Graf, known as Krutoyarovka in Russia, was a village settled on 10 June 1766, by German "colonists" invited by Tzarina Catharine the Great (see Manifesto), to settle the fertile steppes along the Volga River. It is one of among hundreds of such towns, and the Volga-Germans as they became known, during the next hundred years and with great sacrifice wrought this land into their homeland and into the Breadbasket of Russia. The first several decades were very difficult, with attacks from Kirghiz raiders and starvation.

The Volga-Germans were given freedom of religion and freedom from military service. As they had accepted Catharine's invitation to escape war-ravaged Germany, this provision was welcomed enthusiastically.

Over the next century their prosperity and population stabilized and then grew exponentially. They kept their German customs, clothing and dialect, and only very rarely marrying with Russians. This ultimately lead to their demise. As a numerous ethnic minority in Russia, they couldn't escape the notice of Russia's changing politic. During the Nineteenth Century, the tzars began to repeal the favors granted to the Volga Germans, and this brought about the next phase in their history.

Starting in 1875, many Volga-Germans began leaving Russia for promises of free land in the Americas. Their primary destinations were North America, Brazil and Argentina. Here, in these new locations, they repeated the history of their ancestors, tamed the prairies and became numerous and prosperous.

Those they left behind did not fair as well. During the cataclysmic events of the Twentieth Century, they became victims of the Communist Revolution and the Century's two World Wars. As they were considered bourgeois-rich, they often paid with their lives to defend their stored grain. Sadly, during WWII, they were considered to be sympathizers with the approaching Germany Army, and in 1941, they were told to pack enough food for a month, and were loaded in trains, headed for Siberia. They perished in great numbers, perhaps loosing as much as half of their population. They were denied the use of their native tongue, denied the right to return to the homeland which they had carved from the wilderness and were forced once again to begin their lives from scratch.

This is the history in which Graf played a part.