Buller Time Turns Five

On 15 June 2018 we celebrated the anniversary of Buller Time’s launch by looking back over the first four years of the blog’s existence (see here). There is no need to repeat that information, although it is worth several paragraphs to update what was written there, before we rehearse the territory covered over the past twelve months.

Counting this post, Buller Time published 101 posts after the one on 15 June 2018, which brings our total to 679. Using our previous estimate of 860 words per post, this represents an additional 86,860 words, leading us easily past the half-million mark, since last year we estimated 497,080 words. If all Buller Time posts were assembled into book form, the total page count would exceed 1,450 pages. The material published just within the last twelve months would make for a nice 200-page book.

Over the past year, Buller Time enjoyed a modest increase in popularity. Since 15 June 2018 the blog has had 8,688 distinct page views, for an average of 724 per month and 23.8 per day. By way of comparison, the totals on this date a year ago were 682 page views per month and 22.6 per day. The majority of visitors are located in the United States: 66 percent. Canada accounts for the next largest portion, at 12 percent, with Germany adding another 5 percent of the audience. The remainder of users live in a wide variety of countries.

The posts of the past year ranged widely in terms of geography, chronology, and genealogy. Late June 2018 found us located in central Nebraska with pictures of Johann Siebert and Sarah Siebert Buller and their descendants (here and here) and photographs of Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller’s house on the farm where Grandpa was born; in fact, the picture in question is the earliest photograph known to us of Grandpa himself (here and here). 

Most of our attention was given toward an earlier time and a distant place: the mid-nineteenth century and even earlier in Molotschna colony. Our long-running series on the village Alexanderwohl turned to the 1848 Gemeindebericht (community report), as we offered a translation and commentary on it in order to increase our understanding of the life experiences of our forebears and their neighbors (see here for the first post in the Gemeindebericht sequence). An unexpected finding along the way raised significant doubts about the Alexanderwohl claim to primacy as the heirs of the Przechovka church in Poland. In fact, we discovered that a substantial number of Przechovka church members had emigrated to Molotschna in 1819, the year before the arrival of the group that established Alexanderwohl.

The Przechovka Emigration series that followed confirmed our hunch that the Alexanderwohl group was not the first from Przechovka to resettle in Molotschna (see here for the initial post). We also learned during the course of this investigation that the earliest Przechovka members founded and took up residence in the Molotschna village known as Franztal. This, of course, led us to learn what we could about that Mennonite village, including translating and commenting on its 1848 community report (the Franztal series begins here). 

In addition to nineteenth-century Molotschna, we explored a twentieth-century Siberian village named Konstantinovka (begin here). This originally Mennonite village experienced profound change during the decades of Soviet rule, so much so that it today it has no Mennonite presence. In the late 1980s, however, a member of our larger family, one Heinrich Buller, still called the village home. 

Heinrich of Konstantinovka was not the only distant family member we covered. For example, we devoted considerable time to a Heinrich Buller and family who settled in South Dakota in late 1875, four years before our own immediate ancestors took up residence in Nebraska (see here for the first post in the series). Other Bullers we mentioned were more closely related, both brothers of Grandpa Chris Buller: Peter E Buller and Klaas P. Buller (see here).

One final member of our extended family, albeit by marriage, offers a segue to upcoming posts: Oma Buller (see here). This Mennonite grandmother also lived in a Siberian village, although much earlier than the Heinrich of Konstantinovka mentioned above. In fact, the photograph that we discovered of her (below) places her squarely in the late 1930s, during the Great Terror or Great Purge, a time of unprecedented oppression of anyone deemed an enemy of the state led by Joseph Stalin. 

As we will learn in the posts to come, Oma Buller was not the only one of our family to live through the events leading up to the Russian Revolution and the rise of the communist state during the first half of the twentieth century. It will be interesting to look back a year from now and see the ground that we have covered and the discoveries we have made. 

Bullers in the Soviet Union 2

Only a few hours remain in May, so it is time to get writing, lest the month end up a complete void. Although there are no posts to prove it, Buller Time has been active throughout May researching the topic of this series. This post will begin to lay out the broad strokes of what has been learned so that, as we proceed, we can understand the lives and experiences of the Bullers and other Mennonites we encounter within their proper historical contexts. We start with several clarifications.

First, the term Soviet Union is not relevant for the entire period we will cover, nor should the term evoke the same image throughout this entire period. Strictly speaking, the Soviet Union—or, more properly, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—did not come into existence until late in 1922; our examination will begin well before that date, during the years that led up to the creation of the Soviet Union. 

Further, even after 1922, the Soviet Union was not a static entity: like all governing bodies, the Soviet Union evolved and changed to meet the demands of a dynamic internal and international situation and to conform to the personal desires of various leaders, whether Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, or someone else. Consequently, those of us who grew up during the height of the Cold War, when children and parents alike feared nuclear war between the US and USSR, should not impose our memories of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and beyond on the earliest Soviet state of the 1920s and 1930s. There were similarities and continuities, to be sure, but each period should be examined on its own terms, so that our understanding of life in the Soviet Union at any particular moment is true to the facts as we know them.

Second, although the series refers to Bullers in the Soviet Union, the scarcity of family-specific data will frequently require us to discuss the Mennonite experience in general, then apply what we learn to any Bullers who may have been under Soviet control at that time. We will, to be sure, seek to identify specific Bullers in the historical record, and we will also attempt to place them on the family tree. 

We will begin, I imagine, with David Buller and his son Heinrich, during the last days of the Russian monarchy. However, we will also touch on other Bullers we can identify, including Katya Buller’s family in Kleefeld, a family of Bullers we discovered earlier seeking to escape Soviet control, and, I believe, even one Buller member of the Soviet Communist Party. With any luck, other Bullers will step out of the mists of history and take their rightful place in our larger family story.

The investigation will be informed, of course, by various resources, but two deserve special mention. First, Russia: A History (Freeze 2009) offers a scholarly but highly accessible account of Russian history from Kievan Rus in the late ninth century through Vladimir Putin in the early twenty-first century. Our general history of the Russian/Soviet context will be heavily informed by the narrative offered there. Second, our understanding of the Mennonite experience within the Soviet context will depend greatly on a series of lectures by Terry Martin on “The Russian Mennonite Encounter with the Soviet State, 1917–1955” (Martin 2002). Martin’s three lectures on this topic are freely available for anyone to read, and I encourage those who wish to understand the Mennonite experience in the first half-century of Soviet rule to read these lectures more than once.

With this background set, we are ready to begin the series proper. Our approach will be to describe as fully as necessary the historical context of a particular moment in Russian/Soviet history, then locate the Mennonite community and any Bullers known to us in that time and place. Our goal in all of this will be not only to learn both the names and lineages of members of our broader family but also to appreciate the challenges they faced during the waning of the Russian Empire and the rise and growth of the Soviet Union.

Sources Cited

Freeze, Gregory L., ed. 2009. Russia: A History. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martin, Terry. 2002. The Russian Mennonite Encounter with the Soviet State, 1917–1955. Conrad Grebel Review 20:5–59. Available online here.

Bullers in the Soviet Union

My recent reading has focused on two topics: Mennonite life in Siberia/Kazakhstan, and Mennonite life during the early decades of the Soviet Union, particularly during the time of Joseph Stalin’s reign of brutality and terror. The two topics overlap to some extent, since Mennonites were numbered among the millions of foreign residents and other enemies of the state either executed or exiled to the east, to Siberia/Kazakhstan, during the 1930s and 1940s. 

