Johannes Thielmann (1903–1957), loving and devoted son, and proud supporter and admirer of Vladimir Lenin, was my mother’s brother. There are two contrasting newspaper clippings about him – one published in North America at the time of his death, written by his mother, the other from Soviet Russia, written a year earlier by Johannes himself, self-identified as Ivan Tilman. His mother wrote:

With a heavy heart, I am sharing with all my dear friends and acquaintances, that on October 9 of this year, I received the sad news from Russia that my dear son, Johannes Gerhard Thielmann, died on March 10 of this year. Where or how? We do not know the answer. Oh, how long we waited to hear from him and his family. Almost tweny years have passed since we received his last letter. He was born on March 16, 1903. His dear wife Anna and sons Gerhard and Hermann live in Russia. [Signed:] In deepest sorrow, Mother, Mrs. G. J. Thielmann and children, R.R. 2, Line 1, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. P.S. The photo was taken in 1928. On the backside he wrote to his mother: “This past week I did not go to bed, before I turned my thoughts to you, and voiced a prayer for you. Your first-born son.”¹

In 1956, Johannes wrote and submitted for publication the following, entitled “Near and Dear”:

From 1923 to 1925 I studied at the first military academy established by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). The school was located in the Kremlin in Moscow. V. I. Lenin was named our honorary cadet.

For our practicum, cadets were assigned to guard the government buildings. We all dreamed of guarding No. 17, the office of the Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars. Many students who guarded this post witnessed Vladimir Ilyich working hard all day, and going home after midnight. (He only had to go across the corridor on the ground floor.) He would go so quietly, as not to disturb the domestic staff – into the kitchen for a cup of tea or a little modest supper. Several times I met Ilyich as we cadets went from our barracks to classes. I saw him once during a morning walk, in a wheelchair accompanied by N. K. Krupskaya, the doctor in charge.

By March 9, 1923, the health of Ilyich had declined so much that he was moved to the small town of Gorki, close to Moscow, under strict medical orders. By July he had become a little better, and could get up and walk a little.

I saw Vladimir Ilyich for the last time on October 19, 1923. Fellow cadet Peter and I were on duty at the inner gate, the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, that night. The signal came from the outer gates facing Red Square that a car had just entered the tunnel. We were ready to check their passes again. The car stopped and driver Gil presented his pass. A thought came to me that perhaps Ilyich was riding in this car. I went to the other side of the car, and indeed it was our dear Ilyich, presenting his pass. Later that evening when we were back in our living quarters, we heard from our friends who had been posted on other watches that Ilyich, with his driver Gil assisting him hand in hand, had eventually gotten up to the second floor, entered his office, and looked around the conference hall. Then he had been taken back to Gorki. There he spent the last months of his life.

V. I. Lenin was near and dear to all Soviet people. His memory will always live in the hearts of the workers.

– I. Tilman.²

The family in North America and the family in the Soviet Union emphasized different parts of the life of Uncle Hans. To my grandmother, he was the loving, devoted, and ever-caring son that she “lost” when he was unable to join the family in Canada. To my mother, he was the older brother. “He wasn’t a communist,” she once said to me. To his brother, later a political science professor at Georgia State University, he was the sibling, only a year older, with whom he had quarrelled as a child, and debated intellectually various aspects of communism and capitalism. To his sons, he was the father they had hardly known, because he was a political prisoner and enemy of the state for the first twenty years of their lives. His grandsons, born in the 1960s, after his death, learned he had been in a high-ranking position in the Red Army, was arrested in 1938 during a period of mass repression, sentenced and imprisoned in the Komi Republic, and released in 1953 after Stalin died, and was one of the first to be declared rehabilitated in 1956 after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, which condemned Stalin’s political repression. Much of what I know about my uncle Johannes today is based on a review of the letters that he wrote from 1922 to 1938, and subsequent communication with his wife, sons, and grandsons after 1957.³

The Early Years: Before 1924

Johannes – or Hans, as he was often called – was born in Rosenort, Molotschna, in 1903 where his father, Gerhard J. Thielmann, was a village teacher. His brother Gerhard (later called George) was born in 1904, also in Rosenort. A sister Kaethchen died at age two, and a brother Jacob (1909–1921) died at age twelve. His sister Elly, my mother, was born in 1912 in Neu-Halbstadt. In his earliest years the family moved frequently, as his father taught in Friedensdorf and then Gnadenfeld before moving to Lichtenau to join the family farm implement import firm, Hamm and Huebert. The family then moved to Halbstadt, where the firm relocated its head office around 1910. The firm went out of business during the First World War, because it depended on imports from Germany. As a result, the family moved to the village of Muensterberg in 1918, where his mother’s family lived. Hans was fifteen and his brother Gerhard was fourteen, brother Jacob, nine, and sister Elly, six. His maternal grandfather was Johann N. Huebert (1848–1934), a mill owner in Muensterberg who had a number of children: daughters Liese (married to Gerhard Sukkau), Katharina (married to Gerhard Thielmann), Justina, and Anna (neither married), and sons Kornelius, Johann, Jacob, Heinrich, Nicolai, Abram, and Isaac.

