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The Volga Germans (German: Wolgadeutsche, pronounced [ˈvɔlɡaˌdɔʏtʃə] ⓘ; Russian: поволжские немцы, romanized: povolzhskiye nemtsy) are ethnic Germans who settled and historically lived along the Volga River in the region of southeastern European Russia around Saratov and close to Ukraine nearer to the south.
The first contingents of Black Sea Germans arrived in Argentina in 1898. Volga Germans, who had begun migrating to the country 20 years earlier, outnumbered Black Sea Germans at all times. Thus, many of them joined Argentine towns where there were already Volga Germans and in other cases founded their own colonies.
Russian Germans frequently lived in distinct communities and maintained German language schools and German churches. They were primarily Volga Germans from the lower Volga River valley; Black Sea Germans from the Crimean Peninsula / Black Sea region; or Volhynian Germans from the governorate of Volhynia in what is Ukraine .
The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory military service in the Russian Empire, large groups of Germans from Russia emigrated to the Americas (mainly Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina ...
Many Catholic Volga Germans chose South America as their new homeland because the official religion in Brazil and Argentina was Roman Catholic. The ratio of Catholic to Protestant Volga Germans in South America was 7 to 1. The opposite was true in Russia, Protestant Volga Germans outnumbered Catholics by about 2 to 1.
For example, an ethnic German born in a village in Odesa is a Ukraine German, a Black Sea German and a Russia German (the former Russian Empire). Alternatively, the Germans of Odesa belong to the group of the Germans of Ukraine, of the Black Sea, of Russia, and, less specifically, of Eastern Europe. The most populous division are the Volga Germans.
The number of "ethnic Catholics" in Russia, that is to say Poles and Germans, and smaller minorities, is continually declining due to deaths, emigration, and secularisation. At the same time there has been a discrete rise of ethnic Russian converts to the Catholic Church.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 marked the end of the Volga German ASSR. On 28 August 1941, the republic was formally abolished and, out of fear they could act as German collaborators, all Volga Germans were exiled to the Kazakh SSR, Altai and Siberia. [4] Many were interned in labor camps merely due to their heritage. [2]