Life in Russia
Life in Russia was disastrous at first. The Russian government abandoned the colonists to the elements with little provision for survival. The Germans were familiar with their lush and forested homeland but were unprepared for the treeless prairies of the Russia steppe. With few building materials and tools at hand, many lived in dugouts and caves in the early years. Disease, crop failures, harsh winters and attacks by Kirghiz tribesman plagued their first years. The Kirghiz (later known as Kazakh’s) raided Cossack and German settlements from 1771 to 1774.
Emelian Ivanovich Pugachev led the 1773-74 Russian peasant uprising. A Don Cossack, he claimed to be Peter III, announced the end of serfdom, and gathered an army of Cossacks, serfs, and Tartars. After seizing towns in the Volga and Ural regions, he was caught and executed in 1775.
Over time the German colonists became very successful. They learned to farm the land, built self-sufficient communities, and eventually established businesses and factories that were prosperous in comparison with their Russian neighbors.
An excerpt from the book Russia by Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace written from 1870 to 1875 illustrates the relationship between the German colonists and their Russian neighbors:
“Of all the foreign colonists the Germans are by far the most numerous. The object of the Government in inviting them to settle in the country was that they should till the unoccupied land and thereby increase the national wealth, and that they should at the same time exercise a civilizing influence on the Russian peasantry in their vicinity. In this latter respect they hae totally failed to fullfil their misson. A Russian village, situated in the midst of German colonies, shows generally, so far as I could observe, no signs of German influence. Each nationality lives more majorum, and hold as little communication as possible with the other. The muzhik (Russian peasant) observes carefully – for he is very curious – the mode of life of his more advanced neighbours, but he never thinks of adopting it. He look upon Germans almost as beings of a different world – as wonderfully cunning and ingenious people, who have been endowed by Providence with peculiar qualities not possessed by ordinary Orthodox humanity. To him it seems in the nature of things that Germans should live in large, clean, well-built houses, in the same way as it is in the nature of things that birds should build nests; and as it has probably never occurred to a human being to build a nest for himself and his family, so it never occurs to a Russian peasant to build a house on the German model. Germans are Germans, and Russians are Russians – and there is nothing more to be said on the subject.”
The brutal hardship and profound physical isolation of the Russian steppe transformed the culture of the German colonists. In the constant struggle to survive, hard work and frugality became pre-eminent cultural values. A German proverb says “Die Arbeit schmeckt bessar als Essen” – Work tastes better than food.
Victimized by raiding Asiatic nomads and distrustful of the Russian serfs surrounding them, the colonists became suspicious of outsiders. For over a century the German colonists clung tightly to their ancestral heritage and language. Colonists rarely mixed with the Russians. Hardship and stark isolation on the steppe left them deeply religious and fatalistic.