Our natural interest in these topics increases when we consider that members of our broader family lived in different areas of the Soviet Union, from present-day Ukraine in the west to Kazakhstan in the east, throughout this entire time. Several years ago, for example, we read of three Buller children living in Kleefeld in 1930 (see here). We wondered then, and we ask still today: Whatever happened to Katja Buller, her siblings, and her parents? What was their fate within the Soviet state?

More recently (here) we revisited David Buller’s youngest son Heinrich and his son Heinrich, who moved with David’s widow (his second wife after Helena Zielke) to Kazakhstan in 1908, nine years before the Russian revolution that eventuated in the formation of the Soviet state (see further here). Evidence leads us to conclude that the family remained in the area, which means that they still lived there when the Soviet authorities began exiling Mennonites and other people classified as German to this area in the 1930s. 

We have also encountered other Bullers in Kazakhstan, such as Oma Buller and her granddaughter Katharina Heinrich Buller (here) and Heinrich Buller of Konstantinovka (here)—all of whom are in some way related to us. No doubt other Bullers can be identified in various regions within the Soviet Union during this time, if one looks hard enough and long enough and is blessed with good fortune in the search, and each discovery of a previously unknown Buller can lead us to wonder what life was like for that subject of the Soviet state.

The various strands just mentioned have converged into an idea, or at least a hope of an idea, for a series of posts on Bullers in the Soviet Union. The series has two goals: (1) to identify members of our broader family living within the Soviet Union roughly from 1917 through the end of the twentieth century; and (2) to learn more about the early years of the Soviet Union and especially the Mennonite experience within that polity. I do not know how successful we will be in discovering Bullers within the Soviet Union, but we will try just the same. If nothing else, our exploration of Mennonite life—and death—in that context will give us empathy for what so many faithful endured and appreciation to Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller for making a life-altering decision that has given to many of us the opportunity to enjoy life within a reasonably free society.

What’s Next?

With the Franztal series at an end, the question arises: Where now? I am open to suggestions, if any come to mind; you can use the Click Here to Contact Me link in the upper right to send your ideas. Although Buller Time has been quiet the past several weeks, reading and thinking about matters Mennonite and Buller have continued.

For example, we have heard from several members of the broader family. A son of Peter E Buller (see here), who was Grandpa Chris’s younger brother, emailed to make contact and fill in some blanks on that branch of the family. His memory, since confirmed by Dad, is that Pete and his wife Elsie Fast Buller took over the family farm after Peter P and Margaretha moved to California in 1936 (see here). Dad recalls that several years later when Uncle Pete and family were preparing to move to Iowa, they held a farm sale, and he believes that a Farmall (F20?) was sold by lottery at that sale.

According to Pete’s son, the family moved to “Salix, Iowa, due to the dry years, to Chicago for Moody Bible Institute, back to Iowa because of WWII, and to Omaha for Grace Bible Institute in 1945.” Chris and Pete had a good relationship and traveled together at least once: “In February 1957, I got to go with them and Matilda (and Esther?) to visit Grandpa PP Buller and Aunts Sarah and Marie in Upland, CA.  … We traveled in Uncle Chris’ 1956 Ford sedan (six adults and me as a seven year-old boy sitting on a little folding stool).”

Many of you will recall that Pete and family owned a nursery for many years in Omaha. If anyone has memories (or photographs!) of that family branch that you would like to share, please contact me.

Buller Time was also contacted by a granddaughter of Klaas P. Buller, Grandpa Chris’s older brother (see here). I know less about this family (which means more room for readers to contribute their own memories), but Dad’s recollection is that Klaas lived south and east of Peter P and Margaretha. This is consistent with our earlier suggestion that Klaas and family lived on 120 acres of section 13 of the Henderson Township in York County (see the map here). Dad remembers that place well because he broke his leg there jumping off of a feed bunk; he still had the cast on his leg on the third birthday in 1936.

He also recalls that Klaas and family moved to Lushton for a while and had a shoe repair shop there a block west and a block south of the post office. Eventually Klaas moved to York, I believe, and one of his daughters remains there. Again, if anyone has further information about Klaas’s family, please share it with the rest of us.

In the meantime, I will continue to read and explore and think about what topics might be of interest to Buller Time and its readers.

Franztal 23 and (probably) last

In 1846 the Danish author, philosopher, theologian, and critic Søren Kierkegaard published a work titled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Although I highly recommend reading that work, this post is not directly concerned with it, except for the fact that Kierkegaard’s title hints at the volume’s role as not only a wrapping up of what he had initiated earlier (the full title is Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments) but also an extension, an unscientific, even subjective and impressionistic, postscript to that work.

In the same spirit as Kierkegaard’s book, this post offers a concluding unscientific postscript to the Franztal series. Instead of rehashing the historical data in orderly fashion or revisiting the community report to see what details merit a second look, this postscript will recount (coherently, I hope) some impressions made along the way.

1. The Przechovka Church

We began the series because we had discovered in an earlier series (Przechovka Emigration; see here for the first post) that the widely accepted claim that the church at Przechovka in West Prussia had emigrated to Molotschna in a single group in 1820, then founded the village of Alexanderwohl the following year, was not the whole story. In fact, a larger group had emigrated to Molotschna in 1819, and many of them had established Franztal. To my knowledge, the Przechovka-Franztal connection has not been widely discussed, if at all, prior to this point. Why?

On the one hand, the Przechovka-Franztal group did not establish their own village church that might have claimed the Przechovka mantle. Rather, they attended the nearby Rudnerweide church led by Elder Franz Goerz; in so doing, they lost any obvious identification with the Przechovka church. On the other hand, the Przechovka-Alexanderwohl group not only claimed to be the legitimate heirs of the West Prussian church (see their Gemeindebericht here) but also held the visible symbol of that claim: the church book. 

In time, the Alexanderwohl group came to be identified as the continuation of the Przechovka church. In one sense they were: they carried the history and traditions of that church from West Prussia to Russia and even beyond, to the plains of Kansas. However true that story may be, it is not the full story. An larger body of Przechovka members emigrated to Russia a year before the more famous group, and their stories should neither be forgotten nor omitted from the larger Przechovka narrative.

On a more personal note, although the Buller family became prominent within the Alexanderwohl church, the first Przechovka Buller to enter Molotschna (Jacob Jacob Buller) resided first in Franztal. Ironically, however, he lived there only two years before moving to join family and church friends in, you guessed it, Alexanderwohl.

2. The 1835 Census

As a novice only beginning to work with this primary source, I approached it with some unrealistic expectations. Having seen that the census recorded the movements of people within the colony (e.g., Jacob Jacob Buller is listed in Franztal and Alexanderwohl) and the deaths of those who had passed away before 1835, I assumed that it would be a relatively comprehensive source for reconstructing the history of Franztal. Unfortunately, I learned otherwise.

As we discovered in the previous post, the census does not contain evidence regarding the identities of five or six of Franztal’s twenty-three founding settlers. Think about that. In 1835, a mere fifteen years after the founding of the village, roughly a quarter of the founding settlers were either forgotten or omitted from the official record. If this is correct, and at present I see no other explanation, then we (or at least I) should temper our expectations when using the census or any other primary source. Even when the source is accurate, it may be incomplete, and we should keep an open mind until we know that we have all the facts at our disposal, not just some of them. 

A second realization that this exercise produced was the absolute necessity of checking the primary sources themselves. I confess that thus far I have been working strictly from the English translation of the 1835 census, which is several steps removed from the (incomplete) original source: someone first transcribed the census material from a microfilm of the census; someone else then translated what had been transcribed and recorded it on the English translation. 

