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• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism in Europe (1922-75)
• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy
• Ethnic & religious map of pre-Nazi Poland

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional costumes/dress
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Spain & El Cid
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Prussia vs. France (Nazi Propaganda)
• Qadafi: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars
• Soviet Propaganda: Defeat of Germany 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya
& Caucasus vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Russia
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Inside Bulgaria, 1st Slavic nation,
land of Thracian masters of gold
• 510-year struggle for Albanian homeland, and 552 for Kosovo
• 4,000-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

History of the Volga German settlers in Russia and their genocide and expulsion under Stalin
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •    Bibliography/Sources

This article is about the history of the ethnic Germans in Russia and Central Asia, their role in the Nazi invasion of Russia, and their brutal treatment by Stalin after the war. If an error has been made, feel free to notify us.

Germans settle in Slavic lands:

By the 18th century, the Russian Empire had grown into one of the greatest empires the world had ever known. The consolidating conquests of Ivan the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great from the 16th century until the 18th brought the eastern Slavs from squabbling principalities into a domain stretching from the Baltic to Alaska. The ascension of Catherine the Great, a German, to the throne in 1762, led to the gradual triumph of the Russian Slavs over the mighty Islamic Ottoman Empire in nearly a dozen Russo-Turkish wars to follow. The rapid agricultural development in this growing empire required voluntary, stable labor that could not be exploited in the disparate Mongol and Turkic Muslim populations to the east. Catherine encouraged the immigration of the more developed European nations to the west with the promise of food, stable labor, and protection from the government (at least in theory). To the west, the empire of Germany had dissolved into regional states competing with the mighty German nations of Prussia (Preußen) and Austria. Germans, with their uncertain futures and dismal living conditions, accepted the offer in the thousands, and settled with other smaller European peoples in southern Russia. They have become known as the Wolgadeutsche, or Volga Germans because of their typical settlement along the Volga river of central Russia.

The Volga River stretches from Russia to the Caucasus and empties in the Caspian sea. Vikings used to raid along this river after the 9th century, creating the basis of the first pan-Slavic Russian state of Kievan Rus. Kazakhstan to the east, where the Germans were deported with other political criminals, was formerly composed of Mongol Muslim tribes.

These Germans strongly retained the German language, customs, ethnic identity, and their Lutheran and Protestant religion, and seldom miscegenated with the Slavs or other local populations. Although their loyalties were not with German states or, later, the reunified Germany itself, their strong identification with their Germanic ethnic and cultural heritage prevented their assimilation into the Russian and Soviet sociocultural ethos, and would later be their demise for their support for the invading Nazi German hordes.

Volga Germans worship at a Lutheran church on the Volga river (from lhm.org)

Political coalescence in response to the Russian Revolution:

The Russian Revolution polarized the social and political experience of Russia's many minority populations. The collapsed empire was split into warring political factions: the reactionary “White Russians” either endorsed the felled monarchy or a non-Communist nationalist government, whilst the “Red Russians” promulgated the seizure of private industry and the ascension of a populist and unchallenged vanguard party that would, in theory, support the welfare of the people. Immediately after the victory of the Reds, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin formalized representation of the Volga German minority with the creation of the so-called Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (autonomische sozialistische Sowjetrepublik der Wolgadeutschen) near modern-day Muslim Kazakhstan. This play of support from the Reds was an effort to coax the Germans away from their strong support of the Whites and the deposed monarchy, and to perpetuate the glory of the socialist vision. The German socialist republic constituent of the Soviet Union represented nearly a half-million citizens – mostly Germans and Slavs – but excluded more than a million other Germans scattered throughout the neighboring people's republics and the Ukrainian SSR. The republic formally lasted from 1924 until 1941. Intense resistance from the Volga Germans to Soviet rule, as well as the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by Axis Hungary, Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria led to the formal abolition of the German ASSR in 1941.

Russia has, during the Soviet Union period and in the modern era, used the system of "ethnic republics" under Russian rule to give the illusion of equality. The German ethnic republic after 1923 was never reborn after Stalin's genocide of the Germans. (CLICK TO ENLARGE). Read our Map of Russian Ethnic Republics Map for more information.

The flag of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (from flagspot.net)

The official seal of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The Communist rhetoric and imagery was promulgated by the Soviets instead of the Volga Germans themselves.

The expulsion and genocide of Volga Germans under Stalinist rule:

When the Germans violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of non-aggression between the Soviet Union and the Axis with Operation Barbarossa (1941), the ethnic situation in the USSR became problematic. The intense Russification, homogenization, secularization, and Communist re-education of the Soviet world under Joseph Stalin caused many minorities to view the Nazis as liberators. The Nazis enjoyed broad support among the USSR's Muslims, Cossacks, and Volga Germans, each seeking to weaken the Russian armies with hopes of eventual liberation. The Cossacks, long supporters of the monarchy and bitter opponents of Communism, were shipped from Ukraine to the steppes of Turkestan for their collaboration with the Nazis. The destruction of religion made Central Asian Muslims and the Lutheran Germans particularly collaborative with the Nazis. Predictably, the racialist idea of protecting German blood from the “pollution” of Slavic and “Jewish Communist” domination became popular among Germans in Russia, and the Axis gained large pockets of allied rebel factions throughout the Soviet Union. Stalin, never allowing obstacles to impede the ultimate supremacy of the USSR, responded to this internal schism by branding ethnic Germans and Tatars as enemies of the state. Both populations suffered mass expulsion, forced enslavement into labor camps, mass executions for sedition, and forced conscription. The Soviet government naturally made no effort to alleviate the sweeping famines that plagued Central Asia during and after the wars, leading to extreme loss of life among Germans of Russia. Thousands of Germans were shipped to Siberia to participate in Soviet public works projects or to die as political prisoners, and few survived.