The writings and memoirs of Gerhard (George) and Elly about this period say very little about their brother Hans. Elly remembered a few friends she played with in Halbstadt. From Muensterberg she remembered living across the street from her Huebert grandparents until the family immigrated to Canada in July 1924. George recalled witnessing the murder of his mother’s cousin Klaas Wittenberg in Altonau on October 30, 1919, by a group of Makhnovites. Nothing is mentioned about the activities of Hans during this period, except that by the time the family decided to immigrate to Canada, he was studying in Moscow and could not leave with them. The understanding was that he would join the family once he had completed his studies and related service assignment. In my grandmother’s memoirs she relates how Johannes was a gifted child. At age nine he attended the Musterschule (an enriched educational program), where his teacher B. B. Wiens placed him in Grade 3 because he had already learned to read and write at home. At age twelve he entered the Halbstadt secondary school (Zentralschule), and he also continued studies at the Halbstadt School of Commerce (Kommerzschule). He was offered free passage to study abroad in America, which he turned down upon the advice of his parents.

The question of how Hans ended up studying in Moscow was never asked or answered until recently. Perhaps his parents and brother George knew, but nothing was written down or passed on to the next generation. The descendants who remained in Russia have filled in some of those details. Their story goes something like this: In 1918, at the age of fifteen, Hans participated in the youth organization of the Communist Party and entered the Red Guard as a volunteer and was part of the intelligence squadron responsible for the takeover of the Isthmus of Perekop (the narrow strip of land connecting Crimea and the mainland), which had been strongly fortified by General Wrangel, head of the White Army. For his role in that takeover, he was one of the first to be awarded the Order of the Red Star and was invited to study at the Kremlin’s military academy. If my grandmother or mother knew these facts, they were not considered important to write down or pass on.

Hans most likely arrived in Moscow sometime in late November 1922. In a letter dated December 1, addressed to his ten-year-old sister (my mother), he wrote: “My trunk and all my things arrived safe and intact . . . I am enjoying Moscow . . . it is a very, very large city.” His letters written in 1922 and 1923 from Moscow to his family in Muensterberg gush with love and affection for his little sister and gratefulness to his parents. “Warm regards and best wishes for your birthday with 1000 kisses!!!” he wrote to his sister. “Thank you for all your love and sacrifices,” he wrote to his parents, and signed off, “Love and kisses, your Hans. Good night, also, to Elly and Gerhard.”⁴

Changing Identities: 1924–1929

Johannes remained a loving, caring son and brother, albeit at a distance. After July 1924 his immediate family was in Canada, and he was alone in the Soviet Union. Soon after the departure of his parents, his life was turned upside down, with arrests, educational and vocational uncertainty, and political and economic changes, followed by a number of failed attempts to emigrate. Numerous identities appear in the letters he sent to his family in the years immediately after their departure: he was a prisoner, a convict, a reporter, a farmer, a “former Bolshevik,” and a Mennonite.

Johannes (Hans) took leave from Moscow to bid his parents and siblings farewell as they departed for Canada. He remained in military uniform and reported at every train station along the way from Lichentau, Molotschna, where they left on July 13, to Sebezh, where he said his final goodbyes on July 20. He travelled with teacher J. J. Thiessen (1893–1977), who been asked by B. B. Janz to serve as the echelon leader, and who would accompany several emigrant groups that summer to the border. Hans wanted to return to Muensterberg to his Huebert grandparents, but the train needed to go through Moscow, which suited him, because he also wanted to meet the next emigrating group. Barely back in Moscow, after travelling Monday and Tuesday, July 21 and 22, he experienced trouble. One of his classmates from the military academy reported to the authorities that he had witnessed Hans buying a ticket for Riga at the train station on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday, July 24, Hans was arrested and questioned by the GPU (secret police), who didn’t believe his explanation that the Franz Isaaks (with whom he was staying temporarily) had asked him to buy train tickets for the Tjarht sisters who were travelling to Riga. From Thursday to Sunday he was detained and questioned by various departments and agencies. Finally becoming ill from all the stress, he was released on the condition that he report to court in Saratov when called.

When Hans reported this in a letter to his parents, dated August 8, written from Saratov, he included a few more details about those few days in Moscow. F. C. Thiessen from Ufa, married to his father’s cousin, was in the city at that time. The third echelon of emigrants, among whom he knew a few people, was there as well. J. H. Janzen from Tiege was also there, for church and religious affairs, and he and Hans went to the theatre on one of those days. Janzen was also staying at the Franz Isaaks’ place. Hans writes that after he was released from questioning, “I sighed a big sigh of relief as I rode the electric street car, and with joy called out ‘Thank God’ when I arrived at the Isaaks, to which Mr. Janzen added, ‘Nice communist!’ I have to tell you I have been dismissed from the Party.”⁵

Janzen’s “Nice communist” remark was probably made in jest, but it contained an element of truth. The reference to dismissal meant that he had been a Communist Party member and was being disciplined for some infraction, at least until it could be cleared up in court. His infraction might have been returning late to the academy from his leave to bid his parents farewell – late because of his arrest and the interrogation. Nevertheless, it is clear that he was viewed as a communist and this letter provides evidence. I also remember my mother once saying that her brother Hans would attend the Bible studies in Moscow with other Mennonites, but there were people who were always suspicious of his sincerity. She would also say to me, “My brother was no communist.” I had not seen these letters from Hans at that time, to be able to present another view.