Not surprisingly, mistakes entered the document all along the way. For example, Gerhard Heinrich Dirks of Franztal 1 is said to have moved to Rudnerweide in the English translation, but, in fact, he moved from Rudnerweide to Franztal, a correction first noted by Steve Fast (see here for his list of corrections). Therefore, not only is it imperative to approach the census with realistic expectations, but one should remain open-minded about any conclusions drawn from secondary sources; needless to say, one should also prefer consulting the primary sources whenever possible.

What I discovered through the Franztal series is how much I have to learn about the 1835 census and other similar resources. Reading Glenn Penner articles about Russian censuses in general (here) and the 1835 Molotschna census in particular (here) is valuable, but it is no substitute for working with the actual record, even in microfilm form. My understanding is that all LDS Family History Centers provide access to this and other primary sources. It may be time to visit the center 7.5 miles up the road.

3. The 1848 Gemeindeberichten

The Franztal community report gives the same impression as the Alexanderwohl report: although it contains a mistake or two (Johann Cornies was not head of Molotschna colony), it is largely accurate in historical terms. However, the value of the Gemeindeberichten extends far beyond their providing historical information. Their true value, I think, lies in their insider perspective. 

These community reports were written by residents with firsthand knowledge of life in the village. They knew which events were important to the village’s history because they had often lived through those events themselves. They remembered, for example, the droughts, the swarms of locusts, and the devastating blizzards because they had experienced them. They were well equipped to describe the village gardens, orchards, fields, and pastures because they walked past them and worked in them every day. The value of the Gemeindeberichten, in order words, lies in their immediacy, their intimate connection to the village itself. One might even suggest that their unscientific nature is their greatest strength.

The biggest problem with these reports is that they remain largely inaccessible. They are all posted online, to be sure (see here), but few are available in English translation. Even when they have been translated (see, e.g., Alexanderwohl, Friedensdorf, Gnadenfeld, Rudnerweide, Tiege), details within the accounts may remain obscure due to our geographical and chronological distance from them. 

It is because of these obstacles that Buller Time has now translated and commented upon three of the community reports: Waldheim, Alexanderwohl, Franztal. Only forty-one remain for Molotschna, plus many more for Chortitza and other non-Mennonite (generally Lutheran) German colonies in Russia. I trust that someday all the Gemeindeberichten will be available in English translation, so that as many researchers and readers who wish can wrestle with this primary source material for themselves.

Franztal 22

The previous post compared three lists—the 1835 Molotschna census, our list of 1819 immigrants from Przechovka, and Peter Rempel’s list of 1819 settlers—in order to begin to identify Franztal’s founding settlers. A comparison of the names in these sources revealed thirteen of the twenty-three landowners in Franztal, including Wirtschaften 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 24. This post will work through the remaining Wirtschaften to see if we can identify the other ten owners.

Our procedure will be straightforward. We will identify the Wirtschaft by number and give the name of the person who lived there according to the 1835 census. We will survey the available evidence about that person—and any others listed at the same location—and draw whatever conclusions we can about who first settled that Wirtschaft.

1. Gerhard Heinrich Dirks (GM 61557) moved to this plot from Rudnerweide in 1828, so we know he was not the original settler. The census does not list any other inhabitants, so we cannot suggest who first owned this Wirtschaft.

2. Jacob Johann Neufeld (GM 61562) moved to this plot from Grossweide either in 1820 (so his entry under Grossweide) or 1829 (so his entry under Franztal). This discrepancy is at least in the English translation of the census, perhaps also in the original. If Neufeld moved to Franztal in 1820, he was the original settler of this plot; if he moved in 1829, he was not, and we are unable to suggest some other candidate.

4. Peter Jacob Pankratz is apparently GM 43141, since the name of the father, wife, and daughter on the census matches the information given for this individual. Peter was born in 1806, which means he was fourteen when Franztal was founded. Clearly, he was not an original landowner. Interestingly, he had a connection with our family. Peter’s father Jacob (GM 43069) died in 1808, after which his mother Ancke Pankratzen (GM 32957) married Jacob Peter Buller (GM 318737; for a post documenting the confusion that surrounds Jacob, see here). She died in 1813 while still in Prussia, and Peter Pankratz was presumably left with his stepfather Jacob Buller. What is curious is that Peter Pankratz is not listed with Jacob Buller when the latter emigrated in 1820 (Rempel 2007, 172). What happened to Peter Pankratz that he did not emigrate with Jacob Buller? It is tempting to think that this Peter was one of the drivers named Peter Pankratz within the 1819 traveling party (see here). How and when he came to own Franztal 4 is unknown, as is the identity of the original owner of the Wirtschaft.

5. Although we already identified Peter Andreas Richert (GM 48279) as the original owner, it is worth mentioning that he died in 1821. His plot was taken over by Peter Peter Janzen (GM 29972), who moved to Franztal 5 from Rudnerweide in 1822. We should also note that Jacob Jacob Buller (GM 5587) lived at this plot from 1820 until he moved to Alexanderwohl in 1822. This Jacob was the son of Jacob Peter Buller mentioned in number 4 above.

7. The census reports that Jacob Jacob Goerz (GM 61582) emigrated to Molotschna in 1821 and then moved from Tiegerweide to Franztal in 1822. Therefore, he was not among the original twenty-three landowners, and we have no clues as to the original settler of this Wirtschaft. 

9. Dietrich David Block (GM 61603) left Prussia for Russia in 1818 (Unruh 1955, 360; Rempel 2007, 109). He is not listed at any other Molotschna village, so it is reasonable to think that he settled first in Franztal and was one of the original landowners. 

12. Peter Peter Ratzlaff (GM 47898) was twenty-two in 1835, so he was six when his family moved to Molotschna in 1819. His father Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff was the original owner of Franztal 6, so the most reasonable explanation is that the son Peter took over Franztal 12 when he established his own family. We have no further evidence as to who was the founding owner.

13. Andreas Jacob Pankratz (GM 43136) came to Molotschna late. According to Rempel (2007, 172), he received a passport in 1820 but was unable to sell his possessions and so stayed in Prussia. Later (2007, 194) we read that a second visa was issued in 1824. The English translation of the census states that he moved to Molotschna in 1829, but one wonders if the 4 has been misread as a 9 (Steve Fast’s list of census corrections does not indicate any error; see here). Whichever date is correct, we can conclude that Pankratz was not an original landowner.

16. The census reports that Kornelius Kornelius Siemens (GM 61663) emigrated to Russia in 1817, which is confirmed by Rempel (2007, 106). The census further states that he moved to Franztal from Ohrloff in 1820. The Kornelius Siemens listed at Ohrloff 22 appears to be a different individual (and, contra GM and the index here, I see no Kornelius Siemens listed at Ohrloff 25). Assuming that the Franztal listing is correct, Siemens was an original landowner in Franztal.

20. According to the census, Heinrich Peter Janzen (GM 225175) moved to Molotschna in 1817 (see also Rempel 2007, 105). The census adds that he moved to Franztal from Lindenau 30, where he was apparently landless in 1820. Janzen was thus one of Franztal’s founding landowners.

21. Peter Peter Janzen (GM 61689) is reported to have emigrated in 1819 (neither Rempel nor Unruh lists him in any records). He is not listed in any other village, so we may conclude that he settled first in Franztal and was one of the original landowners. His residency there was short, however, since he passed away in 1822. Franztal 21 passed to his second son, Klaas, who continued to live there at least through 1857, after which the property apparently passed to Klaas’s son Jacob (see the voter lists here). 

