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

such a group, why we should raise our sights to
Siberia, why we should not be satisfied to focus
all of our attention on the Ukraine.
One, the story of the first Mennonites on
Kulundasteppe is phenomenal
For one of my classes, a group of MA-level
physics students, I wrote an imaginary piece on
how 800 families, coming from many locations
– for example my maternal grandparents from
Sagradowka, and my paternal grandparents from
Neu-Samara - managed to settle on that virgin
grassland, the Kulundasteppe, and build up to
50 villages within a period of three years (1908
to 1911). I gave these budding engineers and
physicists an imaginary recreation of how this
was done. My Russian students, till struggling
with English and too shy to speak much, were
quite ignorant of this voluntary settlement of
Mennonites in the Altai. But they could appreciate
the difficulties they had faced - travelling a
long way by wagon and rail, and wagon again.
On the Steppe they found no trees or stones for
building, no nearby lakes or rivers for water, just
grass growing on loam and clay.
These students knew about the Germans
and the German National Region granted them
by Yeltsin in 1991. But they did not know that
these Mennonites had so impressed the Russian
government that the Tsar’s PM, Peter Stolypin,
came to visit as early as August 1910. The locale
chosen was Orlovo (Orloff) where I was later
born. My maternal grandfather, a minister and
teacher, from Sagradowka, Peter J. Wiebe, was
asked to give the address of welcome in Russian
under Jacob Reimer, the Oberschulze. He offered
the traditional loaf of bread and a pinch of salt
(G. Fast, Steppen….)
Who was this Stolypin? During one of my
presentations to a seniors group in Calgary someone
asked: Was this the same man who hunted
down all those thousands of people in the previous
four years? “Yes, this ‘PM of all the Russias,’
Count Pyotr Stolypin, was that same Stolypin!
He had much blood on his hands.” The Tsarist
reforms of 1905-06, following the terrible defeat
at the hands of Japan in the Far East, as welcome
as they were to some, did not slow down the
revolutionary activity of certain political parties,
neither on the right or left. One of these, the
Socialist Revolutionaries, particularly, made it
their business to assassinate as many government
officials as possible, as highly placed as possible,
hoping to take out the Tsar too.
In response Tsar Nicolas II had given
Stolypin full powers not only to deal with
reforms such as opening the steppelands of
Western Siberia to settlement, but also to dealing
with such anarchic destructive activity. These
revolutionaries killed Stolypin on his visit to
Kiev in 1911.While Stolpyin paid thus for his
murderous reactionary measures, the Orlovo
Mennonites under Reimer honored him with a
statue whose story was told in some detail by
Schellenberg in his Orlovo. If he had been able
to continue his reforms, Stolypin might have
stolen much of Lenin’s thunder.
This anomaly brings out the contradiction
within the Mennonite relationship to govern-
One adult class of Russians improving their English.
ment. Leaders like Stolypin were anathema to
the intellectuals, the liberal parties (the Kadets,
constitutionalists) and, of course, to the Bolsheviks,
Mensheviks and SRs, but acceptable,
tolerable, to the Mennonites.
Johann Schellenberg told how this monument
was destroyed in 1918, after the Bolsheviks
came to power. The granite slabs left lying
around were taken to another village where they
Johann Schellenberg
were used as a foundation for a monument to
partisans in the civil war 1918‐1921. The obelisk
was moved to a different village in 1967 for the
50 th anniversary of the Revolution. Later it was
returned to the grave of the partisans where it
was overgrown with weeds.
Siberia: not only Unknown but Neglected
Once I had received
some insight into what
Siberia, especially the
Altai, had to offer in
this period since 1990
of relative freedom and
greater opportunities
for gratification, and
open to visitors and
tourists, Rotary Clubs
and business, I regret
that Siberia has been
left so in the dark and
neglected.
While the very
name Siberia (Sibirien)
causes some to shudder,
Gerhard Fast recaptured some of the mystery
as well as excitement when he recalled in 1957
how they had felt as settlers a half century earlier:
“Siberia: this land of mystery with its vast
steppes, mountains, and mighty streams, with its
immeasurable riches in gold, silver, coal, iron,
with its wolf population, with its places of exile
for political prisoners and convicts, and with its
mosaic of strange peoples, shall now become our
home” (Steppen).
The coffee table book of the 1960s by Walter
Quiring and Helen Bartel In the Fullness
of Time left us a mixed message, as translated:
“The fate of the Mennonite settlers of Siberia is
generally unknown abroad. It can be said with
some certainty that to some degree they are still
in existence today, though without a doubt completely
changed. Through the intended levelling
and collectivization of all aspects of life and the
unrestricted influx of foreign elements into the
Mennonite settlements a gradual russification
appears inevitable.”
The Germans who have written about the
Volga, Volhynian, Black Sea, and Bessarabian
Germans in the ‘70s and ‘80s found their information
drying up for lack of access to sources.
For example, George J. Walters Wir Wollen
Deutsche Bleiben (1982) wrote about their
1941 exile into the vast silence of Siberia under
Stalin. His regime closed the door to the press
from the West, and even got all the War Leaders
and even General Eisenhower to cooperate
Oleg Startsev shown here with the driver, Rotarian Boris Chesnekov.
Preservings No. 26, 2006 - 73