Catherine the Great recruited thousands of colonists "to populate her lower Volga River frontier with dependable permanent settlers who not only would bring stability to this lawless, underdeveloped, and uncharted region, but also would reclaim the vast wasteland there"--an area larger than the state of Maryland. This recruitment program ended in 1766, after drawing a majority of the colonists (about 30,000) from west central Germany, particularly the Hessian states.

Since 1874 many inhabitants of this overpopulated land island between Saratov and Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) have...