Before arriving in Saratov on Wednesday, August 6, Hans spent several days in Muensterberg, settling some issues around land redistribution and property. His letter is somewhat opaque, but he knew his father, to whom he was writing, would understand. He wrote:

On Sunday there was a meeting of the village and the Land Commission, where my land was taken from me. Now I’ve done my part. Braun and J. Neumann really wanted to lead my case through. I wrote a statement for the Molochansk Land Commission. . . . Was it right for me to do that? Later I went and said to Braun, you should rather tear up the statements. I’m so much of an idealist. Well, one of them warned me about such a step. . . . Now they also want to break into the trade unions. I spoke with all my uncles, H[einrich], K[ornelius], A[bram], and N[icolai]. Uncle Nicolai is so taken up in this, especially against Uncle Heinrich, and also against Grandfather, that he wishes that everyone’s land be taken away from them, and thus cause the village to be against the work of the other siblings. . . . How it eventually turned out with the land, I do not know. . . . If my land is to be divided up, I don’t want to waste any more time on this issue. . . . The Muensterbergers have divided the land of emigrants among themselves, except, for example, Lorenz’s land stayed with Nikkel. How, I don’t know, that is why I stopped there, and because of your land, although I know it is in the “possession of A. J. H. [Abram J. Huebert] and Grandfather.” I can report nothing more. . . . The Sukkaus want to move back to M[uensterberg]. . . . J. Braun wants to move into our previous home in M., and will pay Abram Huebert ten rubles per month for it. Not that long ago there existed an alliance between H., A., and N., but now the one who worked in the field is against H. and N., and one from the opposite side (Grandfather, K., and G. Th., namely G. Th. [Gerhard Thielmann]) is in America. It seems like there are now three camps out of the five, while previously there were two camps out of the six.

One of the results of the Russian Revolution was land reform, and Hans seemed to have been well versed in the ideology and implementation of these reforms. His exact role is not clear from his letters, nor have I found other records which would confirm that he had any kind of official position in this regard. Colin Neufeldt’s research on Mennonite involvement in the dekulakization of former landowners from 1928 to 1933 argues that during this period there were many Mennonites pitted against each other over economic reforms.

In Saratov, the life of Hans Thielmann took another turn when he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to a year in prison on a criminal charge. Now he also had that identity. In his letter from prison in Saratov, he reported that he did not want a pardon; he was innocent and would serve the sentence until released. The incident which led to this conviction was the result of a dirty trick by the wife of the secretary of the People’s Commissariat. He wrote:

The adulterous, carnal instinct of my close acquaintance . . . whom I strongly resisted . . . led to my conviction. I was forced to disarm her from her pistol with which she wanted to take her life. I let my emotions guide me. Had I been guided by my mind, she may have shot a bullet through her head, or maybe not. . . . My honest disgust tempted this woman to lie in revenge, so that in the end everything turned out quite differently, and I was convicted of a gun theft.⁶

Instead of being commended for saving her life, he was convicted of stealing her only means of defence or protection, her pistol. From September 27 to December 20, 1924, he was a prisoner in Saratov. His release seems to have come as a result of an order that came down from Moscow, not long after Gerhard Woelk, a friend of the family, had a personal meeting with Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, head of state of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Hans was overjoyed that he was free just before Christmas, but he also had mixed feelings about what Woelk had done “against his wishes.”

In another letter, written on September 11, while in Saratov, before the incident where he disarmed the woman, he reflected on the days in Moscow following his family’s departure for Canada, his uncertain future, and several other exchanges which reveal how he viewed himself:

Perhaps I acted too hastily and without thought, when I came to bid you farewell. I should have acted more cautiously and perhaps it would not have been necessary for me to go to Saratov. Maybe I could have gotten a posting in the college. . . . Now I know that I will leave Saratov for sure after this month. I have written to Moscow, and the result is that they have released me from the academy. Where I’ll be assigned, I do not know. The most unfortunate thing is that I need to appear in court; if not, I could leave Saratov this week. Today I gave a written affidavit at the tribunal that I would not leave town. . . . It is not a pleasant thought to think that in the future if I’m ever asked if I have had any charges in court, I will need to say “yes.” . . . If I am completely free by the 1st of October, maybe I will still get to go to the college. But that is one big question. It may turn out that I will spend this winter in Muensterberg instead.

. . . I recently wrote a letter to B. Janz, Kharkov, who requested that I write because he wanted to stay connected with me. The top Mennonite official knows me and is counting on me, even though the masses don’t know me nor want to know me. (I have to tell you, or perhaps you already know, at this moment I am judicially nonpartisan, though inwardly I still believe what I said earlier – ([blackened spot, by a censor?]). I received a response to this letter from J. Thiessen from Moscow, who at the beginning of September again accompanied an echelon of Mennonites. He sends greetings to you. . . . He begins his letter like this: “Dear Hans Gerhardowitsch! Surely you will be quite surprised that I am writing to you, but your letter to B. Janz has moved me to write to you. The tone of your letter sounds like you are saying: ‘I am a child of your people and I know my duties, waiting for the moment when I can jump into action. Just watch me!’” . . .

