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.