a. Known as "Pokrovsk" or "Kosakenstadt" before 1931.
Streckerau, 1920 (Novokamenka).Pokrowsk, 1928 (Engels).Administrative division of the republic after its dissolution
The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (German: Autonome Sozialistische Sowjetrepublik der Wolgadeutschen; Russian: Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика Немцев Поволжья, romanized: Avtonomnaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika Nemtsev Povolzh'ya), abbreviated as the Volga German ASSR, was an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR. Its capital city was Engels (known as Pokrovsk or Kosakenstadt before 1931) located on the Volga River. As a result of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the republic was abolished and Volga Germans were exiled.
At the moment of declaration of autonomy, an amnesty was announced. However, it eventually was applied to a small number of people. According to the policy of korenizatsiia, carried out in the 1920s in the Soviet Union, usage of the German language was promoted in official documents and Germans were encouraged to occupy management positions. According to the 1939 census, there were 366,685 Germans in the republic.
By 1 January 1941, the Volga German ASSR included the city of Engels and 22 cantons:[3] Baltsersky, Gmelinsky, Gnadenflyursky, Dobrinsky, Zelmansky, Zolotovsky, Ilovatsky, Kamensky, Krasnoyarsky, Krasnokutsky, Kukkussky, Lizandergeysky, Marientalsky, Marxshtadtsky, Pallasovsky, Staro-Poltavsky, Ternovsky, Untervaldsky, Fedorovsky, Franksky, Ekgeimsky and Erlenbakhsky.
Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the situation for Volga Germans improved dramatically. In 1964, a second decree was issued, openly admitting the government's guilt in pressing charges against innocent people and urging Soviet citizens to give Volga Germans every assistance in their "economic and cultural expansion".[citation needed] With the existence of a socialist German state in East Germany now a reality of the post-war world, the Volga German ASSR was never reestablished.
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.[6]
1921–1922: Alexander Moor (1889–1938) (World War I and Russian Civil War participant, Russian general and statesman, Turkmenistani statesman, Uzbekistani statesman, shot in Tashkent)
1922–1924: Wilhelm Kurz (1892–1938) (Russian statesman, shot)
1924–1930: Johannes Schwab (1888–1938) (Russian statesman, shot)
1930–1934: Andrew Gleim (1892–1954) (Russian statesman)
1934–1935: Heinrich Fuchs (?–1938) (Russian statesman, shot)
1935–1936: Adam Welsch (1893–1937) (World War I participant, chekist, regional party leader, Russian statesman, shot)
1936–1937: Heinrich Lüft (1899–1937) (Russian statesman, shot)
^Президиум Верховного Совета СССР. Указ от 28 августа 1941 г «О переселении немцев, проживающих в районах Поволжья». (Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Decree of 28 August 1941 On Resettlement of Germans living in the Volga Region. ).
^Barbara Dietz, "German and Jewish migration from the former Soviet Union to Germany: Background, Trends and Implications", Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 26, No. 4 (October 2000): 635-652.
