Volga Germans Research Articles

Volga German surnames and Alzheimer's disease in Argentina: an epidemiological perspective.

The N141I variant (PSEN1 gene) is associated with familial forms of early-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) in descendants of Volga Germans, whose migration to Argentina is well documented. As a proxy for geographic origin, surnames can be a valuable tool in population studies. The 2015 Argentine Electoral Registry provided geographic data for 30,530,194 individuals, including 326,922 with Volga German surnames. Between 2005 and 2017, the Ministry of Health recorded 4,115,216 deaths, of which 17,226 were attributed to AD and related causes. The study used both diachronic and synchronic data to identify patterns of territorial distribution and co-spatiality, using Moran's I and generalised linear model statistics. The frequency of surnames of Volga German origin accounts for 43.53% of the variation in deaths from AD and three clusters of high non-random frequency were found. Almost 150 years later, people descending from the Volga migration remain highly concentrated and may have a different risk of developing AD. The identification of spatial patterns provides reliable guidance for medical research and highlights the importance of specific health policies for particular populations.

Конституционный процесс в Республике немцев Поволжья в 1920–1930-е гг.: содержание и сущность

The article examines the constitutional policy of the Soviet state in relation to the autonomous republic of Volga Germans that existed in 1924–1941 as part of the RSFSR, shows this policy as an integral part of the general national-state policy towards national minorities, to whom the Bolshevik government was granted a certain form of statehood. The characteristic of the two constitutions of the Non–Republic of 1926 and 1937 is given – as octroated, i.e. granted from above and therefore contained as much independence as allowed by the center. The state policy related to the implementation of the content of these constitutions is described. The principle of octroism unified and strictly regulated national life, giving it a rather limited place and thus allowing the authorities to quickly implement the process of integrating peoples into a new socio-political system.

The Volga Germans’ Confirmation as the Christians’ Lifestyle Evidence

The present paper deals with the confirmation evidence of the Volga Germans in the form of the visual communication artifacts, in which religious meaning has been depicted. The semiotic analysis has identified the structure of the confirmation documents in the symbolic space. The structure contains a number of similar grounds or markers and indicates the formation of the Volga Germans’ confessional culture. The religious ceremonies’ transmission and the traditional forms’ reconstruction by the Lutheran community in «the alien environment» were based on the existential nature, contributed to the preservation of the Russian Germans’ ethno cultural image, to the ethnic identity functioning and to the national consciousness determination. Having resettled to the vast Russian expanses and to the Volga region in particular and being isolated from their homeland, the Germans built their mode of life in accordance with the traditional religious way of life. Lutherans did their best in perpetuating every stage of the Christians’ lifestyle, the Lutheran confirmation texts detecting it easily. The preserved extant examples of the confirmation evidence maintained personal data of each believer. The quotations from the Bible, the Psalms, the lines from the pastor’s sermon, the verses of the anthems and chants, the Biblical stories paintings have been found in the symbolic space under research. Thus, he confirmation evidence has been proved to comprise Lutheran confessional culture markers on the verbal, artistic, musical levels in the symbolic space of the visual communication.

VERBAL-SEMANTIC LEVEL OF THE LANGUAGE PERSONALITY OF A VOLGA GERMAN (BASED ON MY CHILDREN BY G. YAKHINA)

The article describes the verbal-semantic level of the linguistic personality of a Volga German based on the material of G. Yakhina’s novel My Children.
 The question of the linguistic personality as an object of linguistics continues to remain one of the most pressing, since the linguistic personality in the conditions of intercultural communication, with a certain set of skills require a comprehensive and integrative approach. There is still no single concept of understanding the linguistic personality with theoretical and methodological positions. However, it is obvious that the variety of positions on this linguistic object allows one to refer to various kinds of material: in particular, modern Russian novel. The novel My Children represents relevant and valuable material for study if it is considered from the perspective of the anthropocentric paradigm of linguistics. This is due to the presence in the novel of a large number of linguistic personalities, interesting both in their verbal-semantic component, as well as in their cognitive and pragmatic ones.
 The relevance of the chosen topic is also motivated by the linguistic personality of the writer Guzel Yakhina herself, who is a bilingual philologist, which cannot but be reflected in the language of her works. In the article, a specific example of the description and analysis of a certain level of a character’s linguistic personality is presented. The material included over 1000 examples of various subsystems and different levels of linguistic units related to the characteristics of the phenomenon of linguistic personality. The main attention in the article is paid to the lexical and syntactic levels of text material, analyzed using the techniques of descriptive, semantic, functional-stylistic methods, as well as the method of stylistic interpretation, etc. The results of the study allow us to speak about the special linguistic personality of the Volga Germans with their own individual characteristics, in which both cultural and social components are clearly manifested, which is obvious when analyzing the verbal-semantic level of the linguistic personality; the conclusion about the possibility and potential of studying other components of linguistic personality in the presented way is substantiated.

