Russian History for Bullers

As mentioned several posts ago, our primary goal for the next few months is to identify Bullers who remained in Russia after our ancestors emigrated to the United States and to describe their lives in as much detail as our sources and knowledge of the Russian context permits. Of course, to understand and appreciate the lives of the Bullers who remained, we need to be able to place them accurately in their historical circumstances and contexts, which, in turn, requires us to learn a little Russian history.

That will be the task of this series: to teach us all enough Russian history that we understand how the times and places in which these Bullers found themselves affected or even determined the outcomes of their lives. Consider Peter Buller of Tiege, for example (see here). All we know of him is that he lived in a village named Tiege, in the Zagradovka settlement, until he was killed by a marauding band on the night of 29 November 1919. A number of questions arise:

• Where in Russia was the Zagradovka settlement located?
• What was its relation to the other Mennonite colonies?
• Why was at least one Buller family living in that place?
• Why were Peter and sixteen other Tiege residents killed?
• What was the political situation that such a thing could happen?

One could offer a brief answer to all of these questions: Zagradovka, a Mennonite settlement located slightly more than 100 miles west-northwest of Molotschna, was established in the 1870s to provide land for some of Molotschna’s landless families; during the chaos of the civil war between the Red Army and the White Army, anarchist bands of men under Nestor Makhno’s command roved about robbing, pillaging, raping, and killing. Peter Buller was one of their victims.

Helpful as it is, this brief answer may obscure important considerations, such as: Was it, in fact, Makhno’s group who killed Peter, or might it have been vengeful Russian peasants? In addition, because it is so brief, the answer raises as many questions as it answers:

• When did Russia undergo a civil war?
• What caused the civil war to break out?
• Who made up the Red Army? the White Army?
• Who was Nestor Makhno? Why was he an anarchist? 
• Why did Makhno command a band of marauders?

In the end, we will be better off not settling for quick answers or brief explanations; we should rather learn enough history that we can genuinely understand, even appreciate, the contexts and situations in which these Bullers found themselves. That is what this series will seek to do.

Our approach will be to begin at a macro-level, dividing the last four centuries of Russian history into two broad periods. With that framework in place, we will progressively fill in the details, add flesh to the bones, as it were, until we arrive at an understanding of Russian history adequate to the task of placing both our immediate ancestors and the members of our larger family within their historical contexts and circumstances.