the 2002 Russian census, 597,212 Germans were enumerated. Prominent ethnic Germans in modern Russia include
Viktor Kress, governor of
Tomsk Oblast since 1991 and
German Gref Minister of Economics and Trade of Russia since 2000.
Germans in the Baltics
Main articles: Baltic German
The German presence on the eastern shores of the
Baltic Sea dates back to the
Middle Ages when traders and missionaries started arriving from central Europe. The German-speaking
Livonian Brothers of the Sword conquered most of what is now
Estonia and
Latvia (the former
Livonia) in the early
13th century. In
1237, the Brothers of the Sword were incorporated into the
Teutonic Knights.
Over the course of the next several centuries, the Teutonic Order solidified into a regime of mostly German-speaking nobility ruling over indigenous peasants. The religious and economic institutions in late medieval Livonia were mostly controlled by locally born German-speakers and new immigrants from central Europe. Several cities in the area joined the
Hanseatic League, dominated by German-speaking merchants. This German presence brought not only
Christianity to Estonia and Latvia - one of the last parts of Europe Christianity reached - but ultimately also
Lutheranism.
The Teutonic Order progressively lost territory during the
15th century and had practically disappeared as a political force by the middle of the
16th. Although the Baltics passed into the hands of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the south and
Swedish rule in the north, the privileged status of the local German-speaking aristocracy remained largely unchanged. Baltic Germans are estimated to have represented no more than 6% of the population of
Estonia and
Latvia at the end of the
17th century but their dominant position in society remained relatively unchallenged.
During Peter the Great's rule Russia gained control over much of the Baltics from Sweden in the
Great Northern War at the beginning of the
18th century, but left the German nobility in control. Until the Russification policies of the
1880s, the German community and its institutions were intact and protected under the
Russian Empire. The Baltic German nobility were very influential in the
Russian Tsar's army and administration.
The reforms of
Alexander III replaced many of the traditional privileges of the German nobility with elected local governments and more uniform tax codes. Schools were required to teach Russian, and the Russian nationalist press began targeting segregated Germans as unpatriotic and insufficiently Russian. Baltic Germans were also the target of Estonian and Latvian nationalist movements.
When Estonia and Latvia became independent nations after
World War I a degree of autonomy was granted to ethnic German institutions, and German schools and newspapers expanded somewhat during that period. However all of the nobility's traditional privileges were abolished and most of their agricultural land holdings were redistributed to local farmers. At that point, ethnic Germans represented no more than 1.5% of the Estonian population and roughly 3% of the Latvian population, many having left for Germany during the chaos of World War I and the Russian Revolution. Independent
Latvia pursued an open policy of "Latvianisation" in the
1930s which, encouraged by ethnic nationalists in Nazi Germany, induced many Latvian Germans to move to
Germany.
In late 1939, (''after'' the start of the second world war) the entire remaining Baltic German community was repatriated by Hitler to areas Nazi Germany had invaded in western Poland (especially in the
Warthegau). The "legal" basis for this was agreed in the August 1939
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent
Nazi-Soviet population transfers which had given the
Soviet Union a green light to invade and annex Latvia and Estonia in
1940.
Only a handful of Baltic Germans remained under Soviet rule after
1945 mainly among those few who refused Germany's call to leave the baltics.
See also
★
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
★
Nazi-Soviet population transfers
★
German Russian
★
Crimean Goths
★
Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
★
German operation of the NKVD
★
Germans of Kazakhstan
Notes
{{FootnotesSmall|resize=
External links
★
Germans From Russia Heritage Society
★
American Historical Society of Germans from Russia
★
German-Russian Settlement Map
★
Manifesto of the Empress Catherine II issued July 22, 1763
★
Vistula Germans - history and map settlements by religion
★
Germans from Volhynia - genealogy, culture, history
★
JewishGen's Shtetl (Village) Seeker -- Often busy, but very helpful
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