The article presents a brief overview of the evolution of a diverse German community in Russia. Diversity
characterizes all aspects of the community's life: linguistic (the immigrants to Russia spoke all
German dialects, as well as many other European languages), economic and cultural (from the horticulturists
and winegrowers in the Caucasus to stock-breeders and hunters in Siberia), social (from
the agriculturalists-settlers to members of the Academy of Science and members of the ruling dynasty),
confessional (the German community had representatives of various confessions — the Catholics,
the Lutheran, the Mennonites, the Baptists, the Russian Orthodox), etc. The fi rst foreigners arrived
to Moscow Principality already during the reign of Ivan III. During the reign of Ivan IV the number
of German immigrants increased signifi cantly, at the same time Nemetskaya Sloboda (the Foreign
Quarter) appeared in Moscow. As a result of Peter I policy the Germans began to dominate both
at the imperial court, and in the military, industrial, and academic elites. The Catherine the Great’s
Manifesto led the foundation of a new Germans identity in Russia — “the German settlers”. Main
principle underlying the shaping of their identity was the territorial one: in this way the Volga, the
Black Sea coast, the Volyn, the Caucasus, and the Siberian German communities were formed. In the
20th century the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans was established. Two
World Wars added complexity and diversity to the Germans communities in the USSR/Russia with
the formation of new territorial groups in Kazakhstan and in the Ural. Late 1980s was the period
of mass emigration of the Russian Germans to Germany. The ethnicon “Russian Germans” has long
since become an established term. The complex and diverse history of the Germans in Russia refl ected
the history of long-standing and intensive contacts between Russia and Germany in political, economic,
cultural, academic spheres, as well as a tight network of a multitude of personal live-stories.