Nowohradkivka (Neuburg)

Neuburg (now Novohradivka) was a German colony founded in 1805 by Lutheran settlers from Württemberg and Hungary. It initially formed part of the Liebental Colonists’ District of Odesa Uyezd in the Kherson Governorate. Today, the territory of the former colony lies within Odesa District.

For a long time, the population of Neuburg was unstable. Colonists left the settlement due to a lack of employment opportunities. Migration was also prompted by marriages to colonists from other colonies or to the widows of artisans in Odesa.

The economy was based primarily on agriculture. Cattle breeding and market gardening played a secondary role. Attempts to develop sericulture proved unsuccessful. By the early twentieth century, viticulture had become a significant source of income.

A stone prayer house was built in Neuburg in 1824. In 1903, a new Lutheran church was constructed in the Neo-Gothic style according to the design of a native of the colony, the architect Christian Beutelspacher. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Baptists appeared in the colony and built their own prayer house.

In 1895, Neuburg was renamed Volodymyrivka in honor of Grand Duke Volodymyr Oleksandrovych.

At the outbreak of the First World War, the men were drafted into the army. At the same time, the state restricted the political, economic, and cultural rights of the German population. The school in Neuburg was closed.

The residents of the colony experienced the fall of the autocracy, the collapse of the Russian Empire, and the bloody events of the Civil War. In the summer of 1919, they took part in the anti-Bolshevik Grossliebental Uprising.

The colonists reacted negatively to Soviet rule, which was finally consolidated in February 1920. Crop failures and the famine of 1921–1923 hindered the Sovietization of the population. From late 1928, dekulakization and collectivization began. By 1930, fourteen families (60 people) had been dekulakized and deported to various regions of the USSR, including the North. In 1937, the number of repressed residents reached fifty-five, of whom twenty-seven were executed. In 1938, four more were executed.

During the war against Nazi Germany, the colony was located in the Romanian administrative zone of Transnistria, but under the authority of the SS Special Detachment R (Sonderkommando R). On 29 March 1944, in connection with the advance of the Red Army, the residents of the colony were evacuated to the Reichsgau Wartheland (Poland). After the war, they were repatriated to the USSR and sent to Udmurtia and Krasnoyarsk Krai.

Ukrainian peasants deported from the part of eastern Poland annexed by the USSR settled in the former German colony.