1917 - The Bolshevik Revolution
The Russian Bolshevik Revolution occured in October 1917 abolishing private ownership in land and property and forever changing the country and life of the colonists in Norka.
Many Volga Germans were consider kulaks - a category of relatively affluent and well-endowed farmers. According to Marxism-Leninism, the kulaks were a class enemy of the poorer peasants. Many farmers and communists were killed, fields were burned, and many privately owned operations were destroyed. This often caused pronounced hunger and created large problems in agriculture and the economy of the new Soviet Union.
All sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918-20 — the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities — had provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land": they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. The Bolshevik government had requisitioned supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production.
The "Black Book of Communism" states that Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain in retaliation for their "sabotage" of the war effort, leading to widespread peasant revolts. In 1920, Lenin ordered increased emphasis on food requisitioning from the peasantry.
A man-made famine began to unfold in 1920 and would continue for several devastating years.
"Bolsheviks" by Ilya Repin, 1918