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

collectives continue to this day and some of
my Kroeker relations grew up and successfully
raised families there and claimed to have all they
required.
A ‘Siberian Initiative’
The utmost necessity of a research initiative
into the records of that story came home to me
when Johannes Schellenberg took my Russian
host, Oleg, and me to an archive in Barnaul that
housed 42,000 cases of people who were repressed
in the 1930s. Oleg, a Russian of about 50
years, away from home, grew up without being
aware that such things had taken place right there
in his Altai region, in Slavgorod, at the Friesen
mill converted by the NKVD into a jail. He came
away appalled at the perpetration of those horrendous
Stalinist crimes against humanity, including
many more Russians than Germans. Good God,
he exclaimed, what did these innocent people do
to deserve such treatment?
Those archival resources were mostly in
Russian, but some, even the minutest records of
those repressive measures involving Germans
were in German. Nevertheless, it seemed obvious
that those with complete Russian language skills
and knowledge of the archives and the ways of
Russian archivists would do better at digging
out the story than those from abroad with weak
language skills and facing many frustrations.
For this reason it is a pleasure to recall that
in 2001-02 we launched what was called a
“Siberian Initiative”. At that time I told some
historians from Western Canada and Fresno
my story of how I managed with the help of a
Rotarian in Novosibirsk to make contact with
several historians and to discover Andrej Savin.
He communicated easily in German and already
had an impressive list of articles about Germans
in Siberia, including joint authorship with Detlef
Brandes, Duesseldorg, of “Sibiriendeutsche im
Sowjetsystem 1920 - 1941” (Siberian Germans
in the Soviet System, 1920-1941). Hardly did
I know that he would become our chief channel
of communication between East and West and
continues to do work of huge significance to all
Mennonites.
Paul Toews, Fresno, was successful in
finding funds to support Savin’s research into
archival collections in Siberia, particularly
Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Barnual, Omsk, and of
course Moscow. The first significant result of
that, as already reported, is Savin’s preparation
in Russian of a volume including an introductory
essay, an annotated listing of 1000 archival
files in various depositories across Siberia and
Moscow, as well as more than 100 selected documents
on Mennonites.
Clearly, it is time to look north and east into
Siberian Russia.
Selected Sources
Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der
Ruszlanddeutsche (Essen: Klartext verlag, Detlef
Brandes, editor; 1990s) Among the contributors:
Elvira Barbasina; Larisa Belkovec; Detlef
Brandes; Olga Gerber; Andrej Savin; James Urry.
All told, these and others have covered the Stalin
period as it affected the Kulundasteppe and its
people. Andrej Savin, among these, has now
published his “Sibiriendeutsche im Sowjetsystem
1920 - 1941” (Siberian Germans in the Soviet
System, 1920-1941) (Essen: Klartext Verlag,
2001), 495 pages; [soon to be released in Russian,
first, the title here translated into English:
Ethno Confessions in a Soviet State: Mennonites
in Siberia, 1920-1980, Annotated Archival Listing
of Archival Documents and Materials, Select
Documents (Novosibirsk: Russian Academy of
Science-Siberian Branch and Center for Mennonite
Brethren Studies-Fresno, 2006).
Larisa Belkovec gave me a copy of her
‘Bolshoi Terror’ in Court and Village Records
(1920s and 1930s in Russian). (Moscow: IVDK,
1995), 317 pages.
Gerhard Fast (Peter J. Wiebe), In den
Steppen Sibiriens (Rosthern: J Heese, [1956])
Manfred Klaube, Die deutschen Doerfer
in der westsibirischen Kulunda-steppe: Entwicklung
– Strukturen – Probleme (Marburg: Elwert
Verlag, 1991)
C.C. Peters and H.J. Willms, Vor den Toren
Moskaus (Abbotsford: 1960)
Johannes Schellenberg, Istoria celo
Orlovo [History of Orloff] (Moscow: Gotika,
1996)
George J. Walters, Wir wollen Deutsche
bleiben:The Story of the Volga Germans. (Kansas
City: Halcyon Press, 1982, 1993)
Adapted from what I wrote in May 2001,
June 2006.
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