Karaganda or
Qaraghandy ( ), more commonly known by its Russian name
Karaganda (, until 1993), is the capital of
Karaganda Region in
Kazakhstan. It is the fourth most populous city in Kazakhstan, behind
Almaty (Alma-Ata),
Astana and
Shymkent. Population:
In the 1940s up to 70% of the city's inhabitants were ethnic
Germans. Most of the
ethnic Germans were Soviet
Volga Germans who were collectively deported to
Siberia and Kazakhstan on
Stalin's order when Hitler invaded
Soviet-annexed eastern Poland and the Soviet Union proper in 1941. Until the 1950s, many of these deportees were interned in labor camps, often simply because they were of German descent.