Saratov Oblast
Saratov Oblast is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Saratov. As of the 2021 Russian cens ...
,
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
Volga River
The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...
.
It was founded by
Volga Germans
The Volga Germans (, ; ) 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.
Recruited as immigrants to Russia in the ...
in 1767 and until 1941 was known as Lauwe; other German names for the settlement were Laube and Schönfeld.
History
It was founded on August 19, 1767 by the colonial agency LeRoy and Pictet and 169
Lutheran
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
immigrants from Germany,The Center for Volga German Studies,
Concordia University (Oregon)
Concordia University was a private school, private Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) university in Portland, Oregon, that closed in spring 2020. One remaining program, the accelerated bachelor's degree in nursing, continues to operate und ...
Catherine the Great
Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...
's manifesto of July 22, 1763, which guaranteed settlers in the Russian Empire free transport and monetary support in reaching their new
colonies
A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their '' metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often or ...
, free choice of settlement location, freedom of trade, freedom from taxation for thirty years, interest-free loans for ten years, freedom of religion, freedom from conscription in perpetuity, and freedom of return to their homelands, but at their own expense.Germans from Russia Heritage Society Lauwe: A German Village on the Volga River The settlement was named Lauwe after the first elder of the village. Its original demarcation consisted of 4,455 '' desiatinas''. The first forty-seven settler families came from Bavaria (
Nuremberg
Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...
), Baden, Hesse (
Darmstadt
Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...
and
Neu-Isenburg
Neu-Isenburg (, ) is a town in Germany, located in the Offenbach (district), Offenbach district of Hesse. It is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Regional Authority, Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area and has a population of 38,204 (2020). The town i ...
), the Palatinate, the Rhineland, Saxony, and Brandenburg. It was one of the ten colonies established by LeRoy and Pictet south of
Saratov
Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...
on the "meadow" (eastern) side of the Volga and along its eastern
tributary
A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...
, the Terlyk. In later years, it was also known under the German names of Laube and Schönfeld.
In 1774, Lauwe was looted by the rebels of the peasant rebellion led by Yemelyan Pugachev.
The German colonists' special status was nullified under the
Russification
Russification (), Russianisation or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians adopt Russian culture and Russian language either voluntarily or as a result of a deliberate state policy.
Russification was at times ...
measures which began as part of Tsar Alexander II's reforms and continued under his successor, Alexander III, and some of the male colonists who had been conscripted were killed in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1888. Between 1871 and 1914, some of the Volga Germans left Lauwe and emigrated to North and South America.
When
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
broke the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
and invaded the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
in
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
in 1941,
Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
abolished the
Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (; ), abbreviated as the Volga German ASSR, was an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR. Its capital c ...
and signed an order of banishment against ethnic Germans, which took effect on September 16, 1941. The population of Lauwe was exiled to the
Kazakh SSR
The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Kazakhstan, the Kazakh SSR, KSSR, or simply Kazakhstan, was one of the transcontinental constituent republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Located in northern Centr ...
and the village was renamed Yablonovka ('apple-tree village', after a nearby ravine where apple trees were growing wild) in 1941. The log houses built by the ethnic Germans were torn down and used as firewood.
Post-war hopes for the re-establishment of the Volga German ASSR and return of the deportees were dashed by a February 21, 1992 decree of
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to ...
in Saratov, and Yablonovka is now populated primarily by Russians.
Demographics
The following table shows population development in Lauwe up to 1931.
References
Further reading
*Igor Plewe. ''Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764–1767''. Göttingen: Nordost-Institut
**Volume 1. ''Kolonien Anton - Franzosen''. 1999. .
**Volume 2. ''Kolonien Galka - Kutter''. 2001. .
**Volume 3. ''Kolonien Laub - Preuss''. 2005. .
**Volume 4. ''Reinhardt - Warenburg''. 2008. .
*Arkadij A. German and Igor' R. Pleve. ''Nemcy Povolž·ja: kratkij istoričeskij očerk: učebnoe posobie''. Saratov: knižnoe izdatel'stvo Saratovskogo Univ., 2002.
*Karl Stumpp. ''Die Auswanderung aus Deutschland nach Russland in den Jahren 1763 bis 1862''. Self-published: Tübingen,
972
Year 972 ( CMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Spring – Emperor John I Tzimiskes divides the Bulgarian territories, recently held by the Kievan Rus', into six ...
. 9th ed. tuttgart Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 2009.
*Karl Stumpp, tr. with Joseph S. Height. ''The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862''. Lincoln, Nebraska: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1973.
*Adam Geisinger. ''From Catherine to Khrushchev: the story of Russia's Germans.'' Winnipeg: Marian Press, 1974. (London: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 1993, )
*Gottlieb Beratz. ''The German Colonies on the Lower Volga.'' Lincoln, Nebraska: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1991. .