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

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Germans from Russia
Russlanddeutsche
Российские немцы

Total population
~3 million
Regions with significant populations
Germany	~2.3 million
Kazakhstan	226,092 (2021)[1]
Russia	195,256 (2021)[2]
Ukraine	33,302 (2001)[3]
Languages
German, Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh
Religion
Historically:[4][5] Lutheran majority Catholic minority Currently:[6] majority Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal and Catholic minorities
Related ethnic groups
Volga Germans, Germans in Kazakhstan, Baltic Germans, Germans from Russia, Estonian Swedes

The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory military service in the Russian Empire, large groups of Germans from Russia emigrated to the Americas (mainly Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina), where they founded many towns. In 1914, an estimate put the remaining number of ethnic Germans living in the Russian Empire at 2,416,290.^[7] During World War II, ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were persecuted and many were forcibly resettled to other regions such as Central Asia.^[8] In 1989, the Soviet Union declared to have an ethnic German population of roughly 2 million.^[9] By 2002, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many ethnic Germans had emigrated (mainly to Germany) and the population fell by half to roughly 1 million. 597,212 Germans self-identified as such in the 2002 Russian census, making Germans the fifth-largest ethnic group in the Russian Federation. There were 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan and 21,472 in Kyrgyzstan (1999);^[10] while 33,300 Germans lived in Ukraine (2001 census).^[11]

Emigrants from Germany first arrived in Kievan Rus during the reign of Olga of Kiev.^[12] Before Catherine the Great's reign (1762–1796), ethnic Germans were also already strongly represented amongst royalty and aristocracy, as the European nobility was highly interrelated.^{[citation needed]} In addition, Germans had become prominent among large land-owners, military officers, and the upper echelons of the imperial service, engineers, scientists, artists, physicians, and the bourgeoisie in general, because there was strong education among some of the German peoples.^{[citation needed]} The Germans of Russia did not necessarily speak Russian; many spoke German, while French was often used as the language of the high aristocracy. Depending on geography and other circumstances, many Russian Germans spoke Russian as their first or second language. During the 19th century many of the early immigrants began to identify primarily as Russians, particularly during and after the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815. The large numbers of farmers and village tradesmen who arrived following Catherine the Great's invitation were allowed to settle in German-only villages and to keep their German language, religion, and culture until the 1920s. She was seeking to repopulate some areas devastated by Ottoman invasions and by disease.

Today's Russian Germans speak mostly Russian, as they are in the gradual process of assimilation. As such, many may not necessarily be fluent in German. Consequently, Germany has recently strictly limited their re-patriation. A decline in the number of Germans in the Russian Federation has moderated as they are no longer emigrating to Germany. In addition, Kazakhstan Germans from Kazakhstan are moving to Russia rather than Germany. As conditions for Germans in Russia generally deteriorated in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century during the period of unrest and revolution, many ethnic Germans migrated from Russia to the Americas and elsewhere. They became collectively known as Germans from Russia.