Volk auf dem Weg: Transnational Migration of the Russian‐Germans from 1763 to the Present Day

Abstract

AbstractThis article traces the migration patterns of the Russian‐Germans across international borders from their initial settlement in the Russian Empire starting in 1763 up to the present day. In particular it analyses the reasons behind these migration flows. Both push and pull factors motivated the immigration of ethnic Germans to the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A similarly complex combination of such factors spurred the various waves of emigration by Russian‐Germans out of this territory during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article seeks to illuminate the primary causes of these migrant flows. It covers the main waves of German immigration into the Russian Empire including the initial settlement in the Volga region from 1763 to 1769, the establishment of the Mennonite colonies in Ukraine from 1789 to 1809 and the migration of German speakers to the Black Sea area from 1804 to 1856. It examines the various waves of emigration out of the territory of the former Russian Empire starting in the 1870s and continuing until today. The article goes on to analyse the immigration of Russian‐Germans to the Americas from Tsarist Russia from the 1870s until the First World War. Then it deals with the various waves of Russian‐German emigration under the Soviet regime starting in 1917–21 and reoccurring later in the 1920s, 1940s, 1970s and finally from 1987 to the collapse of the USSR. Finally, it examines the emigration of Russian‐Germans from Russia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia and their settlement in Germany until 2006. Special attention is given to the history of Stalinist repression and later discrimination against the Russian‐Germans as factors in their desire to emigrate.