I live in the Siberian village of Bulyi Yar, in the Achinsk District. Our
village is situated on the raised banks of the river Chulym. This year we
celebrated its 280th anniversary. When I studied the history of our village at
school, I learned that it had been a Cossacks’ stanitsa (settlement) in former
times. And I began to get interested in the phenomenon, why there were German
surnames among all the Russisan, Ukrainian and Belorussian family names, as well
– like Grumel and Stritz. I touched on this subject at home, asked my relatives,
and it turned out that my grand,other’s maiden name – Felde – was a German
surname, too. Grandma gave me quite a brief report (she does not like to recall
those hard times), after which I decided to interview the other villagers of
German origin, try to question grandma once again in order to receive more
details and a reply to my question of how these families happened to get to
Siberia.
On the 28 August 1941 Stalin’s ukase became operative according to which all Germans living in the territory of the former USSR were to be deported to remote districts of the country.
My grandmother Dorothea Genrikhovna Okisheva (maiden name Felde) is from a family of repressed Germans. She was born in the village of Krasnyi Yar, Ssratov Region, on the 18 October 1940. Her parents were Heinrich Yakovlevich and Dorothea Ivanovna. There were six cildren: five girls and a boy. Grandma was the youngest daughter. She was only five months old, when the family was displaced to Siberia in 1941. They were allocated Belyi Yar as their new place of residence. They found accomodation in a small apartment. They had to lead a life in undue hardship. They literally had nothing of their own: neither dishes, nor bedding or garments. The neighbours met the newcomers with mistrust. They were of the opinion that, apparently, they had not been driven away from their homes without reason: it was obvious to them that they were enemies. However, they somehow had to organize their lives. Great-grandmother Dorothea Ivanovna started to work for the kolkhoz farm. Soonafter her husband was called up into the army and sent to the front. She and her children moved into a little house. And after a while it seemed that they had somehow settled in. They had just accepted the situation as it was, when they received the official notification about Dorothea Ivanovna’s husband. She was left behind as a widow, her children had lost their father. Deeply grieved she she took her children and removed to the place where her mother-in-law lived. Unfortunately, my grandma, Dorothea Ivanovnas’s daughter, is unable to recollect her father.
Grandmother had a very hard childhood. The family lived in grinding poverty. They were weak from hunger. In 1947 she went to school. As from the fifth grade, which she attended with other children from the village, she had to walk on foot to the neighbouring village of Sertsaly, three kilometers away from where they lived. Grandma recalls: “We went to school every day. When it was raining the path was all rain-sodden. We had to wade through deep mud. Apart from this, we had to pass by two gaps, which had once been bridged. But the bridges had collapsed. In the winter the path was completely snow-covered; we sank into the snow up to our knees. We went there in the morning and set off home after lunch. Our clothes were all soaked through and full of mud, and we were dead tired”.
During the summertime, the ten year-old Dorothea and her classmates were working for some Chinese vegetable gardens. The Chinese were growing vegetables for the flying school in Achinsk – carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and poppy seeds. The children took care of the vegetable patches, picked weeds and watered the plants.
In 1955, at the age of fifteen, Dorothea Felde finished school and began to work for the pig breeding farm. She and her comrade herded the pigs, feeded and watered them. They had to work hard for the kolkhoz farm – there was no mechanization at all, everything had to be done by hand. The work days there were made up by so-called “trudodni”, work units, and the people were paid according to the number of work units completed; however, wages were extremely low.
In 1959 grandmother met her future husband – my grandpa. One year later they got married and removed to the village of Bychki in the Bolsheuluy District. Their son Nikolai, my uncle, was born there in 1961, and daughter Yelena, my mum, in 1964. In Bychki my grandmother found a job in the bakery, where she did not only bake bread, but was also responsible for the cleaning of the rooms. The village was far away from the next bigger down; that is why friendship among the German families, who were quite a lot in number, was preserved for a long time. Since Bytchki was situated right in the taiga, the inhabitants used to hunt bears and foxes. Whenever they had shot a bear, the event was celebrated. All village people were then gathering behind the fencing; they had all brought along food and beverages, everybody was dancing. My mum recalls: “We, the children, found the bear extremely huge. His broad paws were hanging down from the vehicle. Those long claws, the soft, brown coat … The meat of bears looks dark; they used to make cutlets from it”.
In 1972 grandma, her husband and children returned to the village of Belyi Xar. She found a job at the greenhouse and began to grow cucumbers and onions. A great deal was demanded of her, not to mention the hard physical labour. In 1993, two years before her going on pension, she quit her job and changed to the pig breeding farm again, which, sometime in the past, had been the starting point of her job history. In the meantime, they had introduced at least some kind of a mechanization – labour was not that hard anymore. Therefore, after her official retirement in 1995, grandma decided to continue to work there for some more time.
… While I was listening to my grandmother’s report, I glanced at her horny hands, her face with all the rinkles, and then right into her eyes … In spite of her fate, in spite of all the bad times she had gone through in her life, her eyes had never ceased to give a very vivid and even joyful impression. Grandma is now 67 years old, but she is still very spirited, strong-minded and industrious, as she had always been. I believe that these attributes are just part of the Volga Germans’ character in general, for they contrived to survive the hard times in spite of all strokes of fate. They had always been willing to work hard, help eachother and somehow enjoy life.
The above material was arranged by Darja LASUN. Achinsk District.
Today’s Newspaper, 11.08.2007