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Features and Results of Demographic Processes Among the German Population of Armavir (late 1880s – 1941)
Authors: Vladimir G. Schneider, Sergey N. Ktitorov
Number of views: 16
This study examines the demographic processes among the largest German community in the North Caucasus, Armavir. The most important sources of information when considering the dynamics of the population of this ethno-local group are the metric books of the Armavir Lutheran prayer house, the books of civil status records of the city registry office, as well as materials from the population censuses of 1897, 1920, 1923 and 1926. It has been established that all Armavir Germans were migrants of the last quarter of the 19th – early 20th centuries, or their children, who were already born in the Kuban. The vast majority of immigrants came from the Volga region, mainly from the Samara province (65.6 %) and from the Saratov province (23.6 %). The remaining 10.8 % of Germans moved to Armavir from other regions, mainly from the Baltic states, as well as Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea. The main factors of migration to the Kuban were a complex of economic reasons, first of all, lack of land and difficult life circumstances, aggravated by lean, famine and epidemic years in the lands of the Volga region. In Armavir, the majority of Germans retained the official status of residents of the Samara and Saratov provinces. During the pre-revolutionary period, the size of the local community increased. In 1897, 1,269 Germans lived in Armavir, in 1910 – 2,834 people. In 1904, Deutsche accounted for 8 % of the total population of Armavir (25,449 people), which exceeded similar figures for other urban centers of the Russian Empire, with the exception of the Baltic states, Poland and areas of German colonization of the Volga region. According to the data of the first All-Union census of the population of the USSR in 1926, considering the ethno-local community (2,913 people), it becomes the largest in the North Caucasus, ahead of even the former German colonies of the region. In the next decade and a half, the number of Germans in Armavir decreases. By determining the dependence of the number of marriages, births and deaths on the total number of the considered ethnic group, the authors conclude that by 1941 there were from 1453 to 1565 Germans in the city. After the start of the Great Patriotic War, the vast majority of the inhabitants of German origin were evicted from Armavir to the northern regions of Kazakhstan.