Escape From Russia

ESCAPE FROM STARVING RUSSIA
By Edward John Amend

Source unknown—possibly AHSGR

(MY NOTES: I have included excerpts from this story because it represents the fate of many Russia Germans after the Bolsheviks took control. It may also represent the fate of those Ehlenbergers and other relatives who stayed behind, rather than emigrate to America.)

(Excerpts)
(Page 17)
My knowledge of the conditions in Soviet Russia is based on the fact that I was a native-born Russian subject and personally experienced the revolution and the first hectic years of Communist rule. I was born in one of the German colonies in the Volga region, received most of my education in Russian schools and served in the Czarist army during the world war. For three years after the war I taught school in a rural community and then in 1921, at the age of twenty-three, left the country.

Whatever may have been the various difficulties at the outbreak of the revolution and during the first years of the new regime, the fact that I was a German, my education and the comparative security I enjoyed as a Soviet employee should have made it easier for me to endure the general hardships in Russia. But when the famine invaded our district, it spared no one except, of course, the privileged members of the ruling party. To save myself from starvation, I seized an opportunity that offered itself to escape from the land of my birth.

…Before Bolshevism appeared on the scene, the life in our little village was peaceful. It was true that during the war there was a shortage of many of the necessities that were abundant prior to its outbreak, but at least we always had more than enough to eat. Our community was located in one of the most fertile sections of the country, and our people were relatively well off even during the four years of war. With the advent of Communism, however, the entire picture changed. After the overthrow of the Czarist regime, rumors of the Kerensky revolution reached our out-of-the-way community, but our life was not materially disturbed. Even the subsequent change in government hardly affected us. But during the fall of 1918, after just a few months of Bolshevik rule, terrible events soon made our existence almost unbearable.

In the winter of 1919-1920 famine swept over the country for the first time. At that point it was predominantly the city population that suffered. In spite of the new government’s urgent orders, accompanied finally by violent threats to compel the peasants to deliver their farm produce, the farmers openly ignored both orders and threats and refused to part with their grain. The main reason for this non-compliance with government orders was the fact that the peasants were offered ridiculously low prices, hardly enough to pay for their seed. “Let them come and get it”, was the sullen grumble of every farmer. And that is exactly what the government did: it sent out detachments of the Red Army into every town, village and hamlet, who collected at gun-point all the grain they could find, paying the peasants nothing at all for it. Under the existing conditions, this desperate step was necessary not only to save the people in the cities, but, above all, to save the new government itself, for Communism then was supported chiefly by the city population.

(Page 18)
…During the winter of 1920-1921, however, the situation was reversed. This time it was the turn of the peasants to starve, while the people in the cities were amply provided for by the government. Early in the fall of 1920, the Bolsheviks, taught by their experience of the previous eyar, sent out their collecting agents with strict orders to take from the peasants all the farm produce they had, including vegetables and fruits. All the grain and other edibles were collected at the nearest city, where regular distribution was made to the city workers and Soviet officials, while the farmers, relying on the promises of the collectors, waiting impatiently for their just shares, which never arrived. Famine spread quickly over the poverty-stricken countryside. To save their lives the farmers had to butcher their last cows and sheep, and after these were gone, their horses also had to be sacrificed. Throughout that long, dreary, and exceptionally cold winter, we existed on a diet that consisted exclusively of meat and, what was worse, meat which had to be prepared without salt. Like salt, many other necessities of life were lacking; items such as sugar, soap, matches and kerosene were unobtainable by the people in the villages…