. . . I also received a letter from Mrs. Isaak. She sends greetings to you, Mama, and wants to write you too. She writes that so many people ask about “her regular guest.” . . . She feels along with your grief, Mama, that we must still be apart. She asks if she can comfort me and if I will come again. She must say goodbye to her son Jacob soon. . . . Will you become a Christian? she ends, recalling our conversation in the hotel in Moscow . . . and I so openly confessed, “I am a Christian.”⁷

“I am a child of your people” and “I am a Christian” were statements of identity which might have been necessary to allay the doubt or skepticism of others. Hans was a twenty-one-year-old trying to find his way in an ever-changing world. His parents and siblings were gone. His country was facing the challenge of rebuilding after war, revolution, and famine.

With his future plans uncertain, he left Saratov and returned to Moscow a “free man,” as he wrote on January 25, 1925, the day he arrived. He reported that he attended the late evening celebratory service marking the fourth hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Anabaptist/Mennonite church. He also mentioned the All-Mennonite General Conference held the previous week in Moscow. He expressed a lot of uncertainty about his immediate future. He wondered if his age cohort would be mobilized in 1925. He wondered if he should return and live in Muensterberg for the winter. He reiterated that he understood that he was supposed to join the rest of the family in Canada, but added that in his mind, if it didn’t happen in 1925, it could always happen later. He felt no urgency.

He must have stayed in Moscow no more than two months, because on March 20 he wrote a letter from Muensterberg stating that he had already been there for four weeks. This letter was particularly focused on the upcoming birthday of his mother (March 23). He wrote conveying his love for his parents, brother, and sister:

Mama, what should I wish you for your birthday? If only we could see each other again! Mama, are you still so sick and filled with worry? Don’t make it so hard for yourself concerning your first-born. Your Hans won’t be lost. I wish you could feel my kisses. . . . It is already late. I have to go to sleep. I want to have a night kiss from all of you. Stay healthy, Mama. Stay alive. I want to see you. Your Haenschen.⁸

A letter written for his mother’s birthday a year later was again filled with affection. “How I’d love to throw myself at your feet, embrace you, and listen attentively to how your warm heart still beats for me!” he declared.⁹

After spending some time in Muensterberg with his grandparents in the spring of 1925, another identity began to develop: Hans the journalist/reporter/editor. By the summer of 1925 he was the village correspondent (Dorf-Korrespondent) for the agricultural cooperative (landwirtschaftliche Genossenschaft), which presumably was what led him to a role and position in Kharkov with the newspaper Das Neue Dorf in 1926. Das Neue Dorf was a German-language paper, formed by the merger of Hammer und Pflug (Odessa) and Der Rote Stern (Melitopol), that began to publish weekly in Kharkov on October 17, 1925. It identified itself as the official paper of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine.

On February 20, 1926, Hans attended a meeting of the Verband der Buerger hollaendischer Herkunft (Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage) as an editorial representive of Das Neue Dorf. On April 27 he attended the all-Ukrainian youth worker convention, presumably also representing the paper. His letters to his family, by then in Saskatchewan, were upbeat and he often included photographs, but they also expressed continued concern about his mother’s health and his growing desire to be reunited with them. Sometimes he even hinted that they should consider coming back instead of him joining them. In June 1926, he wrote to Elly:

I wanted to send you money many times already, but there was always not enough. Now I get 100 rubles a month. Earlier I earned more, 124 rubles. But before I was still doing a bigger job; now there is another man working in the editorial office, and so the work has become a little less for me, and hence also a little less money. These 100 rubles are not enough for the expensive life in Kharkov, where I have to buy everything ready-made. I have nowhere to eat and I always eat out, which is very expensive. If you would come back now, you could live with me. I would then get a room. Papa could work in the office and not have to do such hard work. Mama could get medical care here free of charge and would still get money from the health fund. Don’t you want to come back?¹⁰

In another letter to his little sister, written on October 31, he described how he saw life in the Soviet Union:

Soon it will be your birthday. How quickly time passes! You are so far away that I cannot even give you a birthday card. Therefore I want to write you a few lines.

Children, girls and boys of your age, are pure gold, they are happy, because the future belongs to them. I am also still very young, and yet you are my little sister, even though you have grown taller than me. Many workers’ and peasants’ children of your age are Young Pioneers in our Soviet Russia. The Pioneer organization already consists of two million children in our country. The Pioneers in Russia are part of the building of a new life. In spring and summer the Pioneers live outdoors, in tents. Somewhere on the edge of a forest stand the tents of the girls. Nothing seems sweeter to them than their forest camp. They are not inferior to the boys, neither in gymnastics nor marching, neither in endurance nor in dexterity. The Pioneers are cheerful girls. It can’t be said that the boys are particularly serious, but only girls can laugh at the smallest thing.¹¹

He then described in great detail several humorous incidents that he was sure his sixteen-year-old sister would enjoy and chuckle over.

