Tribulations

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Description	Links
Historical Dates
1774: Rober Bands & Tartar Raids
Famine of 1891 & 1922 (Kao & McCrory)
Kulaks & Famine of 1932-1933 (Book - Adam Giesinger)
1941 Russian Government Deportation - 400,000 Volga

Condensed History:
Of the Germans arriving in Russia, only a few were farmers. On one side of the Volga river (Bergseite), the terrain was rolling and covered with forests. On the other side (Wiesenseite), the land was a grass covered plain. Their first wheat crop was eaten by rodents and grasshoppers. Crop failures tended to follow year after year, until they learned how to cope with the land, the climate, and also its marauders.

Tribal marauders struck often. The Volga region was populated by nomadic tribes, living on the Ural steppes, called Kirghiz, Kalmuka and Bashkirs who preyed on victims. Also the rebel Pugachev, a Don Cossack, who passed himself off as Czar Peter IV, plundered and committed atrocities on the colonists. During the same period the kirghiz reinvaded their homelands. By 1775, about 4,000 of the original 26,000 germans had lost their lives or had been sold into slavery.

By 1790's the colonies began to prosper and became the agricultural pacesetters of Russia. Now they were efficient farmers and cattle breeders. Gradually, mills for grain and weaving were built, supplying the Crown and other cities along the Volga with goods and service. Healthy and prosperous, the population grew to 60,746 persons by 1816.. Then unease began, succeeding Tzar's began to take away the original rights and added further debt loads to the Volga community.

Russian Exploitation:
Empress Catherine II had forgiven the debt that resulted from the destruction of villages, farms and ransom, but in 1842, Nicholas I and officials rejected this decision and demanded total payment from the colonists. The new debt load prevented proper economic development resulting in keeping these people poor. The colonists were systematically exploited, almost to the point of serfdom, by officials of the government, called Kontors, throughout most of their history. A lot of this constant interference and eventual rejection of the premises in Catherine's Manifesto finally led to seeking of migration out of Russia by the Volga Germans in the 1870's.

Reinhardt Yauk:
This is the period that Reinhardt Yauk had stirrings of migrating and in fact went to South America, about 1890, to investigate its potential for emigration. It wasn't until 1912 that Reinhardt actually immigrated to Winnipeg, Canada, with now a family of wife and four children. Its fortunate they made this decision since the greatest turmoil that affected the German-Russians was upcoming, beginning in 1917 (Russian Revolution) and lasting until the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990's.

Even though we cant detirmine what Yauk relatives remained in Russia after 1912, there is no doubt they existed in Holstein, consequently for their memory, further tribulations up to 1941.

Famine, Kulaks, Deportation: Famine of 1921:
The famine of 1921 began with a drought that caused massive crop failures, including total crop failure on about 20 percent of Soviet farmland. The Bolsheviks simply ignored the famine until it was largely too late. Unwilling to admit natural disasters could strike in the worker's paradise, Lenin took actions to protect himself politically but did nothing to prevent the starvation.

Even when finally requesting aid, and the USA and others responded to relieve the Russian famine, the Soviets sold millions of tons of cereals for hard currency rather than feed its starving people. Exact casualty figures don't exist, but a Soviet estimate put the death toll at 5 million with 166,000 dying from the Volga region.

Famine of 1932-33:
The famine which struck the Soviet Union in 1932-33 was unlike 1921 and appears to be instigated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin whose main goal was to force farmers into collectivization. Millions died from this man-made famine in Russia.

In 1932, the Soviets increased the grain procurement quota by 44%. They were aware that this extraordinarly high quota would result in a grain shortage, therefore resulting in the inability of the people to feed themselves. Grain was removed from the people and stored in larger cities.

Kulaks:
By 1936, an additional purge of leaders, landowners, clergy, etc, (called Kulaks) were arrested and deported by the thousands to slave labor camps all over Russia, mainly Siberia. This was Stalins answer for full collectivization, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class. Germans, deported as kulaks, was about 100,000.

1941 Deportation: (Trudarmee - Slave Labor Camps)
Russian government (Stalin) has directed that 400,000 persons of German extraction be moved from the Volga autonomous republic to various parts of Siberia. Moscow says the move is necessary because there are tens of thousands of German agents in the region and the people of this little republic have been harboring these saboteurs. The Volga residents will be deported to land in the Omsk, Novosibirsk and Altai mountain areas, some 2000 miles away.