Языковая репрезентация этнографических реалий российских немцев (на примере романов Г. Яхиной «Дети мои» и Г. Завацкого „Wir selbst“ / «Мы сами»)

The aim of the study is to identify German ethnographic realia in novels and the peculiarities of representation of these realia in the linguistic consciousness of Germans and Russia Germans. The paper attempts to determine the psycholinguistic significance of German realia on the basis of associative experiment data and to establish their nuclear-peripheral organisation for these ethnic groups. The study is original in that it is the first to identify and systematise German ethnographic realia based on the material of novels about Volga Germans, as well as to describe mental representations of German everyday and ethnographic realia in the two ethnic groups and to compare these representations with the image of realia in the artistic reality of the novels. As a result of the study, it has been found that the authors most often use ethnographic realia, especially everyday realia, including food and drinks, clothes and shoes, housing and property, to describe the life of Russia Germans. The ideas of Germans and Russia Germans about German realia most often coincide in the semantic aspect, but differ in the evaluation component.

On the concepts of “Russian Germans” and “Volga Germans”: A psycholinguistic aspect (based on a free associative experiment)

The article studies the psycholinguistic meanings of the concepts “the Russian Germans” and “the Volga Germans” in the linguistic consciousness of the Russian Germans and establishes the features of the linguistic self-presentation of this ethnic group. To study linguistic consciousness, a free associative experiment was conducted among the Russian Germans, in which informants were asked to record spontaneous associations to the stimulus “the Russian Germans” and “the Volga Germans”. As a result of the experiment, 171 reactions were received to the “Russian Germans” stimulus, 183 reactions to the “Volga Germans” stimulus. To determine the psycholinguistic meanings, the method of semantic interpretation of associations was used with the allocation of core and peripheral meanings. As a result of the study, we found that the psycholinguistic meanings of the concepts have similar meanings in the linguistic consciousness of the Russian Germans and are defined through lexemes indicating family ties (“family”, “ancestors”), people of the inner circle (“friends”) and compatriots (“countrymen”), as well as the tragic events in the history of the Russian Germans of the 20th century (“deportation”, “expatriation”, “exile”). In addition, psycholinguistic meanings have a pronounced positive connotation.

История становления и развития микробиологии в Саратовском государственном университете

The review presents the origins of the study of microbiology at the Saratov State University, the formation and development from the establishment of the Department of Microbiology at Saratov University in 1918 under the leadership of Alexei Ilyich Berdnikov to the educational and scientific-practical activities of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Physiology at the present time. The history of the department is closely connected with the activities of outstanding microbiologists Alexander Alexandrovich Bogomolets, Sergey Mikhailovich Nikanorov, the first head of the Department of Microbiology of the Faculty of Biology of SSU – Albert Reingoldovich Werner, heads of the Department Maria Petrovna Gnutenko, Marina Konstantinovna Shcheglova, Pavel Abramovich Chirov, who formed the main directions of scientific research. Pages of the history of our country were reflected in the life of the staff of the department: the repressions of the 1930s, the deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941, the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. In 1955 The Department of Microbiology is combined with the Department of Plant Anatomy and Physiology. The department has become the cradle of scientific and educational departments of Saratov institutions – the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics of SSU, the Department of Microbiology of SSMU, the Federal State Institution of the Russian Anti-Plague Institute “Microbe” of Rospotrebnadzor. Currently, scientific and pedagogical activities of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Physiology of the SSU N. G. Chernyshevsky is provided by the head of the department Sergey Alexandrovich Stepanov, doсents Alexandra Mikhailovna Peterson, Elena Vladimirovna Glinskaya, Denis Valeryevich Utkin, Valeria Valeryevna Korobko, Mikhail Yuryevich Kasatkin.