23. According to the census (also Unruh 1955, 370), Peter Jacob Schmidt (GM 61708) emigrated in 1822 and resided first in Alexanderwohl; he moved to Franztal 23 in 1824. He was therefore not one of the original landowners.

This exercise has enabled us to identify at least four, possibly five, more original landowners, but five or six remain unknown. In the next post we will recap what we have learned thus far and make some concluding observations about the nature of the sources on which we must rely.

Works Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Unruh, Benjamin H. 1955. Die niederlandisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe-Rüppurr: self-published.

Franztal 21

After spending several weeks learning more about Konstantinovka and the Mennonite experience in Siberia/Kazakhstan, we are ready to return to Molotschna colony, specifically to Franztal. When we last looked at this small village, we had just completed the translation of the 1848 Gemeindebericht (here). 

If you recall, Franztal was founded in 1820 by several groups, the largest of which had emigrated from West Prussia (Poland) the previous year. We identified as many of of the group as we were able in an earlier series titled Przechovka Emigration (see the first post here). The goal of this post is to begin to weave together several lines of evidence to form a more complete picture of Franztal’s early days and beyond.

The 1848 community report provides several important clues. 

In April 1820, fifteen families from the district of Schwetz near Kulm in West Prussia arrived to establish a village among the others. It was considered appropriate by the authorities and a commission chosen for settlement to set up each village for twenty fireplaces [residences] but to cultivate only fifteen of them and to leave the others empty for their descendants. However, in a subsequent review of the plans, it was found that the villages would not get their proper land, so all fireplaces had to be occupied immediately, and one village had to be distributed among the others. So it happened that on 18 May of the same year, eight more families of immigrants from the same district were added to the village. …
The first fifteen families of this village formed a single party in their immigration but did not have a leader. Of the others involved, some traveled with the large party whose leader was the now long-deceased elder Ohm Franz Goerz, and some also came to the country in small parties without a leader.

The key facts are as follows: (1) although Franztal had twenty-four Wirtschaften (plots) when it was fully occupied, it was established with only twenty-three (15 + 8); (2) fifteen of the plots were settled by members of the party we traced in the series Przechovka Emigration. With that background, we are ready to consult several different lines of evidence to see how many of Franztal’s original settlers we can identify. Those lines of evidence include the 1835 census as our foundation, plus our earlier work on the Przechovka Emigration party and the list of 1819 settlers in Franztal recorded in Peter Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828 (2007, 157–59).

The table below presents the names retrieved from the three lines of evidence. It first lists the twenty-four landowners in Franztal, followed by the other heads of household who lived in Franztal but did not own a Wirtschaft there (25–29).

Wirtschaft	1835 census	Przechovka list	Rempel list
1	Gerhard Heinrich Dirks
2	Jacob Johann Neufeld
3	Georg Jacob Nachtigal	Georg Nachtigal	Georg Nachtigal
4	Peter Jacob Pankratz
5	Peter Andreas Richert		Peter Richert
6	Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff	Peter Ratzlaff
7	Jacob Jacob Goerz
8	Tobias Peter Schmidt	Tobias Schmidt	Tobias Schmidt
9	Dietrich David Block
10	Peter Kornelius Abrahams	Peter Abrahams	Peter Abrahams
11	Kornelius Johann Richert	Kornelius Richert	Kornelius Richert
12	Peter Peter Ratzlaff
13	Andreas Jacob Pankratz
14	Peter Peter Block	Peter Block	Peter Block
15	Heinrich Christopher Hooge		Heinrich Hooge
16	Kornelius Kornelius Siemens
17	Peter Peter Becker	Peter Becker	Peter Becker
18	Peter Peter Janzen		Peter Janzen
19	Adam Adam Ratzlaff	Adam Ratzlaff	Adam Ratzlaff
20	Heinrich Peter Janzen
21	Peter Peter Janzen
22	Peter Peter Unrau	Peter Unrau	Peter Unrau
23	Peter Jacob Schmidt
24	Peter Jacob Becker		Peter Berg [Becker]
25–29	Heinrich Jacob Ratzlaff Benjamin Peter Ratzlaff Adam Peter Ratzlaff Peter Peter Becker Peter Benjamin Frey Johan Johann Stephen Julius Gerhard Durksen David Heinrich Goerz Peter Daniel Daniels Jacob Franz Duerksen Kornelius Kornelius Quiring Peter Wilhelm Janzen Peter Peter Unger Berhard Jacob Matthies Jacob Peter Schoenke Abraham Abraham Weyer Abraham Peter Unger Franz Franz Peters	Heinrich Ratzlaff Benjamin Ratzlaff Adam Ratzlaff Peter Becker Peter Frey	Heinrich Ratzlaff Benjamin Ratzlaff Adam Ratzlaff Peter Frey Johann Steffen Julius Doerksen David Goertz Peter Daniels Kornelius Quiring Berend Mathies Abraham Weier Peter Unger

Based on this presentation of information, we can draw several important conclusions.

1. Appearance of a name across all three lists indicates that the person settled in Franztal in 1820 and, unless indicated otherwise, still lived there at the time of the 1835 census. For Wirtschaften 1–24, this also points to eight of Franztal’s original landowners: Georg Nachtigal (3); Tobias Schmidt (8); Peter Abrahams (10); Kornelius Richert (11); Peter Block (14); Peter Becker (17); Adam Ratzlaff (19); and Peter Unrau (22).

2. Appearance of a name in the census list and the Rempel list also indicates that the person settled in Franztal in 1820 and probably remained there in 1835. The only difference between this group and those in number 1 above is that these settlers were not part of the Przechovka group; they emigrated from some other part of West Prussia (i.e., the “eight more families of immigrants”). The group includes four heads of household: Peter Richert (5); Heinrich Hooge (15); Peter Janzen (18); and Peter Becker (24).

3. Only two names appear on the census and our Przechovka list but not on the Rempel list, and only one of them is identified as a landowner: Peter Ratzlaff (6). An earlier post (here) identified this individual as an original settler in Franztal, so we can add him to the group of known settlers.

By correlating the information available to us, we are able to identify with reasonable certainty over half of Franztal’s original settlers: thirteen of the twenty-three who settled that first year. If we accept the Gemeindebericht report that fifteen of the original landowners were from the Przechovka group, we can further deduce that we have identified nine of them; six remain. Having identified four of the non-Przechovka group (as reported by the Gemeindebericht), we have four more to identify, if that is possible.

We will seek to identify the other ten founding landowners by working plot by plot in a subsequent post, but we should not neglect one final observation from the comparison of lists.

4. The Przechovka and Rempel lists for Wirtschaften 25–29 identify thirteen heads of household who came to Franztal at the same time as all the others but apparently, at least as far as we know at this point, never owned their own plot. A few of the landless thirteen may have intended to earn their livelihoods through other means (e.g., blacksmith, weavers), but most probably hoped to farm their own plots. It would (will?) be interesting to see how many of these thirteen stayed in Franztal over the long term.

For now, however, we will keep our focus on Franztal’s original landowners—in the following post.

Work Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Mennonite Life in 1920s Kazakhstan

The Konstantinovka 4 post published earlier (here) referenced an article titled “Der Cornies-Verband, Pawlodarer Ansiedlung,” which appeared in a German-language periodical named Der praktische Landwirt. Since then I have been able to look more closely at both the article and the journal; I have also learned more about Der praktische Landwirt from a recent article in the Journal of Mennonite Studies. This post will survey both the journal and the article to learn more about what Mennonites living under Soviet rule faced on a daily basis.

