318,531
edits
m
→Volga Germans
m (→Volga Germans) |
|||
| Line 53: | Line 53: | ||
*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). | *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, Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Dakotas, California, Washington''' and other states across the western United States, as well as to '''Canada and South America (mainly Argentina and Brazil'''). | *In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many '''Volga Germans emigrated to Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Dakotas, California, Washington''' 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 deported many of them eastward, where thousands died. After the war, the Soviet Union expelled a moderate number of ethnic Germans to the West. In the late 1980s and 1990s, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved from the Soviet Union to Germany.<ref>" | *After the '''German invasion of the Soviet Union''' in 1941 during World War II, the Soviet government considered the Volga Germans potential collaborators, and deported many of them eastward, where thousands died. After the war, the Soviet Union expelled a moderate number of ethnic Germans to the West. In the late 1980s and 1990s, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved from the Soviet Union to Germany.<ref name="history">"History of Germans in Russia, Ukraine and the Soviet Union", in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Germans_in_Russia,_Ukraine_and_the_Soviet_Union, accessed 12 July 2021.</ref> | ||
====Black Sea Germans (Moldova and Ukraine)==== | |||
*The Black Sea Germans - including the Bessarabian Germans and the Dobrujan Germans - settled the territories of the northern bank of the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine in the late 18th and the 19th century. | |||
*Catherine the Great had gained this land for Russia through her two wars with the Ottoman Empire (1768–1774) and from the annexation of the Crimean Khanates (1783). | |||
*The area of settlement did not develop as compact as that of the Volga territory, and a chain of ethnic German colonies resulted. The first German settlers arrived in 1787, first from '''West Prussia''', followed by immigrants from '''Western and Southwestern Germany''' (including Roman Catholics), and from the '''Warsaw area'''. Also many Germans, beginning in 1803, immigrated from the northeastern area of '''Alsace''' west of the Rhine River. They settled roughly '''30 miles northeast of Odessa (city) in Ukraine''', forming several enclaves that quickly expanded, resulting in daughter colonies springing up nearby.<ref name="history"/> | |||
====Crimea==== | |||
*From 1783 onward the Crown initiated a systematic settlement of '''Russians, Ukrainians, and Germans''' in the '''Crimean Peninsula''' in order to dilute the native population of the Crimean Tatars. | |||
*In 1939, around 60,000 of the 1.1 million inhabitants of Crimea were ethnic German. | |||
*Two years later, following the end of the alliance and the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union, the government '''deported ethnic Germans from the Crimea to Central Asia''' in the Soviet Union's program of population transfers. Conditions were harsh and many of the deportees died. It was not until the period of Perestroika in the late 1980s that the government granted surviving ethnic Germans and their descendants the right to return from Central Asia to the peninsula.<ref name="history"/> | |||
====Volhynian Germans (Poland and Ukraine)==== | |||
*The migration of Germans into '''Volhynia '''(as of 2013 covering northwestern Ukraine from a short distance west of Kiev to the border with Poland) occurred under significantly different conditions than those described above. | |||
*By the end of the 19th century, Volhynia had more than 200,000 German settlers. Their migration began as '''encouraged by local noblemen, often Polish landlords, who wanted to develop their significant land-holdings in the area for agricultural use'''. Although the noblemen offered certain incentives for the relocations, the Germans of Volhynia received none of the government's special tax and military service freedoms granted to Germans in other areas. | |||
*Probably 75% or more of the Germans came from '''Congress Poland''', with the balance coming directly from other regions such as '''East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, Württemberg, and Galicia''', among others. | |||
*Shortly after 1800, the first German families started moving into the area. A surge occurred after the first Polish rebellion of 1831 but by 1850, Germans still numbered only about 5000. The largest migration came after the second Polish rebellion of 1863, and Germans began to flood into the area by the thousands. By 1900 they numbered about 200,000. | |||
*The vast majority of these Germans were '''Protestant Lutherans''' (in Europe they were referred to as Evangelicals). Limited numbers of '''Mennonites from the lower Vistula River region''' settled in the south part of Volhynia. '''Baptists and Moravian Brethren''' settled mostly 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 and South America. | |||
*Between 1911 and 1915, a '''small group of Volhynian German farmers''' (36 families - more than 200 people) chose to move to '''Eastern Siberia''', making use of the resettlement subsidies of the government's Stolypin reform of 1906–1911. They settled in three villages '''(Pikhtinsk, Sredne-Pikhtinsk, and Dagnik)''' in what is today Zalarinsky District of Irkutsk Oblast, where they became known as the "Bug Hollanders". Their descendants, many with German surnames, continue to live in the district into the 21st century.<ref name="history/"> | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||
<references/> | <references/> | ||