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

sed some difficulty .... Not long after I bought a house in the village. One evening I took the school horse which I cared for and drove to our former village. I tied the cow and the year-old calf behind the wagon, then loaded pots and pans and several other things .... I brought Mother and our youngest daughter Hilda to the village. This necessitated some diplomatic manoeuvering on my part and cost Mother all of her chickens .... It wasn’t easy for Mother to leave. For the past ten years this was home and she worked very hard for what she possessed. Now the responsibility for the family lay on my shoulders and we had no choice but to start over .... It was not easy for Mother and yet she was happy that the time had finally come for her husband to look after her. When I brought home my first paycheque she was very con¬ cerned we save it in order to pay the various taxes and state dues. She knew from experience how important this was. I on the other hand had worked in a completely different system during the past thirteen years and never worried about payments of any kind. I had no choice but to adjust to a new order. It was a difficult period .... If one possessed a cow they not only demanded proportionate milk and meat deliveries but garden products as CONCEPTS AND TERMS 223 well. The documents listed these as “freewill contributions” but they were anything but that.... Things became easier a few years later when I became the business manager of the entire school.... There was a constant struggle with the chairman of the village soviet as well as other officials. They were always of the opinion that the female teachers should work free of charge or that they really didn’t do any work during the summer .... The same attitude prevailed in the case of the hospitals and children’s homes .... I had to endure a lot of conflict and criticism and of course the old residents of the village all knew where I came from. Later, however, I counted the chairman of the soviet among my best colleagues. We faced an additional problem during this period: as exiles we were still restricted in our freedom of movement .... As Germans we were scattered throughout the various villages. Many people knew each other or were related, but officially could not even visit. This also meant that we could not occupy any impor¬ tant position .... Internationally, peace was made over five years ago, but peace between the citizens of the [soviet] land did not exist. The restrictions were only lifted in 1956 ... . Sometimes I was sent on business trips with only the verbal permission of the district superviser. Without official papers any village official could arrest and fine you and of course our German identity was clearly written upon our foreheads .... I managed to keep my job from 1950 to 1955 though not without some stress and difficulty. Our children, Michi and her husband Gerhard, built their own house on our yard an