Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens has put together an impressive web site based upon letters written by the Regher family during the early 1930s. The OGPU (Soviet political police) exiled the Reghers from their home in Ukraine to a special settlement village in the northern Urals in 1931. Despite their punitive internal exile they continued to correspond with family members in Carlyle, Saskatchewan. Incredible as it sounds, hundreds of such letters from Russian-German Mennonites banished to special settlements made it to relatives in Canada during the 1930s. You can visit the web site here. I urge all my readers to go check out her web site. She also has both a book and a film documentary coming out early next year based upon these letters. Kyrgyzstan at one time had a fairly large Mennonite population including Maria Regher who settled here with her surviving children after being freed from the special settlement in the Urals in 1956. She died here in 1976. If not for the work of Dr. Siemens she and her family would have been completely forgotten like millions of other victims of Stalinist repression.
hat tip: Michael Miller
Helps to have instructions in English in order to post a comment. Glad to see there is another researcher in Ger-Rus studies who is doing something similar to Ron Vossler's work in North Dakota. GREAT post!!!
ReplyDeletePerhaps you had better check the authenticity of Derksen-Siemens' doctorate with her universities (UBC and Sheffield). It is fraudulent to advertise having a Ph.D, when it is, in fact, still outstanding.
ReplyDeleteHer website says she has a Ph.D. from Sheffield. If you wish to dispute this claim then you can take it up with her. I am only going by what I read on her web page.
ReplyDeleteTo Ellwood and other doubters
ReplyDeleteNote that the statement in the website states: “Her PhD in the Philosophy of Language at the University of Sheffield, UK investigates letters …”. A present tense verb is used to describe the current, but almost completed, research. Note too, that the nomenclature “PhD” is not used after her name. For those interested, Ruth Derksen Siemens’ “Viva” is scheduled for December 4th at the University of Sheffield, UK in the Bakhtin Centre located in the Russian Slavonic Studies Centre. You may contact Dr. David Shepherd or Dr. Craig Brandist at the university if you have further questions.
I incorrectly read the present tense verb as being in reference to the Ph.D. dissertation itself. That is I assumed the thesis had been completed. I am sorry for any confusion this might have caused. I will post a correction later.
ReplyDelete