Germans Who Immigrated to Russia
Catherine the Great
Germans began to emigrate to Russia’s Volga region in large number in 1763 at the invitation of Czar Catherine II (Catherine the Great). This wave of immigration was fueled by a number of factors.
Catherine had taken control of the Volga region and she wanted people to settle the area in order to maintain Russian control. Freeing the serfs who served the nobility would have been the obvious choice, but this was not politically possible. Catherine, a German princess, decided to invite German peasants.
Germany was at the end of the Seven Years’ War and the economic outlook for German peasants was poor. But the German economy alone was not enough to get the peasant farmers, many of whom had never traveled any distance from home, to move to a new country. So when Catherine made her initial invitation, there were few takers.
Catherine’s offer was changed to include a grant of free land, freedom of religion, exemption from forced military service, local self-governance and exemption from Russian taxes. This was enough to entice Germans to leave their homeland and emigrate to Russia.
It was an arduous journey, as there were no railroads or steamships, so most of the travel was done overland in wagons. The initial wave of immigrants settled in the Volga region.
As the Russian Empire pressed south, Czar Alexander I reissued the invitation to Germans to emigrate to Russia in 1804. This second wave settled in the Black Sea region. It was descendants of these Germans who eventually resettled on the plains of North Dakota.
Immigrating to Russia