In “Modelling Mennonites: Farming the Siberian Kulunda Steppe, 1921 to 1928,” Hans Werner explains that the journal Der praktische Landwirt (The Practical Farmer) was the newsletter of the Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschafter Verein (AMLV), or the All-Russian Mennonite Agricultural Association. Werner writes:

The AMLV was established by Mennonites in 1922 to stimulate reconstruction after the Russian Revolution and Civil War. It was granted legal status by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee in 1923 and established offices in Moscow. The AMLV served Mennonites in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, while its counterpart, the Verband der Mennoniten Sudrusslands [Association of Mennonites of South Russia], later the Verband der Burger Hollandscher Herkunft [Association of Citizens of Dutch Descent] dealt with Mennonite settlements in Ukraine. The AMLV was dissolved by the Soviet government in 1928. (Werner 2017, 269)

Werner explains that the AMLV’s efforts to revitalize Mennonite agriculture failed in the Kulanda Steppe region, which included the Barnaul/Slavgorod colony, that is, the Mennonite area adjacent to where Heinrich son of David Buller lived, and by the late 1920s many of the Mennonite farmers in the area thought only of emigrating to North America or some other locale where they could live in freedom. 

Although the AMLV was short-lived, existing only from 1923 to 1928, the issues of its journal Der praktische Landwirt offer an interesting look at the Mennonite experience within the Soviet Union. The masthead, for example, provides basic information about the journal plus a possible hint about the ethos in which it was published.

The journal title is given, of course, but also its sponsor: “Organ des Allrussischen Mennonitschen Landwirtschaftlichen Veriens.” Below that we learn that this is the second volume (2. Jahrgang) and that it was published in Moscow (Moskau) in June–July 1926, numbers (Nummer) 6–7 of the current year and 13–14 since the journal began. The lead article reports on the ninth council meeting of the AMLV (Die 9. Ratssitzung des A. M. L. V.).

The journal motto is intriguing: “Einigkeit macht stark,” or “Unity makes strength.” The motto itself is common enough, being used by various nations and organizations down through history in various forms. Still, one wonders why it was chosen for this Mennonite periodical. Was this a quiet reminder to readers that members of the Mennonite community shared a common commitment? Was it perhaps a nod toward the unity promoted by the communist authorities, embodied in the call for the workers of the world to unite? Did it have any significance at all? That question must remain unanswered for the moment.

The opening paragraphs to the later article of interest to us, “Der Cornies-Verband, Pawlodarer Ansiedlung,” are equally instructive. I am not certain I have translated all the German exactly right (see below for the original), but the sense is clear enough.

Thousands of inhabitants, peasants of the Councils of Union [?], thanks to the tireless efforts [?] of the Councils of Government [?], which sacrificed everything to unite the peasants and workers through cooperation, recognized and grasped the deep-seated, valuable, idealistic nature of cooperation, and now we see how throughout the SSSR the peasant masses strive to improve their economic life through it.
     If you travel through all the autonomous republics of the Soviet Union, we also find a not-so-large Mennonite colony in Kazakhstan (Kyrgyzstan), whose inhabitants decided already in 1923 to create an organization that would overcome all economic difficulties.
     This is how the Cornies Association came into being! (1926, 8)

Although several terms are uncertain, the first paragraph sets the tone for what follows by sounding a number of key Marxist notes. The German word Räte, translated “Councils” here, is equivalent to the Russian term soviet, so it would also be legitimate, I think, to translate the opening as follows:

Thousands of inhabitants, peasants of the Soviet Union, thanks to the tireless efforts [?] of the Soviet government, which sacrificed everything…

Whatever the best translation of the opening clauses, the remaining sentiments are clear—and clearly Marxist in orientation. Reference is made to the two classes whose interests the communists claimed to promote: peasants and workers. The goal of the Soviet sacrifices is also mentioned: to “unite” the two classes; the use here of another form (vereinigen) of the term that appeared in the journal motto (Einigkeit) may hint at its significance within that context. Finally, the emphasis on cooperation for the sake of the greater, corporate good also reflects the ethos that the Soviets sought to engender.*

The Mennonites of Kazakhstan, which included the Mennonites of the Pavlodar colony where David Buller’s son Heinrich lived, are located within this geographical and political context. Further, the establishment of the AMLV is subsumed under the Soviet agenda: the Cornies Association, it is said, was formed in order to fight for the economic well-being of the Mennonite peasants whom it served.

This is the world in which the Mennonites of Kazakhstan lived during the 1920s. Some, we know, became communists in ideology, but all had to operate within the confines and constraints of the Soviet state. Even their efforts to rebuild the agricultural economy after the setbacks of the 1917 Revolution and ensuing civil war, so ably described by Werner (2017), became a tool in the hands and the mouths of the Soviet authorities. It is no wonder that, generations later, their descendants fled the region at the first opportunity.

***

Note: The acronym SSSR stands for Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, which is the transliterated form of the Cyrillic title Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (CCCP), or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Original

Tausende von Einwohnern, Bauern der Räteunion haben dank der unermüdlich bestrebten Räte-Regierung, die alles opferte, um die Bauern und Arbeiter durch die Kooperation zu vereinigen, den tieflagernden, wertvollen, ideellen Sachverhalt der Kooperation erkannt und erfaßt, und nun sieht man, wie in ganz S. S. S. R die Bauernmassen sich bestreben, ihr Wirtschaftsleven durch dieselbe zu verbessern.
     Durchstreist man nun alle autonomen Republiken des Räte bundes, so finden wir im Kasakstan (Kirgisien) ebenfalls eine nicht allzugroße Mennonitenkolonie, deren Einwohner schon anno 1923 den Entschluß faßten, eine Organisation zu schaffen, mit deren hilfe alle wirtschaflichen Schwierigkeiten überwältigt werden sollten.
     So entstand der Cornies-Verband!

Work Cited

Werner, Hans. 2017. “Modelling Mennonites: Farming the Siberian Kulunda Steppe, 1921 to 1928.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 35:269–85.

Konstantinovka 5

Thus far in this short series we have located the village Konstantinovka on a map and in relation to the village Miloradovka, where our ancestor David Buller’s son Heinrich moved with his family and his mother in 1907. We then contextualized the Mennonite presence in Siberia (the term being loosely used) within four specific stages of their history in the region. The last post sketched the geographical context of the Mennonite settlement of Siberia. We paid particular attention to Pavlodar, the area around the city by the same name, where twelve Mennonite villages—including Konstantinovka and Miloradovka—were grouped.

This post will supply an additional layer of context to our understanding of Mennonite life in Siberia, that is, the Mennonite migration east as a part of a significantly larger phenomenon within Russia at that time. What follows depends on the scholarship of Donald W. Treadgold and his work The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War.

We begin with a quick review of Russian history. For a good portion of its imperial history, Russian society included two types of serfs: state serfs were technically free but were tied to a particular plot of state-owned land and obligated to pay taxes on the fruits of their labor; private serfs enjoyed no freedom and were little more than the property, slaves, of the nobles who owned them and to whom they owed their labor. For all practical purposes, these two groups constituted the peasant class in Russia.

Unlike most of its European neighbors, Russia did not fully emancipate its serfs until quite late, in 1861, when Alexander II decreed that serfs on private estates—who constituted 38 percent of the entire population of Russia—and household servants were free citizens with all the rights of self-determination, including the right to own land. The state serfs, who were already free from a legal standpoint, were not directly addressed in the edict, but the effect was essentially the same for them.

