Volga Germans - The 20th Century

The 20th Century

Following the Russian Revolution, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Autonome Sozialistische Sowjet-Republik der Wolga-Deutschen in German; АССР Немцев Поволжья in Russian) was established in 1924, and it lasted until 1941. Its capital was Engels, known as Pokrovsk (Kosakenstadt in German) before 1931.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was worried that the Volga Germans might collaborate with the invaders. On August 28, 1941, he dissolved the Volga-German ASSR and ordered the immediate relocation of ethnic Germans, both from the Volga and from a number of other traditional areas of settlement. Approximately 400,000 Volga Germans were stripped of their land and houses, and transported eastward to Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia, Altai Krai in Siberia, and other remote areas. Other minority ethnic groups were also deported into internal exile in labor camps, including North Caucasian Muslim ethnic groups, Kalmyks and Crimean Tatars. In 1942 nearly all the able-bodied German population was conscripted to the Labor Army. About one third did not survive the labour camps.

In 1941 after the Nazi invasion, the NKVD (via Prikaz 35105) banned ethnic Germans from serving in the Soviet military. They sent tens of thousands of these soldiers to the Trudarmii (Labor Army).