Samara Oblast (Russia)
Samara (called Kuibyshev from 1935 until 1991), a province of Russia located on the Volga River, also the name of the capital of the province. To the north it borders on the province of Kazan, in the west on Simbirsk, in the south on Astrachan, and in the east on Ufa, Orenburg, and the Ural Mountains. It consists of 20,000 square miles and had a population of three million at the turn of the century.
In 1853 Mennonites direct from Prussia established the Trakt (Am Trakt) settlement consisting of 10 villages and an acreage of 37,800 in the southern part of the province near the Volga River. In 1859 a second settlement of Prussian Mennonites was started in the province known as Alexandertal or Alt-Samara consisting of 8 villages and an acreage of 26,500, which later was nearly doubled.
In 1890 the daughter settlement of Pleshanovsk or Neu-Samara, consisting of 12 villages and an acreage of 59,400, was established east of Alexandertal. In 1897 a small group of Alexandertal Mennonites established a settlement near Bezentchuk in the vicinity of the city of Samara. Originally the settlement consisted of some 75 persons with an acreage of 5,400.
Before World War II these four settlements in the province of Samara consisted of a total of approximately 35 villages, and a population of 6,750 with an acreage of 176,580. Samara and Saratoff were the provinces on the Volga River in which large non-Mennonite German settlements were established, which under the Soviets were organized for a while as the German Volga Republic. According to available information, most of these German settlements, including those of the Mennonites, disintegrated before and during World War II. Most of the population was sent beyond the Ural Mountains.
Bibliography
Die Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland. Heilbrorm, 1921.
Quiring, Jacob. Die Mundart von Chortitza in Süd-Russland. Munich, 1928.
| Author(s) | Cornelius Krahn |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 1959 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Krahn, Cornelius. "Samara Oblast (Russia)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 19 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Samara_Oblast_(Russia)&oldid=77383.
APA style
Krahn, Cornelius. (1959). Samara Oblast (Russia). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 19 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Samara_Oblast_(Russia)&oldid=77383.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 411-412. All rights reserved.
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