Old Sarepta

Sarepta Station

Old Sarepta (Russian Старая Сарепта) now Krasnoarmeysky Rayon, is a district of Volgograd, in Russia. Sarepta was founded 28 kilometers south of Tsaritsyn by the Moravian Brethren in 1765 when Catherine II sought to attract German settlers (so-called Volga Germans) to expand crop production in southern Russia and defend against the invasions of Kalmyk, Kazakh, and Tatar tribes. Its name derives from that of the Sarpa river, which flows into the Volga nearby.

The city was renamed Krasnoarmeisk in 1920, and became a district of Volgograd (then Stalingrad) in 1931.

A set of eighteenth century buildings in Sarepta that escaped the bombing during the Battle of Stalingrad is since 1990 an open-air museum called the Old Sarepta Museum of History and Ethnography.

Reference

• Lächele, Rainer Die Herrnhuter-Kolonie Sarepta und die Mennonitensiedlung Chortitza. Wolgograd, 2001. ISBN:R 1231 / 52.1