Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Setting our Sights on Siberia
Peter Penner, Emeritus Professor of History, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB
The Beckoning Altai
Driving south from Novosibirsk, twelve time
zones away from Calgary, one crosses a political,
geographical line into the southernmost part
of Western Siberia. This Altai Region of more
than two million people reaches south and west
to Kasachstan, and east to the famous Altai
Mountains. Barnaul, a city of 650,000 with its
45,000 to 60,000 university students attending
the various parts of the Altai State University
(ASU), sits at the center of this Region.
At the extreme west one finds the ‘German
National Region’, created by Boris Yeltsin in
1991. This is where one will find most of the
Ruszlanddeutschen who are left, by now thoroughly
Russianized, and some still working in
such entities as the Friedrich Engels Collective,
centered in the village of Protassowo. North
Americans often forget that there were over
two million Germans in Russia before 1914 and
the Revolution of 1917. Even before that these
vast steppes of Western Siberia were peopled
by voluntary but largely landless immigrants
between 1906 and 1910. Those who stayed after
my family left for Canada in 1926, resisted
the First Five Year Plan, and failed to get out
of Russia in 1929-30, were subjected to severe
repressive measures, and suffered during the
purges of the 1930s.
In 1941, however, the immigration into the
Altai was different. When Nazi Germany attacked
Soviet Russia, the Volga Germans and
others were deported en masse into this Region
and into Kazakhstan, forced into the Labor Army
or collectivized.
During my brief visit to the western Altai
in the year 2000, I was billeted for a few days
in the central village of Protassowo. This was
only fifteen kilometers from the village of Orlovo
where I was born in 1925 and where I lived with
my family for the first fifteen months of my life.
[The two pictures show me (with my sister Erna and
parents) then and in 2000 on the main street of Orlovo
(Orloff)]
Voluntary Service and the Barnaul Germans
In October/November, 2000, I went to
Barnaul under Rotary International’s Voluntary
Program. My way was paid for two months to do
English as a second language (ESL). Not that I
was qualified to do ESL at the most basic level,
only to help those who had had some English.
I was given hospitality by a Russian Rotarian,
Oleg Startsev, a Physicist, and his wife Ludmila.
Oleg is the one who made the arrangements for
me to help two different classes of adults who
already had some elementary English.
When some of the remaining Ruszlanddeutsche
(Germans in Russia - formerly Lutheran,
Catholic, and Mennonite) in Barnaul heard
about my coming and that I was equally facile
in German (almost) and was hoping to visit my
birthplace, this doubled the interest for all the
people I met. As a result my life was enriched
by so many experiences, encouraged as I was
by the Barnaul Club to take advantage of these
opportunities.
Soon I met Johannes Schellenberg, 80, a
longtime editor of the German-language weekly
for Ruszlanddeutsche. As a result, my opportunities
to meet people grew and grew. I met the very
significant professor and writer Lev Malinowski
who gave me a copy of his book on Germans in
Russia (in German). Schellenberg gave me his
book (in Russian) on Orlovo, my birth village.
I also met two renowned Barnaul artists of this
background who gave me autographed copies
of their portfolios. One was Alfred Friesen of
Mennonite parentage, and the other Johannes
Sommer, a Volga German, a sculptor (ein Bildhauer).
I had unexpected media exposure. People
from the press wanted to know about my visit to
my birth village and area. As a result there were
two stories about me in Slavgorod’s Zeitung fuer
Dich (“Newspaper for You”), as well as in the
Barnaul city newspaper (Russian). A Mrs. Filistovich
(mother of my student Denis who did well
in three languages) interviewed me for a Barnaul
German Radio program. This was aired in two
instalments. At a Russian/German Cultural Event
I was asked to speak briefly.
Experiences
First, I was privileged to see much of the
Altai, from one end to the other, from Slavgorod
in the west and the villages mentioned above,
set in the vast Kulundasteppen of Siberia, to
Gorno Altai in the east, nestled in the foothills
of the Altai Mountains, with its richly endowed
birch forests. The countryside in the west was
dotted with German-built villages, the rest with
Russian. I witnessed life in a Kolkhoz (a collective)
whose formation had been forced upon
most people; saw a village of summer dachas
(with their saunas and gardens) alongside the
Ob River; stopped at open markets; experienced
(with fellow Rotarians) the unusual phenomenon
of Russian women hitchhiking alone along the
highways, to get to town or the market. One
I remember as having the face and neck of a
Cleopatra, but hands of a kitchen maid.
My Rotary hosts, the Startsevs, and Schellenberg
made sure I took in several concerts of
Siberian-style orchestras: featuring balalaikas
and accordions playing classical music. I attended
two Baptist churches services, one in the
German region, one in Barnaul. I spoke with an
interpreter briefly at the end of the service in the
latter church – a very new and imposing church
building [shown on page 75].
In all I visited three museums (one holding
pieces of every precious stone found in Siberia,
huge, indicating the enormous wealth of that
vast land; one holding the Siberian mummies;
another showing the sleigh which carried Stalin
to Barnaul at the beginning of collectivization;
one archive housing the records of the repressive
measures forced on Ruszlanddeutsche in the
Altai by the NKVD during the period 1929-31.
I was invited to visit ten schools where English
was taught. Invariably I had an exchange with
the students and tried to answer their many questions.
One class of children in a school for the
gifted kept me going for 90 minutes.
All of this only confirmed in my mind that
we needed to raise our sights to Siberia and
form some kind of formal or informal Research
Group that would link Canada and Siberia. I even
thought we needed to create “Friends for a Mennonite
Focus on Siberia’s Ruszlanddeutsche” (or
something like that). I was convinced we needed
to capitalize on the openness of the Russians in
Siberia who have already published much on
Mennonites and other Germans to link up with
us. Perhaps we have the potential to harness
young Russians to do research for people from
abroad.
With such thoughts I want to give some reasons
why we should and eventually did form up
72 - Preservings No. 26, 2006