In December 1957 Andrei Wigel (Wiegel) knocked at the office door of the secretary of the Comsomol District Committee. The tall, 28-year-old, yet unmarried man from Kumyr had the intention of making the request to send him to the virgin soil of Kazakhstan by means of a voucher signed by him, the representative of the Young Communists’ League. And he frankly admitted: “I have to earn money!” – The request did not raise any further questions or problems, there were no obstacles no delays, so that on the eve of the New Year 1958 the State grain farm “Freedom” assigned Andrei Wigel a tractor of the DT 54 brand to be used in the area around Yezil station.
Andrei Wigel is of Germany nationality. He was born in the village of Schweid (Schwedt) in Saratov Region. In September 1941 the Wigel family, after having been removed by force from their place of residence, happened to get to Kumyr for mandatory settlement. Andrei had just completed the 10th year of his life. When the war drew to a close, he had almost become a young man. Nature had furnished him with a strong, bodily structure – so that he was not afraid to do any work coming up in the kolkhoz farm. Apart from his budding physical and moral strength he enjoyed the reputation of being the best mechanization expert not only on this virgin land, but of the whole Bolsheuluisk District.
Between all his manifold tasks he set about looking out for a bride. Certainly, measured by the ideas prevailing in the countryside, he should have finished his life of a bachelor since long. However, by the time he was to leave for Kazakhstan he had managed to meet a girl according to his taste – Annuschka Franz. His fellow-villagers had proposed her to become his wife, Germans from Saratov, who were always busily gossiping. The Franz family lived in Aleksandrovka in internal exile. And although all kinds of fairy tales are usually told within an instant, but remain unrealized for long (no sooner said than done), this was not the case with Andrei Wigel, at all.
In the spring of the year 1958 he went back to Kumyr with the sole intention of getting married to Anna and then taking her along to the virgin land.
As beloved son of his parents, Andrei first sent his mother and sister on the long way, so that the family would be complete from the very first day. Unfortunately, this ended up with lots of trouble, for both women were not yet in possession of a passport. As a result of this fact they were simply sent back home. A very annoying situation and quite an unhappy circumstance, too, since they had already done all the way!
… Andrei and Anna Wigel were assigned a little trailer to live in. The management of the State grain farm promised to do their best to enable the newly-wed couple to build their own house within a year. The first thing the Wigels bought themselves was … a cow. “How are we supposed to get on without a wet nurse”? – the young people said. – “A farm without a cow is like an orphaned child”. As the trailer stood right in the steppe, on a small, narrow pieve of land, there was, in fact, no farm at all. Andrei and Anna decided to ram a big stake into the ground and tie the cow to it. And this is how the young couple’s family life started.
One son after the other was born to them in their new place of residence – Andrei, Sasha, Vova. A short time after their arrival to the virgin land, before the first child saw the light of day, the Wigels had finished with the construction of their own house – in spite of all difficulties. They plastered the walls with loam and then whitewashed them. They did all this with great care, being convinced that they would live here in unalloyed happiness for a long time.
In 1959, on the occasion of a meeting of the foremost farmers among the newland settlers Andrei Andreevich Wigel was handed over a certificate of honour, which he has been keeping in a casket, together with similar documents and awards, till today. In that very year (1959) he was conferred upon the honorary title of the “Best tractorist of Akmolinsk Region” for having ploughed 1565 hectares of farmland by a DT-54 type tractor.
To plough the compressed, very fertile soil of the Kazakh newland was no picnic. The ploughed soil sparkled like pearls – as far as they eye could reach.
They worked, as if it were for the very last time in their life. They worked as hard as they could. For some reason or other those times evoke warm memories in Andrei Andreevich. For it was the beginning of his family life, of hopes and a certain romanticism, as well. Of course, they had come to this place with the temporary intention to earn more money. But many of them stayed there for the rest of their life. In case of the Wigels, the path of their life had a lot of windings, but it finally made a sharp turn leading them back to Kumyr.
The nights in their new home grounds were fantastically beautiful. Black darkness. It rarely happened that stars were twinkling on the firmament. But once they were twinkling, the people were deeply moved. At such times the mechanization experts had to plough the soil from the setting in of sunset glow till daybreak. During the day there was nothing much to be done with the tractor. The heat of the day. The iron parts had run so hot that one could have made scrambled eggs on the metal. Each shift was fixed to more than 24 hours.Within this stretch Andrei Wigel managed to cultivate up to 26-27 hectares – right in the middle of the night.
When wind sprang up, they had to cope with considerable difficulties. In Yezil, for example, a steppe storm swepped over the recently opened, newly-built club-house, pulling down the entire roof, as if it opened the lid of a box. After the blizzard they covered the roof once again and, to be on the safe side, placed two tractors near the building, to which they fastened two ends of the roof by means of thick ropes. Later they rammed rails in to the ground and tightened metal cables, which seemed to be much safer yet.
Another time a steppe wind blew away all seeds from the fields. All sowing had to be done once again. The crop yields on the formerly virgin land were good. One hectare, for example, produced up to 50 hundredweights of barley and up to 30 hundredweights of wheat. Andrei Andreevich recalls: “Oh yes, on the virgin land the cereal plants bent under the weight of the ears.
Six years after their removal relatives persuaded the Wigel family to come to Tashkent. A nice town, you have to grant that. The potato harvest took place twice each in the spring, summer and autumn. In Tashkent son Vania was born. He was killed later. Four children, the parents themselves – it was a hard life, particularly with regard to the housing conditions in this stifling hot town. So it came about that the Wigels decided to remove for another, last time, but they were already tired of traveling all over the place. The family counsil came to the conclusion: “We go back to Kumyr. We will go and buy a cow, then life will be easier for us!” – This happened 35 years ago.
In the Siberian village two daughters were born to the Wigels – Valia and Sveta. And now they have ten grand-children and three great-grand-children.
Even when merely having a short look on our hero’s biography, it becomes evident that Andrei Andreevich lead a respectable life full of work. He dedicated his life to his family and the cultivation of the soil where they ended up by fateful events. Already in 1970 they sent the mechanization expert Wigel to attend the Exhibition of National Economic Achievement in Moscow as the best tractorist of the district. Seven years later his wife takes part in the event, too – Anna Yakovlevna, the “Best milkmaid of Bolsheuluisk District”.
Even nowadays Andrei Andreevich does not sit around the house idly; he does not like to put his hands in his lap. We met him when he was just piling up wood. Anna Yakovlevna was not at home – she had gone to buy foodstuffs. He lead us into the house excusing himself for the disorder, although we did not find it that bad at all. He explained to us that his wife, after the yesterday’s whitewashing of the house on the occasion of the approaching Catholic Easter holidays, had not yet managed to put everything back in its place.
The Wigels are pure-blooded Germans. For that reason they will always have the possibility to return to their historic homeland. By the way, many relatives of theirs have already left for Germany. Andrei Andreevich asks himself:
- Why should I go there now? Here I have everything I need. My children, grand-children. I got accustomed to the little river, I am used to catch fish. Look this beautiful nature all around! In Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan I have been longing for country air, for freedom. When I, in the summertime, I get up early in the morning, I first of all go outside to catch a vat full of fish for our breakfast. I love the forest. I love nature.
This is how fate decided, but on the whole it was not an extremely hard lot. In case of our hero there was a time to make his choice. He made it, obeying the voice of his heart and conscience.
Nadezhda Stefanenko.
“Vesti” („News“; translator’s note)
06.06.2000, No. 48 (6723)
(Newspaper edited in Bolshoi Ului)