Soviet History
After the 1917 formation of Transcaucasian Federation, the German colonists came together to form the Transcaucasian German National Council (Transkaukasischer Deutscher Nationalrat), with its seat in Tbilisi, Georgia. After the Sovietization of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia in 1920–1921, the Soviet government pursued the goal of eliminating the German cultural presence in the region by closing down German schools and changing German-souding names of virtually all the colonies. After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, it was a matter of one week that almost 200,000 Caucasus Germans got deported to remote regions of Kazakhstan and Siberia. The only ones not subject to deportation were German women who were married to non-Germans. Even though soon after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 the ban for the majority of the deported peoples to return to Europe was lifted, relatively few returned. In 1979 there were only 46,979 Germans living in both North and South Caucasus.
Read more about this topic: Caucasus Germans
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