The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, Fred Richard Belk, 1976

ises the Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uzbek, Turkomen, and Tadzhik Soviet Social Republics of the USSR.' The region covers more than 1,500,000 square miles — approximately one half the size of the United States. It occupies the same ranges of latitude as the territory from Denmark to Algeria or from the southern tip of Alaska to southern California.? The only mountain ranges in Turkestan are the Tien Shan to the east and the Pamir-Alai systems to the south. These two ranges relieve the monotony of steppe and desert.? Except for these ranges, the area forms a great basin, once the bed of an inland sea, which was transformed over the centuries into an arid plain. Remaining vestiges of this prehistoric sea are the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Lake Balkhash, and some smaller lakes. Fed by melting snow from the mountains, the rivers Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya, the ancient Oxus and Jaxartes of the Hellenistic period, emerge from the mountains. Crossing the desert plains, they pick up a yellow-brown 64 The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites sediment, become wide and shallow, and empty into the Aral Sea‘ Many dry riverbeds throughout the area testify to a more moist climate and greater plant cover long ago. Even now, snow fields and glaciers in the Tien Shan and Pamirs are diminishing, and the water supply of lakes and rivers is decreasing, though geographers dis- agree about the rate of further desiccation and whether an equilib- rium has been reached. In northern Turkestan there is more water, and the steppe or prairie grasslands are quite different from the semi- desert and desert of the south. Most of southern Turkestan, in fact, is desert. Less than three percent of the total land surface is arable without proper irrigation. Rainfall is sparse in all of Turkestan and never exceeds eleven inches per year.°® Climatically, the region is controlled by the continental conditions of the great Eurasion land mass of which it is a part. The lack of natural barriers and moderating effect of moisture exposes it to the full extremes of summer and winter temperatures. Winters are made cold and long by frigid air rushing in from Siberia. In January, the coldest month, the temperature on the steppes can drop to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. In the semidesert regions it can reach -40 degrees F. in the west and -57 degrees F. in the east. In the Volga Delta on the northeast border it is a little warmer, but temperatures reach as low as -22 degrees F., and the river is frozen for as many as 112 days each year.* Despite the cold weather, there is little snow, but the driving winds quickly pile it into drifts perhaps 25 inches deep in the north and from seven to eight inches in the semi- desert region. Spring is very short, and winter cold quickly becomes summer heat. Winds that sweep the Volga become as hot as 104 degrees F. At Kasalinsk, near the mouth of the Syr Darya, the mean July temperature is 79 degrees F.; at Tashkent it is 82 degrees