By the summer of 1927, Hans was back in Muensterberg with his grandparents and other relatives. The letters he wrote over the next two years are dominated by reporting on attempts to secure an exit visa from the Soviet Union or an entrance visa to Canada. His longing to reunite with his parents, brother, and sister were his motivation. The letters express emotions ranging from great anticipation and excitement to deep regret and disappointment. In August 1927 he reported that he had received a letter from the head of RUSKAPA (the Russian-Canadian-American Passenger Agency) in Dnepropetrovsk stating that he could be registered to emigrate without special permission from Canada simply by confirming that he was a Mennonite, landless, and going to join his family. He was excited and was beginning the process. He wrote that he needed to work incognito. For example, he went to Tiege with Grandfather to see Lepp the church leader, without any uncles being aware of why he was going or what he was working on. There always seemed to be the danger that someone or something would prevent his success in securing the necessary papers. With Lepp he had no trouble confirming that he was a Mennonite.

In fall of 1927, he entered a program of study in Melitopol about Fordson and International tractors. Why? Because he wanted to have a skill that he could use immediately when he arrived in Canada. He could also use this training to confirm his identity as “a landless farmer.” When he was not in Melitopol he lived in Muensterberg with his grandparents. Here he helped his aunt Justina and grandfather weed and water their garden. He wrote in one letter that Grandfather “has created a canal in the back from the artesian well to the garden, so that it holds enough water that he can water the garden for seven hours and it always remains full.”¹² In a December letter he said more about the tractor course – it was something totally different and new for him. It was a six-week course leading to a diploma. Even if the diploma wasn’t worth anything in Canada, he hoped that the practical experience would be helpful. He imagined the family perhaps having a farm, or working where a tractor driver was needed. And if his hope of immigrating did not come to fruition, then he could find use for these skills. He concluded the letter by thanking his parents for giving him the opportunity to study. Now it was his grandfather making this possible.

For Christmas 1927, Hans wrote, all of the cousins were together and they had a photograph taken. The only ones missing were his siblings Gerhard and Elly, cousin Heinrich Sukkau, and cousin Hans Huebert. (Of the latter two, one had emigrated to Canada in 1925, and the other had gone to study in Germany in 1926.)

At the end of January 1928, Hans wrote a letter addressed to his brother Gerhard, who by then had left Saskatchewan and was studying at Bluffton College in Ohio. He wrote:

Dear Gerhard. I am glad that you are doing well, and that you have the opportunity to study, so one can soon congratulate you as an up-and-coming school headmaster. All the best! Even if money to get an education is rare these days, it is a great fortune that you can hold your head up high, and look forward to the future.

You have finished the Christmas vacation time, and hopefully brought it to a close as you planned. You wrote that you wanted to visit various Mennonite settlements. It will have been more interesting than when we fellow commerce students, during the famine period, travelled to various colonies presenting literature evenings at the request of our teacher. That was once upon a time. Now you would be amazed how, in a few years, Soviet Russia has developed. Obviously it is not logical to compare the former capitalist period and Soviet Russia with an America that has not experienced this change, and furthermore, America is wealthy, and not like many other countries that had losses during the last Great War.

“Now, how are you doing?” you will ask. As I wrote, I am taking a course in Melitopol on tractors, so I can be a “trakorist” (tractor operator). Currently I am in Muensterberg. One day this past week I was in Halbstadt and another day I was in Melitopol.

Our Huebert relatives are in a bad situation. I will write about it a little later.

I have not yet given up my hope of coming [to America], if our parents stay alive, so that we can see each other again. Mama is always ill. From the letter I can feel how difficult it is for her. So, as you already know, I have for quite some time been working to get an exit passport, but that effort has been in vain. At the same time, I also do not have an entrance visa to Canada in my hands, so even if I would get the passport, I still would not be able to go. Furthermore, exit passes are difficult to get without the entrance visas. Of course this is obvious. So our dear parents and others are working on the latter. And with regards to the exit permit, I did get a formal notice of rejection last year. I put in an appeal, and recently received a response from Kharkov that my submission was moving forward. In one month, I should have the results. Then we will know if I can come or not. Let’s hope for a positive answer. I was already considering going to Siberia and getting to know our relatives over there, but that too would be dangerous.

Now I need to tell you some sad news. As you know from my last letter, we had an exceptionally good Christmas time. All of our cousins were together. On January 3 the cousins from Crimea left. They also stopped and visited us in Melitopol. On January 3 Uncle Heinrich’s house was searched, and he and bookkeeper Braun were arrested and brought to Melitopol. This, then, is how 1928 started for the Huebert family. That occurred on Tuesday. On Friday there was another house search, and our cousin Kornyusha was arrested. Now all three are in Melitopol for interrogation. On Tuesday, January 31, the trial will take place in Halbstadt. All three are facing two-year prison sentences on top of the confiscation of all property that is documented. Let’s hope that the judges don’t bring down the harshest ruling. However, you can be sure that they will not be able to talk their way into freedom, even though we have secured two of the best lawyers in Melitopol. How are all three guilty of breaking the law? Heinrich Huebert as the lead tenant, Kornyusha as the younger companion, and Braun as the bookkeeper. I cannot spend much time to indulge in the detail of the crimes. The trials will soon happen and then I can report on their conviction. So that is the story.

Now imagine Grandfather left alone. The lease on the mill will most likely be cancelled by the authorities because the tenants have not complied with the terms. As you know, the mill had a lot of debt. Then the creditors came and demanded their money. In a word, the situation is critical. Mr. Woelke has also become tired. So in one way or another I have become the “man for all seasons,” in that I go from Herod to Pilate, always working at something.