Лингвистическое наследие А. П. Дульзона как источник изучения немецкой топонимии Поволжья

The article deals with the detailed research of the German microtoponymy of the Volga region. The toponym source is the doctoral thesis of a famous Russian linguist A. P. Dulzon, with a special chapter, where a list of 1049 geographical names of the Volga Germans is presented. The linguistic heritage of A. P. Dulzon, which addressed the studying of the Volga region German dialects, is unjustly forgotten and partly lost due to his being exiled to Siberia in 1941, where he was the head of the scientific school of studying native peoples’ dialects and toponymy. The toponymic material collected by A. P. Dulzon has not been thoroughly studied either by the scientist himself or by the following generations of linguists. The main aim of our research, which is based on new factual material and carried out in the field of sociolinguistics, is to define some unique features common for German microtoponymy, resulting from living for many years in multi-lingual surrounding. In this article the primary attention is given not only to the semantics and structure of toponyms, but also to the influence of the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contacts. The research is focused on contact onomastics, the dynamics of cross-cultural interference, the problem of borrowings on the toponymic level, their adaptation in the language depending on the peculiarities of the German dialects of the language islands of the Volga region. It has been proved that borrowed Russian river names, geographical names, microtoponyms, and lexical units denoting Russian realia from the cultural and general sphere, were influenced by German island toponymy and underwent major grammatical and phonetical changes, becoming part of productive word-building models: composites and analytical structures. The research shows that the phenomenon of microtoponymy is characteristic for the German microtoponymy of the Volga region, which proved, together with various extra-linguistic factors, that the Germans led a secluded life on their confined territories. A conclusion is drawn that studying the island toponymy of the Volga Germans in the sociolinguistic aspect, i.e. taking into account all the social environments in which the language of this allochtonous community functioned, can be the foundation for the interdisciplinary investigation of toponymy established by A. P. Dulzon.

Research Issues of the Volga Germans

In the modern research literature, there is a discussion about what concept to designate the socio-cultural community of the Volga Germans. Having previously corrected some aspects of the definitions given by the researchers, the author came to the conclusion that it would be most correct to recognize the Volga Germans as an independent Russian-German ethnic group that does not have a clearly defined spatial autonomy, but has a place of compact residence. The second problem directly affecting the preservation of the identity of this ethnic group is the problem of preserving the native language. We also propose to analyze the definitions of the concepts "nation", "ethnos", "national (ethnic) minority". Special attention is paid to the problem of preserving the language as the basis of the cultural identity of Russian Germans, including Volga Germans. The article presents a plan for conducting a sociological study to identify quantitative and other indicators of the Volga Germans ethnic group at the present time in order to obtain an objective definition of the ethnocultural phenomenon "Russian Germans".

Demographic factor of integration of the territories of the deported peoples (on the example of the Volga Germans and Kalmyk ASSR)

The article is devoted to the problem of economic and economic strengthening of territories disbanded as a result of ethnic deportations of the Kalmyk ASSR and the ASSR of Volga Germans in the 1940s. Based on the extensive historical literature on the problems of deportations, it is proved that the topic of integration of the territories of deported peoples has been little studied. The author shows the administrative and territorial changes that occurred in the Stalingrad region in connection with the annexation of the districts of the former republics. It is proved that the successful integration of the territories of the former republics into the economy of the Stalingrad region was based on the demographic factor. Based on the documents of the archives, the dynamics of the population, as well as the activities of regional authorities to replenish the human potential of these territories are analyzed. The novelty of the study is determined by the lack of a comprehensive study of the problems of integration of the territories of the Volga and Kalmykia German republics, most of whose population were deported, into the economic system of the Stalingrad region in the 1940s. For the first time, unpublished historical sources are introduced into scientific circulation, including statistical information and documents of the Stalingrad Regional Party Committee. As the main conclusion, it was established that by the beginning of the 1950s, the restoration of the pre-war population level did not occur, as a result of which the territories of the former republics remained economically inefficient.

ФЕНОМЕН НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ, РЕПРЕЗЕНТИРОВАННЫЙ В ПРОСТРАНСТВЕ ВИЗУАЛЬНОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ НЕМЦЕВ ПОВОЛЖЬЯ

