German colonies in Dagestan

The first German colonies in the territory of modern Dagestan began to appear at the end of the XIX century. Resettlement mainly came from other regions of the Russian Empire - Bessarabia , Volyn , Volga , Dnieper. The first colony which was formed on the territory of Dagestan was Strauchdorf (Evgenievka) (1889); it was located on the river. Yaman-su in the area of ​​the modern village of Novoselskoye, Khasavyurt district. Then Romanovka (modern brick-cutan ) (1897), Tatyanovka (modern Kamysh-Kutan ) (1898) were formed.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a whole group of Mennonite colonists moved to the lands bought from the Lvov brothers from the Molochansky district. They found 17 colonies along the left bank of the river. Sulak (modern Lviv numbers ).

At the same time, a group of colonies and farms of Romanovka-Dik (district of modern Luxembourg ) was formed.

The immigrants formed both separate settlements and settled in the already existing Kumyk and Chechen villages ( Aksai , Kostek , Andreiul , etc.).

Resettlement and the formation of colonies went right up to the Civil War . During this period, many colonies and farms were ruined and the inhabitants left them.

At the beginning of the XX century, only 2296 people of German nationality lived in the Khasavyurt district (modern Babayurt and Khasavyurt districts).

According to the level of development, Dagestan German settlements were one of the developed in the North Caucasus. The colonies had their own schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and even fire departments. So, in all Mennonite colonies there were schools.

For the development of agriculture and viticulture, canals were built at the expense of the colonists (Talma, Richard (modern Tersakan), Sprengel). In addition to grain (wheat, barley, rice) and grapes, the Germans grew sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco. In animal husbandry, emphasis was placed on cattle breeding and horse breeding, to a lesser extent sheep breeding. So the inhabitants of the colony Neu-Hoffnung introduced in the Terek region a highly productive dairy cow of the red breed.

For the most part, immigrants were Protestants , mainly representatives of two movements by the Evangelists and Mennonites . Most of the colonists were evangelists. Mennonites lived in modern Lviv rooms and in the colony of Dik (Hasanay).

During the relocation to the Mennonite colonies, two congregations were concluded - the “Mennonite Church” and the “Terek Church of the Mennonite Brothers”. Prayer houses were built in the colonies - Nikolaevka, Kharch, Müdelburg and Talma.

There were evangelical churches in Romanovka (Luxembourg) and Eigenheim (Tata-yurt).

After the revolution of 1917 and the outbreak of civil war, the fate of the colonies and their inhabitants was not enviable. As early as 1917, Chechens began systematic and devastating raids on German colonies, Russian and Moldovan economies, farms, villages, settlements and even railway stations of the Khasavyurt and neighboring districts. They plundered houses, killed inhabitants, stole cattle and burned crops.

The government could not help the residents. And they had to leave their homes, the roads to Khasavyurt and Kizlyar were clogged with refugees.

After the civil war, attempts were made to return the population. So part of the inhabitants returned to Nikolaevka, Romanovka, Vanderloo and Eigenheim. But in the place of their houses, they found only ruins and ashes.

The second time the Germans were persecuted during the Great Patriotic War . So, on the basis of the secret decree of GKO No. 827 “On the resettlement of Germans from the Dagestan and Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics” dated October 22, 1941, all Germans of Dagestan with a total number of 7306 people were resettled to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

After rehabilitation, few Germans returned to Dagestan. Several families settled in Luxembourg, Tatayurt , Lviv No. 1 and Babayurt .

The main source for this list is the Dizendorf reference books (2002 ^[1] ; 2006 ^[2] ).

• German settlements in the USSR until 1941 : Geography and population. Directory. / Comp. V.F.Diesendorf. M .: Public Academy of Sciences of Russian Germans. - 2002 .-- 479 p. ISBN 5-93227-001-2
• The Germans of Russia: settlements and places of settlement: Encyclopedic Dictionary / Comp. V.F.Diesendorf. - M., "ERN", 2006. - 472 p.

• Encyclopedia of German settlement in the USSR (inaccessible link)
• Germans on the Kumyk plane
• The Germans We Lost
• Germans who are with us
• Letter from the Brickman family from Germany