Old Sarepta

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 comes from Sarepta in I Kings 17:7 and here 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.

see also: New Sarepta, Alberta, Canada

References

• Lächele, Rainer Die Herrnhuter-Kolonie Sarepta und die Mennonitensiedlung Chortitza. Wolgograd, 2001.

External links

• Article about the museum
• Article about Old Sarepta