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the Volga Germans’ national identity which is represented in the visual communication in the context of historical realities in the period of the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX centuries. The symbolic space of preserved in Saratov Regional Local History Museum funds photos of propaganda posters, notes, streamers and labels’ patterns reflects not only the ethnical German traditional culture peculiarity but also marks famous historical events in the identified period. The comparative analysis of the elements and objects in the visual communication has led to the showing convergences both in their content and design. The semiotic method has revealed symbols and determined the semantics of the studied elements in the visual communication. The collected material has been divided into two groups, each of them having its clear explicit semantic load. The results obtained let us make virtual transfer into the ethnical German cultural space, set the geographical location and reconstruct some historical events typical of Russian Germans in the Volga Region. Preserved to this day not only the elements but also the objects of the visual communication are of historical value, fix ethnical German flavor, give an idea of the formation and representation of the Volga Germans’ identity. Preservation of the authenticity as well as biological survival was of the utter importance for the Russian Germans: the first settlers developed the wasteland in the adverse climate conditions, lived isolated, their dialects were the main means of communication; the Volga Germans equated themselves with the ethnical Germans inhabited their historical motherland – Germany. The concept idea of order typical of German ethnical culture ontologically with its value guidelines, traditions and customs is relevant in the present research.

“Saratov Key” to the 1918 Campaign

In the article, the authors examine the role of Saratov in the 1918 campaign of the Great War. The significance of this Russian rear city in the events of the war only became apparent after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the German Empire and Soviet Russia. The Treaty of 3 March 1918 created a vast field of new opportunities for the Central Powers, which had supposedly triumphed on the Eastern Front. The fragmentation of the Russian Empire, lack of resources and aspirations for a future radical colonial redistribution forced the German Empire to think on a Eurasian scale. The numerous descendants of German colonists in the Russian governorates of Saratov and Samara became an important point of diplomatic and military effort for both Germany and the parties of the Russian Civil War. From spring to autumn 1918, German military and political projects in the East would invariably include Saratov as a crucial location on the road to Turkestan and India.For the various anti-Bolshevik forces in the East and South, which managed to form independently by the summer of 1918, there was the possibility of uniting in the obvious Volga operational direction. In their hypothetical unification, wealthy Volga Germans could constitute a substantial reinforcement, although any interaction with them required an unambiguous pro-German orientation. In the article, the authors examine and assess the capabilities and actions of the main military and political actors – the German Empire, the RSFSR, the anti-Bolshevik governments – in the Brest system of international relations and in the context of the Russian Civil War in March – November 1918. They substantiate the hypothesis of the role, including the potential role, of the Saratov direction, in which both Germany and the White Movement missed the opportunity to achieve decisive results.

«Немцев-переселенцев к эвакуированному населению не причислять». Положение немецкой интеллигенции в годы Великой Отечественной войны (на примере Кустанайской области Казахстана)

Introduction. The history of the deportation of the German population to the USSR up to the present time is estimated ambiguously. The issue of the situation of the German intelligentsia deported to the territory of the Kazakh SSR, including members of the AUCP(b) during the Great Patriotic War, remains problematic and has not been thoroughly studied by scholars. The war created a difficult situation: two different streams of people of German nationality merged on the territory of the Kazakh SSR. On the one hand, there were local Germans living in Kazakhstan since pre-revolutionary times, and on the other hand, there were Germans deported during the period of the Great Patriotic War, which requires a separate study. Methods and materials. Based on declassified documents of state and party bodies of regional and republican levels marked “Classified”, on the example of the Kustanay regional party organization, the features of the “privileged position” of Germans, members of the AUCP(b) in the conditions of deportation are considered. At the same time, in the regional aspect, detailed lists of teachers, medical workers – “German immigrants who arrived in Kustanay region in 1941” – are being introduced into scholarly discourse, which made it possible to find out the composition of the deported German intelligentsia. The archive file “List of teachers evacuated to districts of Kustanay region in 1941–1942” was analyzed separately, which was not reflected in the historical literature. Analysis. The analysis of the documents shows that, with rare exceptions, all the German intelligentsia deported to Kazakhstan (teachers, philologists, librarians, medical workers) turned out to be collective farm labor in 1941. Proof of discrimination against people of German nationality was the complete absence of data on German teachers (both local and resettled) in the lists of teachers and documents of local authorities. The extremely difficult situation of the deported German intelligentsia (the Volga German ASSR, the Crimean ASSR, the Ukrainian SSR) at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War on the territory of the Kazakh SSR is revealed in the regional aspect (on the example of Kostanay region). This is evidenced by the fate of German teachers, including the German party intelligentsia during the deportation to Kazakhstan at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Along with this, declassified party documents directly indicate that persons of German nationality continued to be accepted in the primary party cells into the ranks of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Kazakhstan even after the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Among them were deported German Communists as well. Results. As a result of the collective research work of historians of Russia and Kazakhstan, the situation of the German intelligentsia (including members of the Bolshevik Party) deported at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War from the Volga German ASSR, the Crimean ASSR, and the Ukrainian SSR to the territory of the Kazakh SSR (on the example of Kustanay region) was studied and subjected to scientific analysis for the first time. The article materials will help to facilitate the work of scholars, local historians, and descendants of deported Germans to establish the fate of the loved ones, find the confirmation of their being in forced settlements, and at the same time, broaden scientific topics of papers on the history of Germans in Kazakhstan.

