GERMAN VOLGA REPUBLIC, an A.S.S.R. created in February 1924. It is situated between lat. 50' N. and 5 2 ° N. and long. 45' E. and 48° 5' E. It is mainly bordered by the Saratov province, which it divides into two separate parts. Samara touches it on the north-east, and Stalingrad and the Kazakstan A.S.S.R. on the south and south-east. Its area is 26,753 sq.km., one fourth lying on the right and three fourths on the left bank of the Volga river. The district on the left bank is a plain, with chestnut-coloured soil passing over into salt steppe in the south-east where it nears the Aralo-Caspian depression. The water supply is poor and the streams often salty. The right bank area is a plateau, cut by rivers into ravines which give it a hilly appearance, and it has some forest. The streams here are not salt, and the soil in the north is black earth ; towards the south the transition zone to the salt steppe begins. Except for the Volga river the streams are shallow, liable to dry up, and not suitable for navigation or floating goods. The climate is dis tinctly continental, average July temperature 73°, January 11 °. The rainfall in the south-eastern part rarely exceeds 30o mm. per annum, and even in the more favoured north-west only reaches 35o mm. per annum. The number of days with rain is rarely more than ioo, and most of these are in the period October to March. This scanty rainfall cannot be relied on, and the region has always been liable to years of drought. An added draw back is the liability to late spring frost even at the end of May, and to early autumn frost in September. Dry winds from the desert to the south and east blow for more than half the year, and there are occasional severe storms. Precarious agriculture is the main occupation and the 1921 famine reached terrible pro portions in this district; the population in 192o was nearly 700, 000, but in 1926 was 571,089. Further droughts and bad harvests occurred in 1922 and 1924, but since then varieties of seed have been selected for their drought-resisting qualities and better harvests have ensued. The chief crops are wheat, barley, rye, millet, maize and sunflower seed; in pre-1914 times wheat was largely produced for export, but the subsequent poverty and famine altered the balance of crops in favour of barley, rye, millet and sunflower seed ; maize is also more widely grown than formerly. Irrigation, the only safeguard against recurrent drought, is proceeding as rapidly as local finance will allow, and in 1925-6 the irrigated area was 13,50o hectares. Irrigation works in progress of construction in 1928 cover an area of 40,00o hectares. Livestock diminished markedly during the famine period, but the balance is being gradually restored. Horses and working cattle are still much below pre-war numbers but oil-tractors are taking their place. Sheep, goats, pigs and camels are bred. The industries include flour-milling, tobacco-making from local mak horka, begun in 1922, a leather factory built at the town of Golom Karamysh in the right bank district, bacon factories, and a factory built in 1926 at Markstadt (formerly Katherinestadt) on the left bank of the Volga, for the manufacture of oil tractors. There are small sawmills in the forest area, and a large one at Pokrovsk, the, administrative centre on the left bank of the Volga opposite to Saratov. Peasant industries are widespread.
History.—About 2 7,00o German colonists were settled on the Volga river in 1760 and 1761 at the invitation of Catherine II. by special manifesto, when the population of .Russia was so much less than today that the government was concerned for the development of uncultivated lands. The climatic difficulties of their new environment, lack of capital, oppression by officials and attacks by Kirghiz and Kalmucks diminished their numbers by 5o% in the first ten years. They were at first given special priv ileges, including exemption from army service, but in the mid nineteenth century these privileges were annulled. About 187o the small measure of autonomy remaining to them was cancelled and the colonies broken up.
When war with Germany broke out, the German colonists were persecuted and in 1915 an Imperial ukase ordered their exile to Siberia.
Before this was carried out, the 1917 revolution took place. In early 1918, a commission was organized at Saratov to or ganize Soviet rule among the German Volga peoples, and at that town in June 1918 the first Soviet Congress of the Volga Ger mans expressed a wish for autonomous government.
In October the Autonomous German Volga district was created by decree, and it became a republic in Feb. 1924. Of its twelve cantons, 5 have purely German inhabitants, 4 mixed German Russian or German-Ukrainian inhabitants and 3 are predominantly Russian or Ukrainian.
Of its population of 571,089 (1926) 67% were Germans, 2o% Russians and 12% Ukrainians. The German Volga Republic has a permanent representative in Berlin.