Catherine II's policy falls under the rubric of what historian Eric Lohr described as "attract and hold." Catherine II's 1762 and 1763 declarations promised colonists land, money and a thirty year moratorium on taxation along with a freedom from any military obligations to the Russian state. The Volga steppe itself was a recently conquered territory and both Russia and other Central European powers (most notable Prussia) had a long tradition of inviting foreign communities to make a newly conquered land bloom. One of Catherine's favorites, Count Orlov, felt that German agriculture was far superior to any local Russian alternative and this would be a safe way to quickly make the Volga steppe secure and profitable. For the German communities that moved into the Volga steppe, there was a considerable push factor that drove them to travel by wagons to the homestead areas designated by the Russian government. One factor was religion as the colonization allowed for the Volga Germans (Protestants, Catholics, and Mennonites) a degree of religious autonomy they lacked in the various German states. But arguably the strongest push factor was the high level of taxation and squeeze on land ownership that typified life for small peasant farmers in most of the German states.

Once the colonies were in place, the Russian state instituted a strict program of passports and control over these communities. The Germans became inorodtsy a Russian legal term that means resident alien. Additionally, the settlers found many of the choice lands were already claimed by Russian state peasants and crown peasants. The weather and climate was harsh (blistering summers and freezing winters). The states promise of financial support soon proved to be half-hearted given the endemic administrative poverty of the tsarist state. Subsequent waves of colonists in the early nineteenth century often had to rely upon aid from wealthy colonist associations.

Although it was clear that the tsarist state had abandoned its enthusiasm for German colonization in the first half of the nineteenth century, German unification in 1871 transformed state policy into a guarded hostility towards the colonists. Both Alexander II and Alexander III adapted a reflexive Russocentric policy towards the frontier regions of the empire. If a population could not be Russified, the tsarist state issued a program of supervision and control. The pan-German nationalism of Imperial Germany, although never popular within the Volga settlements, became a rationale state authorities invoked when rescinding the various Katrine compacts with these communities. What was especially galling for the tsarist state was the refusal of the Volga Germans to fully assimilate to Russian culture and norms. This was something of a Catch-22 as the state often sought to quarantine this community from Russian peasants, thus precluding any sublimation of the German community. In addition to the pressures from the state, the Volga community was under economic and demographic pressures as land use shifted from subsistence to cash-based agriculture.

Within this context, the US Homestead Act of 1862 was quite appealing for many Volga Germans. The North Pacific Railroad agents were quite active within the Volga region and provided the organization for a mass emigration to the US. However, there was little emigration prior to 1872 as the Russian state refused to allow it. Between 1871 and 1881, the state allowed for a temporary passport under the state reorganization of the colonies' charters.

Ultimately, both World War I and II proved the death knell for the Volga German community. In the First World War, tsarist suspicion turned into outright hostility and violence towards the Germans within the state. Although this community survived, it had an uneasy coexistence with the USSR. At first, the Germans fit in very well with the Soviet policies of territorializing ethnicity. In the Volga basin, they had actually managed to form their own ASSR in the interwar period of around 600000. In the beginning, the Soviet state averred that this was a war against fascism, not the German nation. In a June 22 speech, Molotov asserted that "this war is not forced on us by the German people...but from a clique of bloodthirsty fascist rulers in Germany." One of the first heroes of the war was a Volga German, Heinrich Hoffmann and the Red Army newspaper published an account of his fatal defense along with pictures of his bloody Komsomol book. This international approach was short-lived and soon being ethnically German became incompatible with being a Soviet citizen. The state banished the entirety of its German population (about 1-2 million) into harsh work camps in the interior of the USSR. After the war, they were expelled out of the USSR into the Eastern bloc.

Sources

Kappeler, Andreas, and Alfred Clayton. The Russian Empire: a multiethnic history. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, 2001.

Lohr, Eric. Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens During World War I. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003.

_. Russian Citizenship From Empire to Soviet Union. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Long, James W. From Privileged to Dispossessed: The Volga Germans, 1860-1917. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.