The Volga Germans were expelled with the Cossacks and Muslims to the wastelands of Kazakhstan for the crime of sedition

Most of the Volga Germans and Tatar Muslims were forcibly expelled from their traditional homes southeast to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), where they could no longer pose as an obstacle to Soviet triumph in the desolate plains of this Muslim Mongol steppes. In Kazakhstan, these distinct peoples underwent re-education programs to stifle their potential for revolt and make them feasible for service to the Soviets. The German and Tatar languages were outlawed, the Arabic and Latin scripts abolished, the Tatars' Qur'ans and the Germans' Bibles were burnt, the Russian language became compulsory, Christmas was banned, and the new refugees were forbidden from leaving government-regulated prisoner settlements. Food shortage, lack of rations and funding, and insufficient legal representation were rampant. Although this appears as the design of Stalin's brutal oppression against innocents, it must be acknowledged that Tatar Muslims and Volga Germans virulently opposed the Soviet Union and supported the invading German armies. An underdeveloped and divided empire like the USSR that was weeks from total defeat at the hands of the Nazis was forced to make ruthless efforts towards stabilization and consolidation.

Despite his modern association as a ruthless criminal, the absolutely ruthless Stalin must be acknowledged for bringing one of the world's backward and impoverished states into the undisputed world superpower (at least initially) that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany. His ruthless policies of fearless destruction prevented his empire from total collapse. Nonetheless, he is (accurately) credited as one of the worst mass murderers of all time. Click here to see photos of my trip to Stalin's house.

Post-war emigration of Volga Germans, the return to the Fatherland, and the status of Germans in Muslim Central Asia today:

The death of the brutal iron dictator Stalin in 1953 changed the situation entirely. The triumph of the Soviet Union was complete with the close of one of the bloodiest conflicts in history that sent tens of millions of Soviet citizens to their deaths, and the USSR was (at the time) the world's superpower. The pacified and emasculated Germans, lost in the plains of once-Muslim Kazakhstan, became more well represented and less readily oppressed. The Volga Germans remained in Central Asian SSRs, but were allowed almost immediately after his death to travel throughout the Union, although never again would an ethnic-German state be re-established. They did not enjoy the equal citizenship rights of other ethnic populations. Whilst other ethnic groups of the USSR were given the illusion of autonomy and Communist equality in constituent ethnic republics under Moscow's rule, the Germans were treated as peripheral subjects. The Russification and homogenization efforts prevailing during Stalinist rule had made the Volga Germans into functional constituents of the Moscow regime, although they managed to maintain their Germanic and Christian traditions in private.

The partial liberalization of the faltering Soviet Union under Gorbachev's perestroika reforms again changed the social situation of the Germans and other deportee populations in Kazakhstan and south Russia. Throughout the 1980s, Volga Germans began to emigrate outside of the Soviet Union to East Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Canada, the United States, and Eastern Europe. Many Germans remained along the Volga and in Central Asia, where they still reside today. Germans gradually enjoyed the legal rights of basic citizens, although they still lacked a functional political state sponsored by the central government that the Circassians, Turks, Finns, and even the frequently victimized Jews enjoyed (in theory). The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 under Boris Yeltsin completed the process of liberation for the Germans and other ethnic minorities in Central Asia and southern Russia. Germans emigrated by the tens of thousands to eastern Europe and especially Germany, although most of the Volga Germans remained living in Kazakhstan due to the preference of maintaining the certainty of their farms and homes there instead of the uncertain future of living in a new nation. The German Law of Return (Heimkehrungsgesetz) allowed ethnic Germans displaced by World War II to return to the Fatherland with open immigration, although this became stunted in favor of Turkish labor immigration by the end of the 1990's. German communities who had lived in Bohemia (Czechia), Pommern (now Poland), and Elsaß (Alsace, now France) were removed from their homes due to post-war territorial changes. The cost of subsidizing this foreign immigration was far too expensive in comparison with the cheap labor of Turkish and Eastern European workers, and the immigration of Poles and Germans throughout the 90's became gradually replaced by Turks. Nonetheless, thousands of Wolgadeutsche re-assimilated into German society in East, West, and reunified Germany after the Cold War.

The unofficial Wolgadeutsche flag of international ethnic Germans with Volga descent

Today, Germans of Volga German descent live in the United States, Germany, Austria, Eastern Europe, Canada, and especially South American nations that were very open to post-war German expatriation. Most Volga Germans today remain along the Volga and in Muslim Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The German Law of Return has atrophied in practice with gradual liberalization, and few Volga Germans have returned to Germany since the end of the 1990's. The Central Asian Muslim states have become more ethnically polarized since the fall of the USSR, and in response Germans have defined themselves in contrast with their Turkic, Mongol, and Slavic neighbors. Today, officially 2% of Kazakhstan is ethnic German (CIA World Factbook). There are roughly 597,212 Germans living in Russia today, mostly along the Volga (perepis2002.ru). Small German communities settled in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan along with Russian laborers and entrepreneurs. Despite the historical effort to forcibly destroy their Germanic culture, language, identity, and religion, the Germans of Central Asia have strongly protected their heritage even through one of the most brutally-oppressive dictatorships of the 20th century.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is the owner and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical evolution in relation to and against each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

-see the notes under images for source accreditation

-CIA World Factbook

- Russian Census: "National composition of population" (perepis2002.ru)