Baronsk

Baronsk, also called Katharinenstadt, was a German colony on the eastern bank of the Volga. Founded in the 1760s under Catherine II's policy of inviting foreign settlers, it took its German name from the empress and its other name from Baron Beauregard de Cano, who recruited colonists. It became an important centre among the newly established villages of the Volga's meadow bank.

The settlers brought different Christian traditions. When the scholar Peter Simon Pallas visited in 1773, he found a large Lutheran church as well as Catholic and Reformed houses of prayer. The colony's position on the Volga connected its farming households with river trade, while its churches and institutions gave the diverse settlers a common centre in their new surroundings.