Vogla german free#

Vogla german free#

Agricultural colonies, even with people who were not Russian, would bring stability.Ĭatherine’s manifesto promised free land, no taxes for the first thirty years of a colony, and no military service for male heads of family and their descendants. She wanted a buffer against Mongols, Turks, and Kirghiz, who roamed and raided the steppe territory much in the way that Apache and Comanche controlled the High Plains. Early on, she worried about the frontier on both sides of the middle Volga River, near the cities of Samara and Saratov, in what was then southeastern Russia. A German peasant was not as slovenly as a Russian peasant. A forceful monarch, Catherine reigned for nearly forty years and was as crucial - indirectly - to settlement of the American Great Plains as the railroad.Ĭatherine believed that Russia could use fewer Russians and more Germans. By the age of thirty-three, she had dethroned her husband, Peter, and became ruler of Russia. “Catherine the Great was a German-born empress who married into Russian nobility just after she turned fifteen.

An excellent overall description through the 20th century is given by Wikipedia: Volga Germans.įor a focus on the Volga German-Russians who founded a colony in the Goodwin/Shattuck area of the Oklahoma Territory, the following description has been taken directly from Chapter 4 High Plains Deutsch of The WORST HARD TIME – The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the The Great American Dust Bowl written by Timothy Egan: There are many resources describing the “Volga German Russians” such as research centers, books and papers. The Volga German-Russians who were neighbors of the Kirmse and Lohmann families near Goodwin/Shattuck, Oklahoma Territory are described.