ЛИТЕРАТУРНО-ОБЩЕСТВЕННАЯ ПОЗИЦИЯ СОВЕТСКОГО НЕМЕЦКОГО ПИСАТЕЛЯ АНДРЕАСА ЗАКСА В ВОПРОСАХ РЕЛИГИИ И ЦЕРКВИ (1930–1960-Е ГГ.)

The Soviet-German writer Andreas Saks (1903–1983) is known as an atheist, an activist of anti-religious propaganda in the 1930s carried out in the Republic of the Volga Germans, and as an author satirizing the religious superstitions of people and the vices of clerics. Applying the biographical approach of intellectual history the author of the article reconstructs A. Sack’s literary and social position on matters of church and religion. As sources for that the author uses Sack’s anti-religious humorous stories as well as his unpublished reviews of the works by Astrakhan novice writers where he expresses his views on the church, clerics and religiosity. There is a conclusion in the article that in those anti-religious works Andreas Saks remained tactful and delicate as he derided the religious superstitions of individual people, mostly, from an older generation who were baptized before the October revolution of 1917. Theomachism and the insulting the people’s religious feelings are not found in his works. It may reflect the Soviet Germans’ “cultural resistance” to the antireligious and anti-clerical campaigns waged by the communist authorities, to the closures of churches and repressions against the clerics in the 1930s. On the other hand, that reflects the writer’s understanding of man’s religiosity as “a complex existential issue” and his realization of big difficulties in “an ideological fight” against church and religion.

«КОНДУИТ И ШВАМБРАНИЯ» ЛЬВА КАССИЛЯ: ИСТОРИЯ ТЕКСТА

The article analyzes the structural and textual changes made by Lev Kassil in the reprinting of the story “Conduit and Shvambraniya”. The material for this study is the 1935 and 1937 editions of the story, two editions in 1957, and the last lifetime edition in 1965. An analysis of the published editions shows the formation of the story “The Conduit and Shvambrania” as a single novel, a single narrative and structural whole, which was not yet the case in the 1935 edition. The author reveals the changes made by Lev Kassil in later versions of the story and offers a classification of authorial corrections: 1) deletions of ideological and political nature; 2) deletions and changes caused by attacks of pedagogical critics; 3) corrections and changes of artistic nature. Lev Kassil was forced to respond to the ideological campaigns that were unfolding both on the national scale and in the professional literary environment (the anti-Semitic campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s, the deportation of the Volga Germans in the 1940s, discussions of “pseudo-romanticism and formalism” in criticism, etc.). Another reason for changing the text of the story was the circumstances of the writer’s family biography: the repression of his brother Iosif Kassil, who was the prototype of one of the main characters in the story — Os’ka. Nevertheless, The Conduit and Shvambrania was the only book in Kassil’s work in which a Jewish theme was expressed.

Аббревиатуры в послереволюционной прессе поволжских немцев как результат языковых и культурных контактов

The purpose of the study is to identify the structural and semantic specifics of abbreviations in the Volga Germans’ post-revolutionary press from the standpoint of a sociolinguistic approach. The paper considers the abbreviation processes from the perspective of their being conditioned by a wide range of extra- and intralinguistic factors in the setting where the Volga region variant of the German language had contact with the Russian language. Scientific novelty lies in introducing new factual material into scientific use. Abbreviations found in the press language of the Volga Germans minority ethnic group for the first time serve as a special object of research. As a result, it has been found that in the early Soviet period, the language of the majority ethnic group had a significant impact on the language of the Volga Germans’ press, in which abbreviation became a new productive way of word formation.

