Ukraine Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

• Russian Immigrants, 1834-1897, index.
• Russians Immigrating to the United States, 1834-1897, ($). Index. Incomplete.
• Swiss Volhynian Database. Incomplete.
• Immigrants from the Russian Empire, 1898-1922, Library and Archives Canada. Index. Incomplete.
• Ukrainian Immigrants (to Canada), 1891-1930), index, incomplete.
• Russians To America ($), index.
• United States Russians to America Index, 1834-1897

Germans from Russia

• 1750-1943 Namenskartei von Siedlern in Russland und Rücksiedler nach Deutschland, 1750-1943 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by governmental jurisdiction, village, and then surname, of German immigrants residing in Russia. Many cards provide birth and death dates, marriage dates, names of spouses, the number of children, when and from where they emigrated, and other genealogical information. A separate set, arranged alphabetically by former Russian town of residence, indicates those who moved back to Germany, but gives no information on where they eventually settled in Germany. Some cards are out of order, and include localities in Hungary, Rumania, Poland, and other countries outside of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.
• 1750-1943 Bestandskartei der Rußlanddeutschen, 1750-1943 Index cards of ethnic Germans in Russia, arranged alphabetically by surname. While not all the cards contain the same amount of information, many of them supply the given name, present address, birth place and date, place and date of death, earlier and present citizenship; place of origin, year of emigration, and names of ancestors who first emigrated from Germany; places of residence in Russia; year of emigration from Russia; earlier occupation and later activities; religion, whether pedigrees exist; name, places and dates of birth, marriage, and death, occupation for spouse; names, birthplaces and dates for children; and documentary sources.
• 1807-1810 Kartei der Auswanderer aus Elsaß und Baden nach Rußland, 1807-1810 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, for German emigrants from Baden and Elsaß-Lothringen (the latter now Moselle in France) to Russia. Includes ages for spouses and children, year and place of emigration, where family settled, children's ages, and documentary references.
• 1870-1945 Auswandererkartei von Rußlanddeutschen nach China und Nordamerika : 1870-1945 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, for German-speaking emigrants from Russia to China, North America, Argentina, elsewhere. Includes birthplaces and dates for both spouses and children, date of emigration and destination, place and date of marriage, children's names and documentary references.
• 1870-1940 Auswandererkartei der Rußlanddeutschen nach Brasilien, 1870-1940 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, for German-speaking emigrants from Russia to Brazil. Includes information about dates and places of birth and death (or age) for both spouses and children, place and date of marriage, religion, homeland, date of emigration, profession, and documentary sources. Though most destinations were for Brazil, a few settled in Argentina, Canada, and the U. S. A.
• 1870-1940 Auswandererkartei von Rußlanddeutschen nach Kanada, 1870-1940 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, for German-speaking emigrants from Russia to Canada. Includes information on places and dates of birth and death for both spouses and children, homeland, state of allegiance, religion, date of emigration, place of settlement, occupation, place and date of marriage, wife's full name.
• 1899-2012 United States, Obituaries, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1899-2012, index.
• Odessa Digital Library
• 1929-1930 Auswandererkartei der Rußlanddeutschen, 1929-1930 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, for German-speaking emigrants from Russia to Germany, Canada, Brazil, Paraguay, etc.

• 1899-2012 United States, Obituaries, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1899-2012, index.
• Odessa Digital Library

Immigration to Ukraine

Immigration into Ukraine (postindependence (1991)) has been mainly ethnic Ukrainians already living in nearby countries; other immigrants were mostly Crimean Tatars and people fleeing wars in Azerbaijan, Transnistria and Chechnya (a region in Russia). After the start of the War in Donbas in 2014 several hundreds foreigners (mostly Russians and Belarusians) migrated to Ukraine to join its territorial defense battalions and army. Immigration: Countries of Origin

Russia 3,613,240 Belarus 270,751 Kazakhstan 245,072 Uzbekistan 242,390 Moldova 165,126 Poland 145,106

Azerbaijan 90,753 Georgia 71,015 Germany 64,015 Armenia 52,168 Tajikistan 32,386 Kyrgyzstan 29,476

Turkmenistan 24,926 Latvia 19,095 Lithuania 16,012 Hungary 11,235 Estonia 10,964

Volga Germans

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• The Volga Germans are ethnic Germans who settled 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, 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.

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.

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.

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/">