Volga Germans
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Volga Germans (Template:Lang-de or Template:Lang, Template:Lang-rus) 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 (Lutheran, Reformed, Catholics, Moravians, and Mennonites). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Volga Germans emigrated to Kansas, the Dakotas, California and other states across the western United States, as well as to Canada and South America (mainly Argentina and Brazil).
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 during World War II, the Soviet government considered the Volga Germans potential collaborators, and transported many of them eastwards, where thousands died. After the war, the Soviet Union expelled some ethnic Germans to the West. In the late 1980s and 1990s, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved from the Soviet Union to Germany.
See also
- Kazakhstan Germans
- History of Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union
- Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
- Volhynia
- Russian Mennonites
- Baltic Germans
