Russian Life & People Digest
Question by Dave: Where do most Volga Germans in Kazakhstan live?
What areas
Answers and Views:
Answer by Slava T
My uni mate who is Russian-German (Volga German) lived in Jezkazgan region of Kazakhstan. By his words almost all of the Russian-Germans from Kazakhstan immigrated to Germany in 1990s, him including.
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Arsan Lupin says
The Germans of Kazakhstan are a minority in Kazakhstan, and make up a small percentage of the population. Today they live mostly in the northeastern part of the country between the cities of Astana and Oskemen, the majority being urban dwellers. Most of them are descendants of Volga Germans, who were deported to the Kazakh SSR (now the sovereign state of Kazakhstan) from the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic at the beginning of World War II. Large portions of the community were imprisoned in the Soviet labor camp system. About one third of them did not survive the labor camps.
According to a 1989 census, more citizens of ethnic German origin lived in Kazakhstan, numbering 957,518, or 5.8% of the total population, than in the whole of Russia including Siberia (841,295).
Due to the German right of return law that enables ethnic Germans abroad who had been forcibly deported to return to Germany, Volga Germans were able to immigrate to Germany after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1999, there were 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan.
Since 2003, approximately 3,000 Germans had returned to Kazakhstan from Germany, asking for Kazakh citizenship. The "Rebirth" organization, founded in 1989, handles cultural and community affairs of the ethnic German community.