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Streckerau, 1920 (Novokamenka)

Volga German ASSR location map

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The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (German: Autonome Sozialistische Sowjetrepublik der Wolgadeutschen; Russian: Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика Немцев Поволжья, Avtonomnaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika Nemtsev Povolzh'ya) was an autonomous republic established in Soviet Russia, with its capital at the Volga port of Engels (until 1931 known as Pokrovsk).

[edit] History

It was created following the Russian Revolution, by October 29 Decree of the Soviet government, Volga German Workers' Commune, giving Soviet Germans a special status among the non-Russians in the USSR.^[1]. It was upgraded to the status of Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in February 20 1924,^[1], becoming the first national autonomous unit in the USSR. It occupied the area of compact settlement of the large Volga German minority in Russia, which numbered almost 1.8 million by 1897. The republic was declared on January 6, 1924.

The A.S.S.R. was divided into fourteen cantons: Fjodorowka, Krasny-Kut, Tonkoschurowka, Krasnojar, Pokrowsk, Kukkus, Staraja Poltawka, Pallasowka, Kamenka, Solotoje, Marxstadt, Frank, Seelmann, and Balzer.

After the Russian Revolution the deeply religious Volga Germans, 76%^{[citation needed]}of whom were Christians of the Lutheran faith, immediately came into conflict with the anti-religious Bolshevik revolutionaries.

As of 1919, pastors were labelled counterrevolutionary propagandists and sent to gulags in Siberia.^{[citation needed]}

During the Russian Civil War some Volga Germans enlisted with the White Army and, as a result, fierce attacks by the Red Army on Volga German communities took place. In the aftermath of the war, the famine that swept the U.S.S.R. took the lives of one third of the Volga German population.^{[citation needed]}

To the moment of declaration of the autonomy an amnesty was announced. However it eventually was applied to a small number of people. According to the politics of korenizatsiya, carried out in 1920s in the Soviet Union, usage of German language was promoted in official documents and Germans were encouraged to occupy management positions. According to the 1939 census, there were 605,500 Germans in the autonomy.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 marked the end of the Volga German A.S.S.R. On August 28, 1941, Joseph Stalin issued a formal Decree of Banishment, which abolished the A.S.S.R. and exiled all Volga Germans to the Kazakh S.S.R. and Siberia, fearing they could act as German spies. Many were interned in labor camps merely due to their heritage^[1]. The Republic was formally extinguished in September 7 1941.^[1]

After the war, they were forced to sign contracts that promised they would never return to the Volga area.^{[citation needed]}

Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the situation for Volga Germans improved dramatically, and in 1964 a second decree was issued. It openly admitted the government's guilt in pressing charges against innocent people, and urged the Soviet citizens to give the Volga Germans every assistance possible in support of their "economic and cultural expansion". With the existence of a socialist German state in East Germany now a reality of the post-war world, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was never reestablished. The land area is now part of Saratov Oblast.

Beginning in the early 1980s and accelerating after the fall of the Soviet Union many Volga Germans have emigrated to Germany by taking advantage of the German Law of return, a policy which grants citizenship to all those who can prove to be a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such a person.^[2] This exodus has occurred despite the fact that many Volga Germans either do not speak German or have a poor grasp of the language. However, especially the older Volga German population can usually still speak the Volga German dialect, which is closely related to the German language. In the late 1990s, however, Germany made it more difficult for Russians of German descent to settle in Germany, especially for those who do not speak some of the Volga dialect of German.

[edit] Population

The following table shows population of the ethnic groups of the Volga German A.S.S.R.:

[edit] Head of Government

Central Executive Committee

• 1924-1930 Johannes Schwab
• 1930-1934 Andrew Gleim
• 1934-1935 Heinrich Fuchs
• 1935-1936 Adam Welsch
• 1936-1937 Heinrich Lüft
• 1937-1938 David Rosenberger

Supreme Council

• 1938-1941 Konrad Hoffmann

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Gustav Klinger
• Republics of the Soviet Union
• Volga German
• Ethnic German
• Ethnic cleansing

[edit] External links

• German Villages in the Volga Valley of Russia
• High resolution map of VGASSR
• City of Pallasowka, Canton of the Volga-German ASSR
• Guide to the history of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union (Russian)

v • d • e   Autonomous Republics of the Soviet Union Soviet Union Abkhaz ASSR (1930–1992) · Adjar ASSR (1921–1990) · Bashkir ASSR (1919–1990) · Buryat ASSR (1923–1990; Buryat–Mongol ASSR up to 1958) · Chechen-Ingush ASSR (1936–1944; 1957–1990) · Chuvash ASSR (1925–1990) · Crimean ASSR (1921–1945; 1991–1992) · Dagestan ASSR (1921–1991) · Gorno-Altai ASSR (1990–1991) · Kabardin ASSR (1944–1957) · Kabardino-Balkar ASSR (1936–1944; 1957–1991) · Kalmyk ASSR (1935–1943; 1958–1990) · Karachay-Cherkess ASSR (1990–1991) · Karakalpak ASSR (1932–1992) · Karelian ASSR (1923–1940; 1956–1991) · Kazakh ASSR (1925–1936) · Komi ASSR (1936–1990) · Kirghiz ASSR (1920–1925) · Mari ASSR (1936–1990) · Moldavian ASSR (1924–1940) · Mordovian ASSR (1934–1990) · Mountain ASSR (1920–1924) · Nakhchivan ASSR (1924–1990) · North Ossetian ASSR (1936–1990) · Tajik ASSR (1924–1929) · Tatar ASSR (1920–1990) · Turkestan ASSR (1918–1924) · Tuva ASSR (1961–1990) · Udmurt ASSR (1934–1991) · Volga German ASSR (1918–1941) · Yakut ASSR (1922–1990)

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