So I will close off now. I have already written a lot, and you will likely not have much time to write while studying, nor time to read long letters. To be honest, I have not been able to write long letters in recent months either. It used to be different.

Waiting for your reply. Have you met Lilli Magnusovna? What is she doing? Love and a kiss from your brother, Hans Thielmann.¹³

This letter marks another shift in themes. His next letters describe further arrests, trials, sentences, and fines. Hans, too, was arrested, and he wrote one letter from detention in Halbstadt, on April 1, 1928. He wrote that if everything worked out as he planned, he would be in Siberia in May, where he hoped that he could get help from his uncle David Thielmann. (Incidentally, the David Thielmann family did exit the Soviet Union via Moscow in 1929, and subsequently went to Paraguay).

On January 19, 1929, Hans wrote from Muensterberg that he was happy to report that in Melitopol he was promised he would be issued an exit permit that month. He hoped his letter would be his last from Muensterberg. He included with it a copy of a letter he had written to Uncle David Thielmann in Siberia, so his parents could see what he was planning. In the past three weeks he had travelled a lot – to Tokmak, to Melitopol, and to Halbstadt. He was keeping everything secretive about his departure. No relatives knew except Aunt Justina, so that nothing would spoil the plans. He had paid a deposit on a ticket but didn’t have enough to pay for the entire ship fare. He had written to Uncle David about this issue. He was hoping that RUSKAPA would give him credit. He asked his father to send him a prepaid ticket that he could then pay back in Canada. The cost was $167. He didn’t know how much Uncle David might be able to provide. He wanted his parents to confirm that they would guarantee for him in Canada. He was excited, and only regretted that he would have to leave his grandparents and Aunt Justina in a helpless state. He hoped there would be no problems or dangers en route, particularly as a “former Bolshevik,” as he described himself.¹⁴

The family letter collection for 1924 to 1929 affirms Johannes Thielmann’s various identities: loving, caring son and brother, Christian, prisoner, convict, journalist, farmer, Bolshevik, Mennonite, and former Bolshevik.

A Valued Consultant: 1931–1938

For almost two years – from June 2, 1929, to March 29, 1931 – Hans did not write any letters to his family in North America. When he finally wrote again, the letter was sent from a post office in western Siberia, about five hundred kilometres east of the city of Omsk. He reported that after his departure from Muensterberg at the end of December 1929, he had heard very little about his grandparents or uncles and aunts. He didn’t know where they were and they didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t locate his uncles David and Kornelius Thielmann, who lived in Siberia. Hans also reported that he was just beginning to recover from having been sick in bed for three days. He wrote that when he read his mother’s last letter, he wept. “Are you healthy, Mama? Are you still alive, Mama?” He added:

Close at my side sits my lovely wife, comforting me. So much time has passed and much has changed. I am married, which you do not yet know. My wife’s name is Anna and she loves me very, very much. She is from a good family, not a German family, but from a Russian family. She has a heart of gold. She regrets very much that she does not know German.

Hans then continued the letter in Russian:

My wife Anya is afraid that you will not love her because she is a Russian, but I told her to remove this folly from her mind. I know that you, Mama, Papa, my little Elly, and my brother Gerhard will all love my Njura. I also asked my wife to write you. But she wants to first wait for a response to my letter, says she is afraid to write first. She is silly. It’s hard for me, dear loved ones, to be so far away from you. But maybe, God willing, we’ll see each other again. I will apply for us to travel together to you. When we get permission, will we be allowed to join you? If it’s too difficult to come from the USSR with my wife, my Anya loves you so much that she would even agree to wait, letting me go first. But all these are dreams, dreams for a sweet happy reunion.

Only at the end of that first letter did he provide a hint about his work: “I am working on a Soviet farm. I am a new person here, and with my illness, I don’t know how it will be here and if I’ll be able to work here.”¹⁵

The next letter in the collection is dated January 25, 1932, and was sent from a sanatorium in the northern Caucasus region (Kislovodsk) and addressed to his brother Gerhard. Letters to his brother often contain more details, things which perhaps might have been harder for his parents to hear, even though he was aware that the family shared every letter with each other. Perhaps he hoped his brother would understand and maybe moderate or interpret these things for the family. Hans wrote:

I will soon be well again. Primarily, I lost my health in prison, arrested a number of times, but it was my fault. Now everything is good again. My medical certificate for treatment at this centre expires on February 4, but yesterday I was examined by the medical commission (three physicians) at the sanatorium named after Stalin, and they have extended my recovery time at the expense of the government for another two weeks.¹⁶

In this same letter he also copied out an excerpt of a report that his superior officer wrote and printed in a local newspaper in western Siberia, dated January 4, 1932:

“Former informant Tilman, now an inspector, showed exceptional initiative during his mission to eliminate backward agricultural practices during the formation of the Khakassy agricultural site (1,800 kilometres southeast of Novosibirsk) through immense assistance to the management of the office, and with a truly shocking pace of work. With the help of Comrade Tilman and his direct cooperation in the local press, the Khakassy office managed to make the greatest progress in eliminating backward practices in the regional, district, party, and professional organizations.

