Our Family: KULAKS!

Have worked on some more on the family history book. This is what we would call a denunciation document. It declared, after an investigation, that my great uncle, Jakob Gerk, was a "Kulak" from a "Kulak" family, and listed the evidence...my great-grandfather, Jakob's father, was complicit in anti-soviet activities, he had land, they had about 5 people working for them, and Jakob was regularly writing my grandfather in Canada. Under socialism, where all people were to be equal...some were more equal than others. Basically our family were labelled "enemies of the people". Jakob was also involved in some of the insurrections against Soviet power. Shortly after this document was created, my great-uncle was arrested for stealing grain to feed his children. He was sent to prison, and, in 1941, sent to the Chelyabmetallurgstroy camp were he died within just a few short weeks.

Last Letters & the Great Silence

Now working on the chapter "Last Letters & the Great Silence" An analysis of the last letters we received from my great-grandmother in January of 1933. Her name was Maria Eva (Heit) Dieser. She was pleading for help to buy food. Soviet postal authorities stole the money and letters my grandparents sent. She starved to death in August of 1933. There was then a 51 year period of silence, as the family were told they would be shot if they corresponded with our family in Canada.

My grandmother did not find out until 1984 that her Mom had starved in 1933.

All the letters are pretty much like this one...they had two things on their minds...thanking God for health and survival January 5, 1933. Written in old German dialect, it reads:

May God grant you warmest greetings from your mother and mother-in-law to you children Paul and Elizabeth and your two children. I thank the dear Lord I am still halfway healthy and hope this letter finds you as healthy as when you left me. Further I want to tell you where the father has gone with the two children. They have gone further into the Kavkas (ed. note: Caucasus) and I am home alone. Dear children, conditions are difficult here with respect to food. Times are tough dear children. Yes dear children we are having a hard time getting food. Some people have had money sent to them. For one coin (taler) one pound of flour can be bought in Kamyshin. If you could come to my aid could you send me 5 (taler) which would give us five pounds of flour. Perhaps then I wouldn't starve to death, dear children. Again I ask if you can help me so that I don't have to starve. Now I will close this letter and greet you again and ask you to write quickly

Currently Reading.....

This book has been a great help as I have worked on my family history book.  When I started this project about 30 years ago, I had very little original research material.  Soviet archives were closed....top secret, and I never would have imagined that it would ever change.

 Now, after a number of trips to the former USSR since 1992, I can say that I am amazed at what material I was able to collect!  But how to present it, and back up each and every thing I want to say?

 So I made the decision to basically not say anything in the book unless I could produce a document to back it up.  More difficult when dealing with Soviet era documents.

Dave Chang writes:

In the internal evidence test we determine whether the contents of the document itself point towards its reliability or otherwise. According to historian and legal scholar J. W. Montgomery, “historical and literary scholarship continues to follow Aristotle’s dictum that the benefit of doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself. This means that one must listen to the claims of the document under analysis, and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualifies himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies.”

 My cousin Alex, who was born in the former USSR, once told me to be careful when using Soviet-era documents, because so many of them were tainted by false accusations against people.

 So  when using some of them, I have to use the principle of "internal criticism".  That has been helpful.  I've used a document that is basically a transcript of a denunciation of one of my grandfather's brothers.  In it, it lists "anti-soviet" activities as the reason our family were so bad, and then how much land we owned.  It also gives a list of names of people that used to work for our family.  So...what do I do with this? Well, because of my numerous interviews with my grandmother, I can confirm at least one name of a person working for our family is accurate. This means that the rest of the document has a high probability of being accurate, also because of the fact I also knew that my great uncle was indeed involved in various insurrections to try to usurp communist power.

Fascinating.