We should stop here for a moment to compare the different situations of our Mennonite forebears with the vast population of Russian peasants. Before 1861, Mennonite farmers could own land, but Russian peasants could not; the government and the members of the nobility owned all of the land on which the peasants worked. After 1861, Russian peasants had the right to buy land, but there was insufficient land to meet all their needs. As a result, some peasants had plot sizes that averaged 4.5 dessiatines, or 12.1 acres (Treadgold 1957, 256), an area too small to support a family, let alone have surplus available for sale. If you recall, Mennonite full allotments were 65 dessiatines, or 175 acres. The disparity in landholdings is stark.

In other words, after 1861 Mennonites were not the only Russian residents to experience a land crisis. Newly emancipated Russian peasants faced the same reality. With a growing population and all of the land in Eurpoean Russia already claimed and cultivated, what were the peasants to do? Enter Siberia.

According to Treadgold, the Great Siberian Migration did not begin immediately after the serfs were emancipated in 1861. According to his table 2 (1957, 33), the explosion did not take place until 1891–1900, when over a million peasants moved east. More than double that number migrated in the period 1901–1910. Table 3 provides yearly totals for 1887–1913; the years 1900–1910 are of greatest interest to us, since 1907 was the year of Heinrich’s migration. 

1900	219,265
1901	120,125
1902	110,930
1903	125,500
1904	46,732
1905	44,029
1906	216,648
1907	567,979
1908	758,812
1909	707,463
1910	353,000

In other words, during the decade when Heinrich Buller and thousands of other Mennonites were moving to Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, millions of Russian peasants were moving along with them. In 1907 alone, over half a million Russian peasants made the same trip that Heinrich and his family made. In short, the Mennonite migration to Siberia was neither unusual nor an aberration; it was a minor part of a long-term, large-scale settlement of a frontier region. Treadgold compares it, albeit loosely, to the westward movement to settle the American frontier. The direction of travel was different, but the pattern of settlement was the same.

This is not to discount the significance of the Mennonite migrants. Treadgood mentions them as one example of the success of the government’s promotion of Siberian migration. 

The example of the Kulunda steppe (in the southern part of Barnaul county of Tomsk province) was illustrative. It had 913,000 desiatinas, and had netted the Emperor’s Cabinet only 3,000 rubles annually from Kirghiz farms and Pavlodar townsmen. In 1907, 1,089 Kirghiz farms were there. The Resettlement Administration had left them 167,000 desiatinas (more than 150 desiatinas per farm) and had turned 746,000 desiatinas into migrant lots. Within three years, 200 villages were settled with some 55,000 peasants (Ukrainian and in part Mennonite). There arose a trade center, Slavgorod. In place of one earth hut, in a year there sprang up a church, administrative building, two mills, bazaars, hospital, and pharmacy; there were preparations for opening a church school for girls and a school for boys; land was set aside for an experimental field. (Treadgold 1957, 174)

The area being described includes the Pavlodar and Barnaul (Slavgorod) Mennonite colonies. They were an important part, but only a part, of the successful settlement and development of the Siberian region.

That being said, one additional point deserves mention. The Russian peasants who had owned 4.5 dessiatines in European Russia had average landholdings of 38.3, or 103.4 acres, in Siberia. This was a substantial increase. However, according to Igor Trutanow (2015, 37), the Mennonite settlers of Konstantinovka received allotments of 60 dessiatines, or 162 acres. If this is correct, then one might easily imagine that the Russian government repeated its earlier practice of granting the Mennonite farmers larger tracts of land in hopes that their example of successful farming would be adopted by the Russian peasants surrounding them.

Before leaving this topic, we should consider also the means of moving such large numbers of people thousands of miles across often-barren expanses: the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Constructed between 1891 and 1916, this railroad carried the majority of migrants west with great efficiency. In order to encourage as many people as possible to make the trip, the Russian government reduced fares in 1898 from an average of 57 rubles per family in 1890 to 15 rubles in 1898 (Treadgold 1957, 131). The lure of available land and the low cost of traveling to it had the desired effect: thousands of Mennonites and millions of Russian peasants made the trip to the wide open spaces of Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe. David Buller’s son Heinrich was but one of the many people who made that trek.

Works Cited

Treadgold, Donald W. 1957. The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 4

We continue our brief series on Konstantinovka (I promise we will return to Franztal soon), which was prompted by the discovery of Heinrich Buller, who formerly lived in that village (see Trutanow 2015). This called to mind that a much earlier Heinrich Buller, son of David Buller and his second wife (after Helena Zielke Buller died), had moved to the same area in 1907. In fact, it seems that the earlier Heinrich lived in a village roughly 20 miles to the east of Konstantinovka, where the later Heinrich lived. 

We are using the occasion to learn a bit more about the Mennonite settlements in Siberia, to use the designation loosely. In fact, Siberia is technically the area of Russia east of the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean: the Asian portion of Russia. Kazakhstan is not part of Russia proper, although it was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. However, the term Siberia was used to refer to the general area that included the Kazakh Steppe in the northern part of Kazakhstan, which is where our interest lies.

As noted in the previous post, chronologically speaking, the Mennonite residency in Siberia spanned roughly a century: from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the majority of Mennonites left the region for Germany. The Mennonite presence also extended across a considerable area of land. Helmut T. Huebert offers a helpful overview of the Mennonite settlements in Siberia:

Thousands of Mennonites know of Siberia only as a place of brutal exile, but it should not be forgotten that there were over 100 villages of Mennonites who voluntarily moved to this vast region. Principal areas of settlement were near Omsk (29 villages plus many estates), the Barnaul (Slavgorod) (58 villages) and Pavlodar (12 villages) colonies south east of Omsk, Minusinsk (2 villages) in Yenisei province, and later settlements along the Amur River (20 villages) in the far east. (Schroeder and Huebert 1996, 131).

Three of the areas mentioned above are shown in the map below.

Omsk, in the upper left, grew into a significant transportation hub when the Trans-Siberian Railroad passed through it in the 1890s. Mennonites were part of the growth of industry in Omsk. The arrow to the right points to the Barnaul, or Slavgorod, Mennonite colony. We encountered that area in a post on Oma Buller (here). 

The center of our immediate interest is the Pavlodar Mennonite colony, which consisted, according to Huebert, of twelve villages. As we noted earlier, Konstantinovka is marked by the yellow pin on the left; Miloradovka is the pin on the right.

According to Cornelius Krahn, the settlement

was established in 1906 by Mennonites coming from the various European settlements. The first settler to come to this area was David Cornies, who bought the equivalent of three quarters of a section of land on the Irtysh River near the city of Pavlodar. … The first settlement, Rebrovka, was established on the west side of the Irtysh River on purchased land opposite Pavlodar, which is located on the east side. During the 1920s the village Rebrovka was transplanted to the east side of the Irtysh in the vicinity of the Mennonite villages of Tursun-Bay and Mosde-Kul. The rest of the land was located on the right [east] side of the Irtysh and was obtained through the government free of charge similar to that of the Slavgorod settlement. The land was sandy. When the settlers came they found no trees. They raised wheat, oats, barley, linseed, and watermelons in abundance. (Krahn 1959)

Krahn goes on to list thirteen villages in the settlement, not the twelve one would expect based on the Huebert report. Comparison with a list prepared by Tim Janzen (here) leads me to conclude that Krahn includes several villages that should be assigned to the Barnaul/Slavgorod colony and excludes one village that was part of Pavlodar, Heinrich Buller’s village: Miloradovka.