“In no lesser measure, Comrade Tilman assisted the office by direct visits to a number of state farms (Soviet farms) and MTSes (machine-tractor stations) for accounting purposes and establishing business relationships between the top management and the site managers of the development sites. For the diligence and conscientiousness that he demonstrated to fulfill these tasks, and for the truly striking pace of Comrade Tilman’s work, he has been rewarded with a trip at the expense of the Trust to one of the resorts on the southern coast of the Crimea or in the Caucasus, and will be promoted to the position of an inspector with a salary of 250 rubles starting November 1, 1931. Administrator Semenov.”

So you can see how good work is valued here. When I read your letter, I had to cry. Dear brother! How much I would love to help you. I’ve often wanted to send my dear parents some money, but that is not allowed. . . .

Never ask me to tell you more about what I’ve been through. Whatever I can share, I will write without you asking. . . .

Dear Gerhard, what do you think about the proposal to come back to Russia? Here, we have no unemployment. The third year of the Five [Year Plan] (1931) was a year of new successes and achievements for the working class in the development of socialism. Despite the insufficient development of specific individual industries, overall industrial production grew by 20–21 percent in 1931 in comparison with production in 1930. This increase in industrial production in 1931 happened while industrial production in all capitalist countries was in decline. At the same time, the unemployment rate in the USSR is dropping this year, while the number of unemployed in all bourgeois states suffered catastrophic growth. It has brought about a significant improvement in living conditions to workers and a further increase in wages by 18 percent, while the living conditions and wages of the workers in the capitalist countries has worsened greatly, which you have confirmed with the description of your situation.

In all seriousness, you must consider the proposal to come back. You know that we do not have enough manpower in Soviet Russia. Annually, thousands of German, English, and American youth, qualified workers, come to Soviet Russia. If you wish, write a request to the West Siberian Regional Executive Committee in which you state exactly what work you are able to do and your education. It is entirely unlikely that I will come to Canada, and it also would not help, so maybe all of you could come back. Here I could be of assistance to our parents. How can I help you if you are over there? Oh my dear father and mother! Oh, how I would love to see you all come here!

In all seriousness, please write a detailed response. And now, my dear little sister Elly, how tall you are already. You are all taller than I am. How much I would love to give you a hug one more time, dear Elly. My wife Anna would be glad and happy if you were in our midst.

A greeting and a kiss from your beloved son and brother, Johannes.

In 1932, Hans Thielmann was finding his way in the country of his birth that had transitioned into communism. He was working in a responsible position as an inspector, he was being rewarded for his hard work, he was married, and he was well clothed (especially compared to family members that remained in the villages of Ukraine that were facing more and more deprivation). His wife wrote openly to his parents about her former life, wanting to hide nothing. She had two sons from a previous relationship. The fifteen-year-old boy never knew his father, who died when the boy was one year old. She had been an opera singer (from 1917 until 1925), but then family life prevented her from continuing. When her health improved she wanted to sing again. She also wanted to bear a child for her husband Hans. She assured them that both Gerhard and Elly could easily find employment in the Soviet Union if the family decided to return. I suspect that Hans and Anna had some idea of what the family was facing in Saskatchewan in 1932. Life was not easy for the immigrants during their first decade in Canada.

In subsequent letters, received from 1932 to 1938, it seems that Hans had to travel as part of his work. In 1932 he and Anna were living in Novosibirsk. From 1933 until March 1935, Hans was based in Ufa, and travelled from there. This was where their first son Gerhard was born on August 23, 1934. In August 1935 Hans began to work in Smolensk. Again he travelled a lot, as he worked as an auditor. He also taught some evening classes. On June 21, 1937, their second son, Hermann, was born in Smolensk. By this time, Hans seemed to be exercising caution with regards to his contact with his family in Canada. Sometimes he told them to send their letters addressed to his stepson, or he used some other method of mail forwarding, so that his location would be less traceable. This wasn’t entirely new for him. In the early 1930s he once reported that half the people in Muensterberg thought he was dead, and the other half wished it to be true. One wonders what type of compromising choices he must have made. Nevertheless, in his letters to the family from 1931 to 1938, he remained the loving son and brother, and the capable, hard-working, and ever-achieving citizen loyal to the country of his birth.

A Political Prisoner: 1938–1953

In 1933, Hans wrote to his brother Gerhard in Russian a long letter filled with the communist rhetoric of the time. Andrej Peters, a fellow researcher who has translated Russian materials for me, summarized it: “Your uncle Johannes Thielmann could write very well in Russian. . . . From the lack of errors and writing style, the letter has high quality. He was an avid communist and spoke of the communistic industry, and was fascinated with the Soviet Union. Your uncle wrote that according to George Bernard Shaw, anti-Soviet elements and capitalist elements had to be killed by shooting, or according to Stalin, anti-Soviet elements and kulaks had to be destroyed or liquidated, crushed or finished off. But he saw this only as one option for moving forward in the Soviet Union.”¹⁷ I can imagine that my uncle was a more moderate communist. In his earlier days, he had been very taken by Vladimir Lenin. Perhaps he could have supported Trotsky, Stalin’s key opponent. Yet Stalin was the leader, and from 1936 to 1938 instituted the Great Purge to secure his political power. It was a period of mass arrests, with little judicial process.

