JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

d the site itself. . . . On the very first day of our arrival there were the old, the sick and even the blind and the cripples who stayed in the barracks. During the course of the winter those who were ill exceeded the ones who went to work. One morning our supervisor announced that he needed forty to forty-five carpenters. These were given axes, saws, spades and other necessary tools .... These were led to the site of the new horse barn . . . and energetically set to work .... We finished the entire barn in three days .... Now we could accommodate the hundred horses needed to move the logs to the nearby river .... Next we built a special accommodation for the supervisor of the horse barn, the veterinarian, the accountant, etc. We, the horse managers, decided to build a six-by-four meter room in the barn for our own use, but were not allowed to use it since it stood outside the camp .... Yet somehow without official sanction it seemed natural that we spend the night next to our horses .... Finally I asked our commandant for permission to run our own kitchen. We received our food products directly and did our own cooking. We lived far better than those in the camp. We also managed to get clothing, felt boots, mattresses, blankets and pil¬ lows. We built our own bed frames and a table and even managed to acquire a few lamps .... 192 JOURNEYS Not long after this the first horses began arriving from the nearby villages. The surrounding collectives lent us the horses until May 1. I was assigned the complex task of keeping track of all these horses .... Naturally the collectives wanted them back in a better condition than when they arrived. It was a grimly cold morning. The temperature stood at minus 45C. Snow had been falling for days and a layer of twenty to thirty centimeters covered the forest and our barn. Amid all of this the horses began to arrive. It was fortunate that I was not inexperienced. I observed and measured every horse and entered the information into our log book.... It was late evening before we finished our task. Now we possessed almost one hundred horses .... It was mid-night when I walked along the barn and listened to the neighing of the horses — momentarily I was overcome by a great longing for my family back home .... I worked almost until morning getting the documents in order. Next morning the horse-handler came to take the horses into the forest.... The entire process was meticu¬ lously regulated . . . and the individual who took out a horse as¬ sumed an awesome responsibility .... I had no rest during the first weeks following the arrival of the horses .... It is only fitting that I should mention the name ofTimiryazev. I can thank this man for the fact that two-thirds of my thirteen years in the north were spent working with the horses. If I had not had a friend like him I would not have lasted two months. He taught me how to work with horses in the forest, how to h