The national question: viewpoints from the 1980s
Andrei Bogdanovich Schnaider (Schneider?) has a certain imagination about his family tree, which starts somewhere in the 18th century, at the time of the rule of Catherine II. Due to her benevolence a great number of very skilled craftsmen changed their place of residence and removed from Germany to Russia. The first resettlers settled down on the banks of the river Volga, about 60 kms away from Saratov; later they took up residence on the right banks, as well.
- You just have to be proud of your ancestors – there is no way out, - says Andrei Bogdanovich pensively. – They were so unbelievably diligent and hardworking people – carpenters, joiners, potters. The first years of their life in the Volga Region turned out to be difficult: local residents – Kalmyks and Kirghizes – did not behave friendly towards the new, unknown clan of settlers in the beginning. Apart from this, there were conflicts with Russians.
Finally, however, sanity and reason prevailed over adverseness and relations between the different parties became tolerable, even though they were not yet friendly enough by half.
Andrei Bogdanovich’s wife, Maria Fedorovna, maiden name Schmidt, is also native of the Volga Region. All of a sudden they found themselves in the chilly, snow-covered districts of the far north, but we will talk about this in more details further to the bottom. Let us now listen to Maria Fedorovna’s memoirs:
- Our family was a big one, we lived in peace and harmony, there were five children in all. In the winter we wint to school, early in the spring and before the summer vacation we were eagerly awaiting the day, when we went to the country, where there was an old house with a big garden. Each of the children had ist own little piece of land. Whenever the wind blew a little stronger than usual, the apples fell from the trees and covered the floor to such an extent that the children had to work hard to collect them all. The father, Fedor Fedorovich, was very fond of labour and order, an attitude towards life which he also tried to instill into his children.
Maria Fedorovna shows as a photography taken of her father, and all of a sudden I recognize that he is my former teacher, the good-hearted Fedor Fedorovich Schmidt, who taught us German at school. From time to time he would bring a violin and, instead of giving lessons, moved the textbooks and the class-register apart with the following announcement: „Children, today I want to play to you on the violin!“ – And then our narrow schoolroom was filled with very unusual, but nice and at the same time mysterious sounds, which we were not very well versed in, but which nonetheless touched our hearts deeply.
Leafing through the photo album of the Schnaider family, I find some more well-known faces: Edwin Viktorovich Wagner, a surgean venerated by the inhabitants of Nasarovo, an utterly generous man.
- This is my nephew, - says Maria Fedorovna, - and over there – that’s my mother, Berta Fedorovna Pochekutova.
I know this woman personally. She is well-known all over the town and district as an active woman, who does her duty and stands firmly on her own two feet.
Which kind of thoughts cross my mind, while I am looking at these pictures? I imagine that all these people would probably live in their home villages on the river Volga today, if there had not been those fateful events of the year 1941. Which events do I have in mind? Nowadays, at the time of glasnost we know quite a lot about them.
In 1918 the German colony on the river Volga was declared an autonomous republic by a special decree passed by the Soviet government. However, on the 22 June 1941 the peaceful, enthusiastic life of the Soviet Germans came to a sudden bad end. Many Volga Germans asked for the permission to go to the front as volunteer soldiers, some even kept their ancestry secret – with the objective of being considered as defenders of their home country. However, they were to meet an entirely different fate: the displacement from their homes on a defined day and resettlement in strange places.
Thus, almost one million of people were moving away from their home towns and villages: by barge, car or train the Volga Germans were deported into unknown districts and rough climates. Many of them were resettled in our region, as for example Andrei Bogdanovich and Maria Fedorovna. And this is the region where they met for the first time and later got married. Before they had to go through lots of hard days in the trudarmy. Maria Fedorovna and her sister Aida got to Taimyr, where they, they women, were forced to catch fish and send them to the continent as long as the war was going on.
- A little further to the north there were no settlements at all, - recalls Maria Fedorovna, - and we survived as if by a miracle. – And do you have an idea what was of help to us in this respect? The bond of friendship which welded us together, friendschip and understanding among the different peoples, which had all been removed from their home districts by force. There were Letts, Finns, Kalmyks, Ukrainians and Russians. Common distress united them all, making them share the last little piece of bread with the others and help eachother as much as everybody could.
Andrei Bogdanovich was to meet no better fate – he became a forced labourer for the timber industry in the Kirov Region and the pits of the Chita Region.
Recently, his poem „Grave in the forest“, which is dedicated to these tragic events, was published in the newspaper „Friendship“. Andrei Bogdanovich explains what this poem is about.
- We were three fellows, death was in store for us. However, we were to dig out graves for our passed away comrades first. While digging, the cavity filled with water, and since we had to put our fellow sufferers into the gravesite without coffins, they immediately came up to the surface again; hence, we were forced to weight them down by means of stones, in order to make them sink. Having finished our task we returned to the camp, where some cold, watery soup, the loud, bawdy scolding of the guards and an ice-cold bed boards were waiting for us, and the next morning again – one of us had died.....
All these years were horrible; we were not even permitted to tell anybody what had happened, and we were not allowed to return to our home villages or home towns, either.
- I recall that one day, this happened already after the war, an old German man passed away, - sais Maria Fedorovna. – He was already losing consciousness when, in the very last moment, he asked us to take him away from this place to the river Volga, to his former home; and he even managed to find enough strength to move out of the house on his own; they searched after him, and when they finally caught up with him he explained that he was on his way back home, in order to die there...
They were lucky enough to survive and decided to stay in our region for the rest of their life. They brought up six children. Andrei Bogdanovich worked as a teacher for one of the schools in Krasnoyarsk for a quaerter of a century, until he finally went on pension. In 1964 he finished correspondance courses with the Irkutsk Institute of foreign languages; during this time he wrote a number of children’s books in German language; he belongs to the group of permanent authors writing for those newspapers, which are published in the Soviet-Union in German. He is very actively contributing his services to the local press.
Maria Fedorovna was always keeping the house in an exemplary way; besides, she was working for one of the schools as a cook and expert for home economics.
What else can we say about these people? They live, work and enjoy their life. I met Andrei Bogdanovich again lately.
Look at this! – he exclaimed, while stretching out his hand, in which he held a newspaper. – Well, we are going to experience a day of rejoicing, after all!
They had published materials from the plenum of the Central Comitee of the CPSU about the nationality problem. One of the paragraphs of the article read: „We have to go to any lengths in order to restore the lost rights of the Soviet Germans...“.
L. Martynova,
Staff member of the „Soviet-Prichulym“ Newspaper
„Krasnoyarsk Labourer“, 21.11.1989