The last letter that Hans wrote to his parents arrived in March 1938. His brother Gerhard received one more letter that had been written on May 2, 1938. It is believed that Hans was arrested in the summer of 1938. His wife Anna was hospitalized with a mental breakdown, and their two young sons, ages one and four, were placed in an orphanage. Once she had recovered and was released, she managed to find her sons and took them to live with her parents in the city of Stary Oskol in the Belgorod region, probably in 1939 or 1940. Anna knew nothing about where Hans had been sentenced. From July 1942 to February 1943, Stary Oskol was under German occupation. Sometime after Soviet troops liberated Stary Oskol, Anna learned that Hans had been sentenced to a camp in the distant north in the Komi Republic. In 1943, Anna and the boys left Stary Oskol and rented an apartment not too far from where Hans was in a labour camp. There she could see him and bring him clothes and additional food, making life easier for him and helping him survive.¹⁸

In the early 1990s, when it became possible to search the KGB archives, his grandsons tried to find his arrest records. The records of his first arrest were not found, but they did get to see his second arrest docket, which was dated shortly before his scheduled release from his initial five-year sentence. The accusations in this docket were most absurd. Hans was said to have formed an anti-state group with other prisoners in order to break through the front line and meet the German troops with arms. The front line was thousands of miles away, and the prisoners, weakened in the camps, simply would not have reached it, even without arms. It is more likely that the Soviet authorities didn’t want to endanger their position against the Germans by releasing some German prisoners, so they made an excuse to re-arrest Hans. Despite denying the charges, he was sentenced to another term.

Final Years: 1953–1957

Hans was released almost immediately after Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, but he could not leave the North because he was not rehabilitated, and was still considered guilty by the Soviet authorities. He was therefore restricted in many rights, including the right to move freely around the country. The family remained in the Komi Republic, where Hans must have found some employment. In 1956, at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, the political repressions of the Stalinist era were condemned, which began the mass rehabilitation of innocently convicted people. Documents show that Johannes Thielmann was among the first to be acquitted, in a process that lasted through the Soviet period into the twenty-first century. His rehabilitation document is dated October 16, 1956.

Still cautious about foreign contact, Hans made no attempt to contact his family in Canada directly. For several years he tried to find his mother’s half-sister, Aunt Justina Huebert, who had been such a close confidante to him in Muensterberg, or his mother’s sister, Aunt Liese Sukkau, whom he had visited in the Caucasus in 1932. If anyone might have contact with his mother in Canada, it would be these two aunts. If only he could find them.

On March 10, 1957, Hans Thielmann died in a hospital in Pechora, Komi Republic. According to a letter Anna wrote to his mother, it came as a complete surprise to her. He never complained, but apparently the climate had caused heart damage, which caused his death. Unfortunately, it was the day after he died that Anna received a letter from Aunt Liese Sukkau, which included the news that Hans’s mother was still alive, but that his father had died in 1949.

His “sickly” mother, whose health had caused him so much concern in the early 1930s, died at age ninety-four in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1974. I spent many hours with her during my high school days, and never really understood her pain over Hans, but then some things only a mother can know and feel. I have learned to cherish the memory of Uncle Hans, the hard-working Soviet citizen and ever-loving and caring oldest son and brother to my grandmother and mother.

Alf Redekopp, former director and archivist at Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg, lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, where he continues to be active as a volunteer editor for the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) and the Mennonite Archival Information Database (MAID).

1. Mennonitische Rundschau, Oct. 30, 1957, 1. ↩︎
2. I. Til’man, “Blizkii i Prodnoi,” Za obraztsovuiu sluzhbu, Apr. 21, 1956. ↩︎
3. Alfred H. Redekopp, ed., “The Life of Johannes G. Thielmann (1903–1957): Translations of His Letters (1922–1938) and the Letters from His Wife and Sons (1958–1972)” (unpublished manuscript, 2018), 66 pages. This manuscript includes translations of most of Johannes’s letters, translated from the German and Russian originals, along with annotations and photographs. The letters have been digitized with the intention of making them more accessible for further research when all translations are complete. ↩︎
4. Letter to Elly Thielmann, Dec. 1, 1922; letter to parents, Mar. 29, 1923. ↩︎
5. Letter to family in Canada, Aug. 8, 1924. ↩︎
6. Letter to brother Gerhard Thielmann, Dec. 5, 1924. ↩︎
7. Letter to parents, brother, and sister, Sept. 11, 1924. ↩︎
8. Letter to mother, Mar. 25, 1925. ↩︎
9. Letter to mother, undated. ↩︎
10. Letter to Elly, June 6, 1926. ↩︎
11. Letter to Elly, Oct. 31, 1926. ↩︎
12. Letter to parents, ca. mid-July 1927. ↩︎
13. Letter to brother Gerhard, Jan. 28, 1928. ↩︎
14. Letter to parents, Jan. 19, 1929. ↩︎
15. Letter to parents, Mar. 29, 1931. ↩︎
16. Letter to brother Gerhard, Jan. 25, 1932. ↩︎
17. This is a 14-page letter written in Russian dated Jan. 22–25, 1933, plus some pages dated June 23–24, 1933. It has not been translated but I am grateful to Heinrich (Andrej) Peters of Hamburg, Germany, for his summary. ↩︎
18. Vladimir Tilman, Orel, Russia, email message to author, Dec. 12, 2021. ↩︎