Thus the complete list of twelve villages in Pavlodar included Sabarovka, Tschistipol (Reinfeld), Sofieyevka, Rayevka, Rovnopol, Olgino, Nadarovka, Miloradovka, Konstantinovka, Domninskoye, Borissovka, and Rebrovka. Miloradovka and Konstantinovka were, in fact, part of the same colony, which only raises the intrigue about whether the more recent Heinrich Buller was not so distantly related to the earlier Heinrich, son of David. We shall see.

Before leaving this overview, it is worthwhile to read more of Krahn’s description of the Pavlodar settlement:

Most of the settlers were poor and the pioneering difficulties were great. The winter was severe and the summer hot and dusty. The Mennonites planted trees around their homes. When P. F. Froese visited the settlement during the summer of 1924 he stated that a Mennonite settlement could be recognized from a great distance. He describes four types of villages in the area. The native Kirghiz population lives during the summer in a special summer aul, and during the winter in a dugout. The Russian village consists of whitewashed adobe houses without any trees or shrubs. The Mennonite houses were also built of adobe or unburned brick patterned after their European architectural styles, but they were surrounded by trees. …

In 1925 the population of the Pavlodar settlement was 2,736. A report of the administration of the co-operative, named the Cornies-Verband…, gives an insight as to what happened to the settlement during the Revolution and after. … Even in 1926 only eight of 12 village schools were operating because of lack of teachers, in spite of the fact that the settlement had a Zentralschule in Sabarovka started in 1918, which was supported by private individuals until 1924, at which time the Cornies-Verband took it over.…

The Cornies-Verband was represented in all villages, and its 450 members constituted 90 per cent of the families. A report states that many had only one horse and some did not even have one cow. The primary objective of the co-operative was to obtain loans through the government to improve the seed and the cattle and do business for the community. Four dairies, one in each of the settlements, were in operation in 1925. The reporter reveals in his concluding remark that the Cornies-Verband was being influenced by the Marxian terminology when he stated, “We would like to urge all readers loyally and without weariness to continue the work of the co-operative so that we can achieve the goal desired by our forerunner, N. J. [sic: W. I.] Lenin.” (Krahn 1959)

The report that Krahn references in the second paragraph and from which he draws is, remarkably enough, available online (here). The article, titled “Der Cornies-Verband, Pawlodarer Ansiedlung,” appeared in a periodical named Der praktische Landwirt, published in Moscow. This particular article carries no personal byline but is rather attributed to the administration of the association. 

The article probably contains additional nuggets about the Pavlodar settlement, but that must await a future post. For now we end with the arresting recognition that this Mennonite settlement, less than a decade after the 1917 revolution, was already compelled to profess their loyalty to the leadership and the vision of one Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, leader of the Soviet Union until his death in 1924.

Works Cited

Krahn, Cornelius. 1959. Pavlodar Mennonite Settlement (Pavlodar Province, Kazakhstan). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Schroeder, William, and Helmut T. Huebert. 1996. Mennonite Historical Atlas. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 3

As was already mentioned, Konstantinovka was not the only Mennonite village established on the Kazakh Steppe. In fact, there were a number of other villages founded at the same time in the same locale and throughout the region. This post will provide background to the larger phenomenon of Mennonite settlement in the Kazakh-Siberian region, so that we may understand Konstantinovka and other similar villages of interest within their proper contexts.

We have typically considered the Mennonite experience in Russia in terms of its westernmost sites: the Molotschna and Chortitza colonies. This is understandable, since our direct ancestors lived in Molotschna and left before any significant Mennonite emigration to the east. However, as noted earlier, Heinrich Buller, son of our ancestor David, and his family were part of a movement eastward. That emigration to what was loosely referred to as Siberia was not a minor event; rather, it extended over a number of years and involved large groups of people who founded a number of new colonies, each of which comprised multiple villages of Mennonites.

In fact, the Mennonite presence in Siberia and Kazakhstan was of such significance that the Journal of  Mennonite Studies devoted an in entire issue in 2012 to the Mennonites in Siberia (see here). One article in that issue is of particular interest for this post: Yulia I. Podoprigora’s “The Formation and Development of the Mennonite Congregations in Kazakhstan: From the End of the Nineteenth Century to the Early Twenty First Century.” Podoprigora divides Mennonite history in the region into four periods, which will give us a good framework for thinking about this topic.

Period 1 encompassed “The Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries.” Emigration east began in the late 1880s with the followers of Abram Peters and Claas Epp, the latter of whom led a group of adherents to await Jesus’s imminent second coming somewhere “in the east.” Epp and his followers were disappointed, of course, but they remained in the east, and over the next decades large numbers of Mennonites moved to Siberia for more earthly reasons, namely, available land. 

Podoprigora reports that “fourteen Mennonite daughter settlements were established from 1900 to 1910 in Pavlodar uezd, Semipalatinsk oblast” (2012, 38; Pavlodar is the area that interests us). As Podoprigora explains, the new life on the wide open spaces of the steppe started out well but, with the coming of communist rule, took an alarming turn for the worse.

Mennonite congregations functioned in the aforementioned areas till the end of the 1920s and into the early 1930s when it became clear that they could not accept the new Soviet regime policies (collectivization, forced military service, anti-religious campaign, etc.). Many sought to emigrate. There were Mennonites who were at the forefront of the emigration movement in Pavlodar uezd. One observer noted that “in Mennonite settlements an inclination for emigration to America was especially noticeable.” Similar emigration sentiments were shared by Mennonite community members of Southern Kazakhstan, who in the late 1880s had considered Central Asia as a place of refuge but in the late 1920s “were burning with one desire, to emigrate.” During this initial period, some Mennonites emigrated but those who stayed were no longer able to observe religious practices as meeting houses were closed and presbyters and deacons were repressed. (2012, 39)

Period 2, “From the Early 1930s to the Early 1940s,” was a time of oppression. The Mennonites who had been unable to emigrate in the late 1920 were effectively living within a prison: they had no chance to leave the Soviet Union and little freedom within it. In addition, this period “was characterized by the forced, repressive resettlement of [other] Mennonites to Kazakhstan.” In the 1930s many Mennonites were designated kulaks (wealthy peasants), thus enemies of the people, and sent into exile in the east. The following decade, during and after World War II, the Mennonites and countless other Germans were deported to various areas of Kazakhstan, including the formerly Mennonite villages.

Period 3, “From the Late 1950s to the Late 1980s,” that is, after the death of Joseph Stalin, saw a gradual relaxing of the oppressive measures that had characterized the previous decades. Although the Soviet state continued to promote atheism and to dismiss religious faith as a relic of “reactionary ideology” (Podoprigora 2012, 40), some churches were permitted to reopen and hold services, albeit under strict scrutiny. During the 1960s, some Mennonite congregations allied themselves with other groups, such as the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. By the mid-1980s there were eleven Mennonite churches registered in Kazakhstan, four of which were Mennonite Brethren (2012, 41).

Period 4, “From the End of the Twentieth to the Beginning of the Twenty First Century,” witnessed the end of any significant Mennonite presence in Kazakhstan. According to Podoprigora, “During this period the majority of Mennonite congregations of Kazakhstan disintegrated as a result of the emigration of believers to Germany” (2012, 42). As we noted in the previous post, this exodus is echoed by Igor Trutanow, who writes, “All my friends and colleagues in Konstantinovka went as Spätaussiedler (late repatriate) to their ethnic homeland,” to Germany (2015, 164). Podoprigora mentions one only congregation with several branches that has two hundred members total; clearly, the Mennonite presence in Kazakhstan is much diminished.

