Russia Germans

Russia Germans

Flag of Volga Germans
Map of the distribution of Russia Germans in Russia in 2010.
Regions with significant populations
Russia	394 000 (2010)
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic	842 000 (1989)
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	2 039 000 (1989)
Languages
German, Russian, Mennonite Low German, Swabian German
Religion
Historically protestant and catholic

Famous Russian Germans:
Denis Fonwisin, Michael de Tolly
Alexander von Benckendorff, Catherine the Great, Peter Struve, Alexei Rüdiger
Alisa Freindlich, Otto Schmidt

The term Russia Germans (in German, Russlanddeutsche, Lit. "Germans of Russia"; in Russian, российские немцы or русские немцы) means "Germans of Russia," that is to say, Germans and/or their native descendants living in Russia or in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, not to be confused with the total number of Germans in Russia. A majority of Russia Germans, including many mixed Russian-German families, have immigrated to German-speaking countries, especially Germany.^[1] The term Russlanddeutsche is often mistranslated as "Russian-Germans."

Terminology[]

Russia Germans can receive a more specific name according to where and when they settled. For example, an ethnic German born in a village in Odessa is a Ukraine German, a Black Sea German and a Russia German (the former Russian Empire). Alternatively, the Germans of Odessa 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.

History[]

See the main article on history of Germans in Russia.

Russia German resettlers in Germany[]

During the advance of the Red Army in the course of World War II, many Black Sea Germans, who had fallen under National Socialist dominion, were relocated by the Nazi SS to Warthegau. They received German citizenship ("administrative resettlers"), but after the end of the war they were forcibly repatriated to Russia. Only in the context of Ostpolitik could more than 70,000 Russian Germans move to Germany in the 1970s and 1980.^[2]

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, voluntary migration skyrocketed and the term "return" became common. Since middle of the 1980 more than 2.3 million have emigrated to Germany.^[3] The resettlers and late emigres who arrived after the dissolution of the USSR were comparatively well integrated; in 2010 the Swiss journal Neue Zürcher Zeitung called the will to integrate "exemplary",^[4] though views conflict on the social and cultural integration of Russia Germans. Men work more often than average in manufacturing and construction, and women often work in marginal employment. Overall, with all family members have taken together, the income distribution of Russia German households is similar to that of the non-immigrant population.^[5]

When the Ruso-German relationship deteriorated after 2014, declining further since the 2015 start of the refugee crisis in Germany, many Russia Germans felt unfairly treated and unwelcome.^[6] Russia had begun to attack Western democracies with propaganda. In the Russian media often consumed by Russia Germans, a mood was set against Chancellor Merkel and neo-fascism was presented as Germany's main characteristic.^[7] In 2017, for the first time since 2004, the Federal Agency for Civic Education provided voting advice in Russian.^[8] Russia German families had not spoken German over fear of discrimination after the Second World War, but had never learned to form a free opinion, according to the Russia German journalist Ella Schindler. Some withdrew "into the well-known Soviet past" and familiar simple explanatory patterns offered by Russian television.^[9]

See also[]

• History of Germans in Russia, Ukraine and the Soviet Union

References[]