History of Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (~3 million) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Germany
|
~2.3 million |
 Russia
|
394,138 (2010) |
 Kazakhstan
|
178,409 (2009) |
 Ukraine
|
33,302 (2001) |
| Languages | |
| Russian, German | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans in Kazakhstan, Baltic Germans, Germans from Russia, Estonian Swedes | |
The German minority in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union was created from several sources and in several waves. The 1914 census put the number of Germans living in The Russian Empire at 2,416,290. In 1989, the German population of the Soviet Union was roughly 2 million. By the next decade (1999–2002), the population will have fallen to the half, to roughly one million: 597,212 Germans were enumerated in Russia (2002 Russian census), making Germans the fifth largest ethnic group in that country; 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan and 21,472 in Kyrgyzstan (1999); 33,300 Germans lived in Ukraine (2001 census).
In the Russian Empire, Germans were strongly represented among royalty, aristocracy, large land owners, military officers, and the upper echelons of the imperial service, engineers, scientists, artists, physicians, and the bourgeoisie in general. The Germans of Russia did not necessarily speak Russian; many spoke German, while French was often the language of the high aristocracy. However, depending on geography and other circumstances, many Russian-Germans spoke Russian as their first or second language. During the 19th century many came to identify primarily as Russians, and particularly during and after the Napoleonic Wars, many Russian-Germans embraced Russian patriotism. Today's Russian Germans mostly speak Russian as they are in the gradual process of assimilation. As such, many may not necessarily be fluent in German. Consequently, Germany has recently strictly limited their immigration, and a decline in the number of Germans in the Russian Federation has moderated as they no longer emigrate to Germany and as Kazakh Germans move to Russia instead of Germany. As conditions for the Germans generally deteriorated in the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Germans migrated from Russia to the Americas and elsewhere, collectively known as Germans from Russia.
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