ACTIVITIES OF THE RSFSR NARKOMNATS (PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF NATIONALITIES) ON CREATION OF NATIONAL AUTONOMIES

The national question was one of the most painful in the multi-ethnic Russian Empire, it sounded especially acute at the beginning of the XX century. In order to attract representatives of different ethnic groups to its side, the new Soviet state pursued a purposeful policy of implementing national-state construction. It should be emphasized that in the historical realities of 1918-1920s such a solution to the national question, which was implemented by the Soviet government, was unique. In no other country in the world at such a level (granting nations the right for self-determination up to separation and formation of their own state), the issue has not been raised or resolved. That is why the Bolsheviks did not have the opportunity to adopt anyone’s experience in this area, which should be attributed to one of the objective reasons for the mistakes made by Moscow in implementing this process. The article is devoted to the study of the experience in national-state building in the RSFSR, which was conducted under the leadership of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities. The current work on preparing conditions to form autonomies in specific regions of the country (strengthening the Soviet authorities, conducting the policy of education and indigenization, publishing textbooks and organizing education in schools in national languages, etc.) was implemented by special not only functional, but also territorial Narkomnats departments such as, for example, Chuvash, Mari, Votsky ones, etc. Based on the analysis of materials from archival funds and generalization of research literature, the article shows the role of Narkomnats and its national departments in creating national-territorial autonomies in the RSFSR. In the opinion of the authors, it is necessary to continue the work on further studying the history of establishing individual autonomous associations that have not received proper coverage in the historiography of the problem to date. These, for example, include the autonomy of the Crimea and the Volga Germans. In this article, the authors dwell in more detail upon the activities of the Chuvash Department of Narkomnats, the choice of which is due to several reasons. Firstly, the work experience of this department turned out to be quite successful (it was established in May 1918, abolished after autonomy proclamation in June 1920), since in a relatively short period of time it was able to prepare the necessary prerequisites for autonomy establishment. Secondly, in 2020, the Chuvash people celebrated the 100th anniversary of statehood, in connection with which the interest in this page of the history of Chuvashia began to attract the attention of modern scientists again. The study makes no claims to be exhaustive, but makes a certain contribution to the coverage of the issue.

Periodical Press as a Source on the History of German Settlements in the Volga Region in the 1920s (based on the Materials of the Newspaper “Die Welt-Post”)

The newspaper “Die Welt-Post” is analyzed in the article, namely, the rubric “Letters from Russia”, from 1920. It published correspondence of Volga Germans and their relatives who immigrated to America in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The analyzed material allowed finding out how the Volga Germans perceived the economic and political situation in the country. Having survived the revolution, the Civil War like many peoples of the Soviet Russia, they experienced all the hardships of the economic policy pursued by the Bolsheviks. In the letters, they described the process of requisitions of food by food detachments in the villages and even told stories about their personal participation in the open confrontation with the authorities. With the first signs of famine in the Volga region, the Germans began to turn to relatives in America with requests to send food, clothing, money, or help to leave the country. However, there were also those who wanted to receive books, newspapers or magazines because they were in an information vacuum or wanted to develop intellectually. The Germans were very religious people and therefore they perceived the events that took place as tests sent from above. American aid had been perceived similarly. Often the Germans gave characteristics in an allegorical form using references to the Bible.

Семантическая адаптация немецкого топонимического субстрата в современной ойконимии Поволжья

The paper aims to reveal the influence of the German toponymic system on the modern Russian oeconymy. The German substrate toponyms were introduced into the Russian toponymic space by the Volga Germans, they functioned from the second half of the XVIII century till 1941. The article examines the toponymic aspect of interlingual interaction in the context of ethno-political events which resulted in official renaming. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that modern toponymy of the Volga region is considered as a heterogeneous language subsystem formed as a result of language and cultural contacts with the Germans and other ethnoses. As a result, it is shown that in the process of renaming, the German substrate toponyms underwent semantic transformations. Many German oeconyms were directly borrowed into the Russian oeconymy.

Население Республики Немцев Поволжья: жизнь и труд в июне–сентябре 1941 года (к 80-летию событий)

The author of the article examines the changes that occurred in the life and work of the population of the Volga German Republic under the state of emergency caused by the outbreak of the war. The article examines the transformation of the state’s policy towards the Volga German: from emphasized loyalty to deaf hostility and their eviction from the region. Special attention is paid to the reaction of the Volga German population to the beginning of the war, the participation of the population in activities caused by the war: military mobilization, reception and placement of evacuated enterprises and refugees, the creation of fighter detachments and militia. The most important event that required great efforts of citizens was the harvesting of a rich harvest. The article reveals the participation of the Volga German in a counter-propaganda campaign aimed at the armed forces and the population of Germany. Due to major failures at the front as a reinsurance company in September 1941 the German population of the Volga region was evicted to Siberia and Kazakhstan.