Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Administrative region of the former Soviet Union. The Volga German Autonomous Republic was formed in 1918 as an autonomous workers' commune of the USSR and made into an autonomous republic in 1924. Over half the population were Volga Germans, descendants of colonists from Germany who settled on both banks of the Lower Volga near the town of Pokrovsk-Glazov (later Engels) in the reign of Catherine (II) the Great in the 1760s. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the republic was abolished and its German inhabitants, accused of collaboration, were deported to Siberia and Central Asia.

A decree issue by the Soviet Union in 1957 rehabilitating deported peoples excluded the Volga Germans, but they were finally rehabilitated in 1964. The republic, however, was never revived, and now forms part of the Saratov oblast (region) of the Russian Federation.