Stepan stopped by my desk again and told me a little story about his great grandfather, Nikolai, who was originally from the Ukraine. Nikolai was a successful, small family farmer. So successful, it turns out, that In the 1930’s, Stalin’s thugs took the farm and sent the whole family to Siberia. Somehow, Nikolai was able to bribe two guards so the family could escape. They changed their names and lived as illegal aliens in Murmansk. I looked up Murmansk on Google maps. It is in the very Northwest corner of Russia, not too far from the border with Finland. His family probably did not live too far from our relative in Northern Finland during World War II. It is an amazing story. Stepan’s family did not hear about it until Nikolai’s wife told them about it after the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990’s.
He also told me about his wife’s great grandfather who is German/Dutch extraction. During World War II, he got sent to a horrible concentration camp in Kazakhstan where the vast bulk of the prisoners died. He had abandoned his factory in the Ukraine and made his way to the south of Russian when he saw that Stalin and the communists were going to come and take it from him.
Needless to say, Stepan does NOT have too many warm fuzzy feelings about atheism, communism in general, and Joe Stalin in particular.
I liked the story of Stepan’s family Ken. My maternal great grandparents and grandfather were German immigrates that moved to Odessa near the Black Sea to homestead. That is where the Ukraine is now. The thought of the Czar was that they would intermarry with the Russians and the strong German work ethic would prevail. The Germans however lived in a community by themselves. In 1908 my great uncle went to America, later my grandfather and then the entire family to Lind, Washington. My great-grand father sold the farm to a cousin. He never received money from the farm because at the beginning of the Prussian War, they came and told the cousin and family to leave, they were taking over. When he protested, he was shot. The family fled…we think back to Germany.
Hey JoAnn. I just saw this. That is VERY interesting. It is amazing how good we have it here. People from the Ukraine, Germans, Dutch, Ukrainians, and even Russians have suffered immensely. I am going to try to learn more about his family if I can. It is so, so sad to hear stories like that about YOUR cousin. We have stories like that about our Finnish relatives. I would love to hear some more about hat if you have any when we get out to Oregon again!