A second day of demonstrations was held in Saratov, Russia's second-largest city, after the murder of a local schoolgirl.
Located 858 kilometres southeast of Moscow, it is one of three cities on the lower Volga River that were founded to protect the recently acquired territory on the edge of the empire during the five years from 1586 to 1590. Saratov is the second largest city in Russia after Moscow and the third largest in the Russian Federation. One of the cities is Moscow State University, Russia's oldest university, and there are dozens of colleges in and around the city, one of which, the Old Universities of Russia, is the oldest.
In 1613 the city burnt down for a year, and in 1674 it was moved to its present location on the banks of the Volga, that is, east of Saratov.
The battle of Volgograd, known as Stalingrad, took place here and is considered the biggest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. The battle is also considered an important turning point in the war, as the Germans never fully regained their influence on the Eastern European front and although the Soviets won the battle, the city was virtually razed to the ground.
The Soviet government expelled the Volga Germans, and many of them were exiled, about 400,000, and few ever returned to the Volga region for rehabilitation. The city of Volgograd has a population of about 1.5 million, 83% of whom belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, 5% are non-conformists, and almost all the others are Russians.
If you do not know the name of the municipality in Russian, you can refer to the address "Localization in the city," but more information can be found in the Russian version. The website of the Engels Archive has an "English" option, so you do not need to speak Russian to explore the site, just use Google Translate to help you. You can change the language settings to translate English into Russian by pasting the web page URL into the "Russian" field. I use it to navigate through Russian websites, and the website of the Engels archive has an English option.
The Wiki page describes the research process of the Germans in Russia and the history of the Engels archive. The archive was established at the end of the 1990s after the death of Friedrich Engels, one of Germany's most famous historians. To visit the archive and its wiki article, please see the section "Visit the Archives" in the wiki article.
It should also be noted that the city has long been home to the Volga Germans, and although they were originally invited by the Tsars to promote agricultural development in the region, the prominent regional role they played has not disappeared. Although Saratov was transformed into a shabby city after the invasion of Pugachev, it became a rich trading city and remained the largest city in the Volga region. By the end of 1920, it was one of the largest cities in Russia, with a population of more than 1.5 million, and was often referred to as the "capital" of the Volgograd region. Since then it has remained an important economic and cultural centre for the region and also a tourist destination.
It borders the cities of Pokrovsk and Engels, which are just across the Volga, and neighboring cities such as Krasnoyarsk, Volgograd (a combined metro area with more than 1.5 million inhabitants), and St. Petersburg were home to hundreds of thousands of Germans until the 18th century.
The Volga became the most important artery of the Russian Empire, and Saratov became an important river port. This made it the second largest city in Russia after St. Petersburg with 1.5 million inhabitants. At the end of the 19th century, the "Saratov-Volga" (e.g. the "Volga Region") was operated under the control of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and the Soviet Union.
The city of Pokrovsk (today Engels), located on the other side of the Volga opposite Saratov, served as the capital of the "Volga Republic of Germany" until 1941. The city was home to a large number of Volga Germans who settled in the city after their expulsion during the Second World War. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Saratsov developed into a shipping port on the Volga River due to its proximity to St. Petersburg and other major cities.
Saratov has a population of 837,900, making it one of the largest cities in the Russian Federation and the second largest city in Russia. It borders Kazakhstan and shares a state border with Kazakhstan. The list of historical Russian cities includes the 11 cities of the region: Saratov, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Vladivostok, Tatarstan, Kharkiv, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg, Ulyanovsk and Tashkent.
The region is divided by the Volga River, and the central and southern part of Saratov lies in the valley, which is surrounded on three sides by low mountains of the Volga Mountains. Saratsov is located on the large central plateau of Russia, which stretches into its imperceptibly melting steppe region. The gorge, which is deeply cut through by its eastern slope, falls abruptly into the depths. With 837,900 inhabitants, it is Russia's second largest city after St. Petersburg.