For over a century significant numbers of Mennonites lived, worked, and worshiped in Kazakhstan. We have long known that some members of our immediate family were among that group, but we have recently discovered that members of the broader Buller family remained in Kazakhstan through the terrible years of communist oppression, then left for Germany after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Both Heinrich Buller son of David and the later Heinrich Buller who lived in Konstantinovka were located in the Pavlodar uezd (district), as did a number of other Mennonites beginning in the early 1900s. Now that we have our chronological bearings, we are ready to explore the development of the Mennonite communities in this particular locale.

Works Cited

Podoprigora, Yulia I. 2012. The Formation and Development of the Mennonite Congregations in Kazakhstan: From the End of the Nineteenth Century to the Early Twenty First Century. JMS 30:37–44. Available online here.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 2

We will return to Franztal in due course, but the village of Konstantinovka deserves at least one more post, if not more.

In the last post we learned where Konstantinovka is located: in the northeast corner of Kazakhstan, 22 miles west of Miloradovka, the small village where we think Heinrich Buller, son of our ancestor David, and his family and mother (David’s second wife) moved in 1908. The map below shows where within Kazakhstan the two villages were located (the two yellow pins). Note also that Siberia lies to the north and the corner of China appears in the lower right. The Mennonites of the Pavlodar area, in which both Konstantinovka and Miloradovka were located, were almost four times farther from the Molotschna colony (1,830 miles as the crow flies) than they were from China (475 miles).

It is important to keep this great distance in mind as we talk shift our attention to the founding of Konstantinovka. As we do so, we will consult Igor Trutanow’s Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. As a side note, I highly recommend that anyone interested in reading about Mennonite life in the Soviet Union during the 1980s buy a copy of this book (Amazon and Lulu). Trutanow’s book is not stale history but rather a firsthand account from someone who lived among the descendants of the Mennonites who established this village.

Like Miloradovka, Konstantinovka was founded by Mennonites who emigrated from south Russia (modern Ukraine) (Trutanow 2015, 28). Trutanow writes:

In the fall of 1907, a group of Mennonites came to the future Konstantinovka. They had to prepare temporary shelters for the settlers from Tokmak [a city on the edge of the Molotschna colony] in the arid steppe. … They made bricks from the upper layer of the fallow soil. It was the only building material in the barren steppes of Kazakhstan. Timber for roofs, doors, and window frames was bought at the bazaar in Pavlodar. These mud huts had no wooden floors, so people lived on the bare ground. Once the shelters were ready, officials of the Pavlodar district administration visited the newcomers to inspect their housing situation. The officials gave the first Mennonite settlers a list of approved Russian names to choose for their new village: Olgino, Borisovka, Konstantinovka, and Natashino. The men from Tokmak picked Konstantinovka. … In the spring 1908, about two hundred Mennonites from Tokmak, Melitopol, and Chortitza settled in Konstantinovka. They travelled by train from South Russia to Omsk, Siberia, where they purchased horses and carts for transportation to Konstantinovka. Upon arrival, each family received 60 dessiatin (655.5 square meters) of fallow land. The agricultural equipment, ploughs, wooden harrows, seeds, wheat, oats, barley, and corn were purchased in Pavlodar. Only three years later, the new land was put under the plough. (Trutanow 2015, 37)

The situation and struggles that Trutanow describes for Konstantinovka were also encountered by Heinrich Buller, son of David Buller and his second wife. So, for example, earlier we read about how the settlers planned to overcome the area’s scarcity of lumber by building sod houses (see the Peter Fast letter here). Even more interesting is the fact that the Peter Fast letter references a group of forty families from the Molotschna colony who were planning to emigrate to the Pavlodar area in April of 1980. Is this the same as the group of two hundred whom Trutanow mentions, or were they separate groups of Mennonite immigrants?

Intriguingly, we also have direct evidence that Heinrich Buller planned to moved to this region in April 1908. In a 5 February 1908 letter to the Mennonitische Rundschau, Heinrich responds to an earlier question about his brothers and sisters as follows:

You ask about my siblings. We are only two, me and Sarah, Mrs. David Nickel; they are already in Siberia, and we plan, if it is the Lord’s will, to depart April 7, from here to there, where we intend to establish our home. (see here)

Clearly, Heinrich planned to emigrate to Siberia—by which he no doubt means the Pavlodar area—in 1908, and he hoped to begin his journey on 7 April. Did he leave then, or did he delay several weeks and travel with the forty-family group that Fast mentions?

We do not yet have answers to these questions, but we will continue to search for information that will shed light on them. Before I close this post, I am happy to provide an answer to a question posed at the end of the previous post: the Heinrich Buller who lived in Konstantinovka and who is pictured with his cow Romashka (see here) is alive and well. There may be more to report about him within the next week, so stay tuned!

Work Cited

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 1

A little more than a month ago (here) I mentioned a book written by Igor Trutanow: Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. I have since purchased and read the book (reasonably priced at Amazon here). I may, in time, offer a more complete overview of the book, but this post seeks only to introduce this Mennonite village and several of its former residents who are important to us. 

I begin with a correction: Konstantinovka is not, as stated earlier, 5 miles west of Kleefeld in the Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement in western Siberia; I have no idea what led me to think that it is. Konstantinovka is in the same general vicinity, but farther west. The satellite photo below shows the city of Pavlodar in the lower left; Konstantinovka is located north–northeast and is marked by the yellow pin on the left.

The yellow pin to the right is also important to us, since it marks the location of the village to which David Buller’s second wife (after Helena Zielke) and their son Heinrich moved (here and here). Both that village, named Miloradovka, and Konstantinovka are located in Kazakhstan, which was earlier part of the Russian Empire and then, until 1991, part of the Soviet Union. 

Pinpointing Konstantinovka’s location is important for several reasons. First, as one can see in the photograph above, Konstantinovka was only 22 miles west of Miloradovka. It was close to a village of some importance to our family. 

Second, although the most common Mennonite names in the village were “Dick, Enns, Epp, Fast, Franz, Friesen, Janzen, Klassen, Lemke, Martens, Neufeld, Penner, Peters, Rempel, Thiessen, Toews, Warkentin, Wiebe and Wiens” (Trutanow 2015, 81), at some point Konstantinovka became home to at least one Buller family.

As mentioned earlier, Trutanow writes of a friend he made during his years in Konstantinovka: a man named Heinrich Buller who had a wife named Helene and a sister Elisa (long deceased). Trutanow includes a photograph from sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s of Heinrich and his cow Romashka.

Although we cannot say precisly how we are related to Heinrich, we can be fairly certain that he is a member of our family. It is a little odd, I admit, to see a photograph of a relative who lived on the other side of the globe and who eked out a living in a poor village located on the Kazakh Steppe. 

Trutanow explains that all the Mennonites fled Konstantinovka after the breakup of the Soviet Union, that is, after they no longer lived under the oppressive control of the Soviet government. Trutanow writes, “All my friends and colleagues in Konstantinovka went as Spätaussiedler (late repatriate) to their ethnic homeland,” to Germany (2015, 164). Presumably Heinrich and his mother Helene were part of that group. 

Does Heinrich still live there today? That we do not know, but perhaps Trutanow has kept in contact with his old friend. Trutanow, who lives in Canada now, helpfully included his email address in his book. The search for Heinrich is not yet ended.

Work Cited

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.