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

away’ by other Mennonites or Germans. Those
who refused to help with the ferreting-out work
were themselves in danger of arrest (Schellenberg,
60-67).
There was no way in which one could escape
this system. Either one went along with it and
had a living, perhaps even some rewards for
extraordinary achievement, or one was accused
of sabotage. What I learned while in Siberia
was proof of the circumstance that it was most
difficult to even become a martyr for the cause.
Those branded as kulaks or arrested and sent
away were not sent away because of a faith issue.
They just could not deliver the unreasonable
norms expected of them, least of all in drought
years, which came often, yet brought no easing
of the demands.
There were mass repressions in 1937-38
when millions in Soviet Russia from all occupations
and all levels, the military not excluded,
became victims of one man’s paranoia. Schellenberg
provided names for a number of villages
in the Altai. One could intone the names on
our senses if we wanted to do a ‘memorial’ to
them.
During the Great Fatherland War the work
force of the various collectives was reduced
to women, girls, and young boys who ran the
This is part of the group that explored the “Siberian Initiative” of 2001 in Winnipeg: L. Klippenstein, J. Urry,
T. Regehr, D. Giesbrecht, W. Unger, and P. Toews.
machines until they ground to a halt for lack of
servicing, and they delivered grain all winter by
horse and sleigh all the way to Slavgorod – from
Orlovo sixty to eighty kms.
There was no improvement in their barbarous
lot until after Stalin died and Krushchev
finally took over. The kolkhozes merged, consideration
was given once again to ownership
of the produce from private lots. Eventually, in
the 1960s and 1970s, the Orlovo and Protassowo
kolkhozes prospered, in Russian terms,
and life became more secure and assured. These
76 - Preservings No. 26, 2006